104 Marie-Cécile Bertau and John L. Roberts
skills, such as collaborating with others on practical tasks (constructing
objects, working, raising children), using language in oral and written
forms, interacting with others, and thinking through abstract problems
(mathematics, philosophy). “Delay” shows thus to be positive, allowing for
fine-grained adjustment and an amazing flexibility to greatly different
environments. Actually, humans create their own environment and become
largely independent of natural ones: this is where culture and society come
into play. Specific cultures and their societies are the contexts for human
learning, and it is for and within specific cultural and social contexts that
humans learn: learning is always situated.
As indicated, others are key players. At the beginning of life in
particular, others introduce us to the socio-cultural contexts we are
expected to learn how to handle. Others regulate our activities and
emotions, they model how things can be and are to be done, they teach us
the specific language in use; they teach us concepts (“freedom”;
“triangle”), categories (“furniture,” “birds”), and procedures (calculating,
cooking); interacting with “our others,” we learn how to evaluate every
object, every action, and every person we experience in terms of the socio-
cultural values of the specific culture and society we live in. In short,
others introduce us to our common reality and its understanding, and that
guides our social behaviors and psychological experiences. Worth noting,
this process is reciprocal: we teach, and learn from, each other – teaching
is always also learning; the children teach their parents, the students teach
their professors, and importantly, peers teach each other, too. Hence,
humans are bound to each other by reciprocal teaching and learning and
this is exactly how cultures live and how human beings are persons to each
other.
Learning is indeed central to the human condition, since it happens all
the time and everywhere as a result of everyday life and the experiences
people make in their environments. This pervasive type of learning, which
happens outside of formal education is called informal learning—people
learning without even realizing that they learn. In contrast, formal learning
“has learning objectives and is intentional”; it is organized and
institutionalized (Werquin, 2008). The institutionalization of learning is a