Learning is a biological process
Learning is a biological process. It is based on biochemical reactions the create special proteins, so called marker proteins, to modify the electrical currents in the brain in a way that produces correct thoughts or saves information, facts or other sensual impressions we get through the sensory system. But not only the brain as a whole is participated. The neo-cortex does learn quite slowly, whereas the brain stem is about 10 times faster in doing things, but, other than the neo cortex, it can not learn in the formal way we train our neo- cortex. The brain stem learns from exercises.
Best example is driving: When we start to learn driving, first of all we try to memorize all the handles we have to use for gas, clutch, gears, blinking and whatever else is required to drive a car. When we try to learn this, we use the neo-cortex and it takes us some hours of training to get better. The way it gets better is they way the brain stem learns. When we are experienced drivers, we can do all these things while talking to the other friends in the car, listening to the radio and singing with the favorite band we hear there. This is possible because the brain stem works massively parallel and "unconscious".
Roots of biological learning
The basics for the modern understanding of learning processes are much more complicated. Knowing these basics enables us to find ways to teach and learn in a brain fitted way. When we deal with students we also have to look for the actual stage of development the student (and his brain in the biological way) has reached. This stage does not always correlate with the real age and very often we have to deal with disadvantageous misconceptions on the psychological side, but with real underdeveloped structures in the brain on the biological side. Most important work on this field in Europe are distributed by Frederic Vester (a German Biochemist) and Manfred Spitzer (a German Psychiatrist).
Learning with the whole body
But there is not only the brain. We need to learn with the whole body! The more and more we know about body learning the more we can use it even at school to help students overcome their problems that often (and even more often) are caused by physical problems in their posture during the learning processes. There are many kinds of posture that make it impossible to learn or to learn efficiently. Therefore we have a strong responsibility to learn more about the context of body and learning progress. Normally we learn much about body language and its psychological background and the meta information students communicate to give indirect feedback about the actual learning situation. We know astonishing little about the role of our muscles, nervous system and other components of the body during the learning processes.
Improving learning performance by improving students' posture
Some first steps towards an understanding of the physical and biological components in the complex biology of learning where done by the American Biochemist Ida Pauline Rolf from Columbia University. She gave us a highly efficient system to see even small misconfigurations and to help the students correct them in collaboration with physiotherapists. Meaning, that we are not finished having a Counsellor of Education and a Psychologist for a school. It seems as we would need a Physiotherapist, too. More and more students suffer from deficiencies in sports, completely wrong nutrition and the resulting problems. Disabilities are no more a single problem of special education - its up to all of us!