Domain

Explanation

Student

• The term Student has the dictionary meanings:

1. A person who investigates & set upon the process of applying the mind so as to acquire knowledge or understanding - a process
2. A person who is enrolled at an educational institution such as kindergarten, school, college, etc. - an act

• The first meaning is of a process - an investigation into the unknown, the ambiguous, the confusion, the difficult & the mystery
• In the process, learning is performed at various levels:

1. Autonomous learning: connective, mechanical manipulation of the sensed into habitual pattern
2. Associative learning: association of the sensed with ideas & concepts relevant to domain of studies
3. Memory learning: capturing, retaining & retrieving of the sensed, automated & associated from the mind
4. Transformational learning: learning the news & unlearning the olds, to overcome the learning inertia barrier & pick the above skills again

• At each of the four levels are seven different learning styles that a student must identify with & come to grasp
• Together, there are 28 learning strata to undergo in the process
• The second meaning is of an act - simply enrolling at any educational institution is enough
• Even if the person is adverse to learning & investigation, that person is still a student due to the formal enrollment
• Hence, we can see two objective aspects of a student - a process & an act
• There are also two corresponding aspects - willingness & formality
• Willingness refers to the will, drive, motivation, inspiration & challenges that one would strive for
• Formality refers to peripheral activities & rituals that are strictly not related to the studies, but is nevertheless necessary in the prevailing environment as social reinforcement

Aspects of a student

• With the two objective aspects - process & act; as well as the two corresponding aspects - willingness & formality
• The student aspect can be entirely described as:

• The total possible number of permutations of the four aspects is 12 possibilities
• Example: {process, no act, willing, informal} would describe a private investigation that is motivated by non-institutional sources
• This description is able to highlight the context (environment) of this student
• It also forms the external relationships with other entities
• A student can have the following external relationships:

1. Mentor(s)-Apprentice: this is by far the most-popular form; a Star-Wars kind of teaching (by the mentor or teacher @ practice) & learning (by the apprentice or student @ practice) - note that there can be more than one mentor, especially under cross-disciplinary studies where each mentor is expert in one & only domain
2. Peer(s)-Peer: although superficially peer-peer learning is not justifiable, research findings have indicated this form of learning offers great flexibility and potential - this is most visible in children who play to learn & learn to play (Jean Piaget); in general, to be rated as peer, some sort of gauge is required; assuming each peer is an individual, there are special, unique & possibly worthy qualities that the others can learn & appreciate
3. Student(s)-Teacher: the teacher (in the formal sense) instead of transferring knowledge, learns from the students, often in refreshing, unconventional & sometimes embarrassing & controversial ways; this can ironic, but on further probing, this phenomenon results from incomplete wisdom, even when knowledge is sufficiently focused; knowledge is a subset of wisdom is a subset of life; by focusing, reality is truncated; hence, students (in the formal sense) can sometimes shed new light
4. Resource-Researcher: a relevant resource, whether in artificial or natural forms, is valuable to the needy researcher (a relentlessly searching student); artificial resources would include literature (publications of any form - books, notes, journals, magazines, online), realisation (physical, emotional, spiritual) & sensed (activities, works, practices); natural resources include any surrounding phenomenon

• The internal relationships between the student's current knowledge base with the internalised product of learning are summed up by the 28 learning strata of the learning process
• Altogether, there would be 336 possible aspects of a student from both the external and internal relationships between knowledge sources and knowledge bases