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Why students do not like to learn
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In this article we explore a scientific finding that students do not like to learn and possible ramifications for adult learning, training, and teaching.
A new book by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham offers an insight many trainers, teachers and presenters know instinctively, that a large majority of students love to learn, but hate the school classroom.
In Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom, Willingham suggests that the human mind would prefer to avoid thinking, and that "Thinking is a slow process; its effortful and even uncertain.”
It seems that people would rather rely on what they already know.
This dynamic is especially true of adults. To a large number of adults, being adult means being complete. When you add the dynamic of negative school memories, it’s a wonder that instructors can get adults to focus on learning at all.
Willingham does offer hope. He stresses that people like to be mentally challenged. This opinion is validated by accelerated learning theory that states that the human brain has excess capacity available for times of danger, and that those reserves must, like any muscle, be exercised to stay fit.
It may seem like there are two polar opposites at work: hating learning and enjoying problem solving. For learning professionals this dynamic means that instruction must clearly build on what the participants already know while challenging those participants to discover new facts on their own.
It is not a argument for avoiding the teaching of information. It is instead a case of packaging that information in participant focused activities that are interesting, enjoyable, and challenging…
…but not too challenging. Adults are too busy to slow down and think anyway.
Or so they think.
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Visit Lenn on line at www.OffbeatTraining.com or follow Lenn on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Offbeat Online.
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