Andrew Lawson says school was a constant struggle, and that reading and retaining information required him to work much harder than his peers. And yet, he’s just won a national learning award, reports DHWANI PATHAK.

Not everyone fits how they’re taught to learn. Andrew Lawson didn’t.

Yet, he’s just been named Australia’s Learning & Development Professional of the Year at the Australian Institute of Training and Development Excellence Awards.

The Canberra-based facilitator was recognised for a 20-year career designing workplace learning across government, corporate and not-for-profit organisations.

But the ideas behind his work began much earlier. 

He says school was a constant struggle, and that reading and retaining information required him to work much harder than his peers. He describes a mainstream education system that didn’t accommodate different learning styles, leaving those outside the “standard” model unsupported. 

While he found confidence in areas like sport and social life, the academic challenge remained difficult. 

“I just learned differently,” he says. “You had to kind-of fit the mainstream model of learning.”

He didn’t.

It wasn’t a single turning point

That perspective has taken on added weight in his personal life. Andrew is raising neurodiverse children, and says watching them move through the school system has reinforced what he experienced growing up. He sees similar challenges in how learning is structured, particularly for students who don’t immediately fit traditional models.

“It’s not a capability issue,” he says. “It’s how the learning is being delivered.” 

It wasn’t a single turning point. The shift came later, at university, where he was studying education. There, he began studying how learning and memory actually work, which helped him understand his own learning differences, leading him to develop a long-term interest in better learning strategies and more inclusive approaches. 

“We were looking at how people actually learn,” he says. “How do we encode information into memory?”

Andrew says that an adolescent psychology subject on how the brain develops and forms memory “gave me strategies I’d been looking for,” sparking a lasting fascination with learning. 

He went on to teach in high schools for around eight years before starting his own business, where he applied brain-based strategies in learning programs. 

“They’ve been honed over the last 20 years, and I’ve got a model that helps people apply what they learn,” he says. 

Andrew works with organisations to design and deliver training. The sector changed quickly during COVID-19, when organisations were forced to rethink how they upskill staff. 

“Training had to change,” he says.

But change did not always mean better outcomes.

Many organisations still treat learning as something that can be delivered in fixed blocks of time. He says that this does not reflect how people actually absorb information.

“They kind of make the assumption because the workday is eight hours, therefore learning should be eight hours,” he says.

He points instead to a much shorter window.

He cites research suggesting most people can only absorb information in shorter bursts – around 90 minutes at a time – before attention and retention start to drop. Beyond that, he says, “we can’t form memories.”

“We should be challenging the norm as to how we learn,” he says. 

Consistency prioritised over flexibility

He recalls getting pushback from some clients who felt short-form learning did not have “the right optics”, arguing shorter sessions did not look substantial enough. 

He sees similar issues in education systems, where consistency is often prioritised over flexibility.

“Some people miss out,” he says.

He remembers thinking the same thing as a student.

“Why didn’t they teach this earlier?”

Now working across organisations, he sees how those gaps continue into professional life. 

He is cautious about the growing reliance on technology in learning environments. While digital tools have become more common, he believes they are not always helping – particularly for people who already struggle.

“For some learners, especially neurodiverse learners, it can be detrimental,” he says.

He says technology has made training more accessible, but not always more effective. The issue is not the tool, but the assumption behind it – that one format can work for everyone. 

Schools, he suggests, often prioritise structure over individual interest, leaving little room for students who do not immediately fit the expected way of learning.

Andrew believes the challenge is not individual effort, but system design. He argues that learning environments still too often prioritise uniform delivery over flexibility. 

For him, the question is no longer whether change is needed but how quickly institutions are willing to adapt.

The award he’s received is recognition of that work. But it doesn’t seem to change how he talks about it.

If anything, it reinforces the same point he started with.

There isn’t one way.