Early researchers on Yolngu learning styles pointed out that the pervasive Yolngu approach to learning is by means of observation and participation rather than through formal instruction (e.g. Harris 1984). A girl (or woman visitor from another culture) learning to twine baskets, for example, will sit with knowledgeable women, observing and trying to copy their technique. From time to time a woman will take the novice's work, continue it, and then hand it back (e.g. Hamby 2001); there is little instruction as such. The clash between Yolngu learning styles and schooling is evident – Yolngu children treat school rather as a kind of ritual, such that mere participation was thought sufficient to be schooled (Christie 1984).

This style of learning is evident in garma (‘public’) ceremonies, which incorporate bunggul (dance) and manikay (songs using clapsticks and didgeridoo) genres. Male singers sit in a group, each equipped with a pair of ironwood clapsticks, and normally accompanied by a single didgeridoo player. The Marradjirri ceremony of Djinang people, described by Borsboom in his PhD thesis (1978), is of this kind. The songs consist of a sequence of topics, each realised by a number of song items each a few minutes in length. The singers perform the melody more or less in unison, but extemporise the text, drawing on a stock of words and phrases appropriate to the topic and the occasion, rather as a jazz player extemporises drawing on a stock of ‘riffs’. The point, as Toner points out (2001), is to evoke emotions associated with the country and totemic ancestors to which the songs pertain, and people associated with the country, especially the dead.

Songs accompany dances of three main kinds (Keen 1994). Women and girls dance in one spot, lifting their feet to the rhythm of the clapsticks while hand movements relate to the topic of the song. Men and boys dance in an arena in front of the singers, generally moving towards the singers in dance. In some ceremonies, including the marradjirri exchange ceremonies, of which the Marradjirri of the Djinang language group described by Borsboom is an example, the dances are peripatetic, movement through the camp representing the movement of protagonists in the related myth (e.g. a journey to the land of the dead in the Morning Star ceremony of the Djambarrpuyngu group).