Learning How to Learn

Many learning theories have emerged over the years, in part as a response to the perception that educational systems have been largely incompetent at educating students. Traditional methods of instruction, which position teachers as expert and authoritarian systems and which emphasize the importance of memorization and rote, were under scrutiny for much of the 20th century. However, actual implementation of innovative practices lagged behind the discourse of learning theory, and even today there persists a view that the problem with failed education lies in the content of the curriculum. Education fails not because students lack academic ability or "willingness to learn but because of inherent shortcomings in curricular organization. A systemic failure to teach all children the knowledge they n

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rk, somewhat revisiting Step 1 for more complex ones (pp. 313-21). The less evidence there is that a problem exists, the closer to a solution the problem is likely to be. Problem-solving skills are linked to the skills of critical thinking (Orlich, et al., 2001, p. 341). In turn, critical thinking is linked to the development and nurturance of cognitive and analytical skills that are meant to serve the learner not just in school but over the course of a lifetime (Tsui, 2002). Various approaches to facilitating the development of such skills have been the subject of research. While some experts advocate including a separate course in critical thinking in the average school curriculum, it is more usual for critical thinking to be "incorporated into the existing subject matter in different ways" (Wright, 2002, p. 257). That is so in part because cognitive/constructive teaching methodology--emphasizing, as it does, process rather than mere content--anticipates that the structures of thought that learners achieve in one discipline (say, math) will be transferable to other disciplines (say, social studies): That approach means that there is less risk of teaching "inert" knowledge--knowledge that is never applied outside of the subject
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Approximate Word count = 6673
Approximate Pages = 27 (250 words per page)

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