Two most important factors for learning

These past few weeks of research, both the literature we've been reading for class and a lot of the articles I've come across at work (I'm a research assistant currently working on a project on technology integration in the classroom), have really made me think about how we actually learn. It's easy for me to understand and give credit to a well-stated theory at the time that I read it; it's harder to come to a decision on what I actually personally believe.

I think that throughout all of the literature that we've studied, there are some recurrent themes that I keep latching onto. I hesitate to give any of them a name straight out of someone else's framework, but there are some concepts that come very close to what I would describe as my personal philosophy. These thoughts are indeed heavily influenced by what I've read and studied (especially a lot of Constructivist thought that I was exposed to as an undergrad), but when it came down to deciding how to articulate what I believe are the most important factors for how people learn, I had to rely mainly on my own experience. As a student, there have been experiences that have really resonated with me, and there have also been teachers and situations with which I've always felt a vague sort of frustration and consternation, even if I couldn't articulate what it was that I disliked. Drawing on those personal experiences and trying to distill them to their important basics, here are the two most important factors for learning I could identify:

Emotion
There is something vital about the connection between learning and emotion. Our most persistent memories are the ones that were etched onto our minds in times of emotional extreme. Emotion is the most direct tool we have to access and create memory and understanding. I find myself really drawn to the work of Damasio and his findings on the importance of emotion in Neurobiology.

All of my memories of school as a child have strong emotional connections. Who were my "best" teachers? Without fail, they also happen to be the ones with whom I felt emotionally safe. What are my clearest memories of things I learned? They always have an emotional connection. I may never forget the geography of Africa, because I remember a giant map of the outlines of the countires laying on the floor of my elementary school gym on "Africa Day." We had been studying Africa for a couple months, and Africa Day was the day we got to take a simulated trip (including a "plane" made out of rows of chairs and a boy in our class dressed like a pilot) to Africa, and we got to eat peanut soup out of wooden bowls and listen to Ladysmith Black Mombazo. It was emotionally exciting, compelling and interesting, and so I will always associate the fact that Kinshasa is the capital of Zaire with that pleasant memory.

Authentic Activity
Several of the authors we've read have spoken of the importance of authentic activity. I really liked the idea of the Cognitive Apprenticeship. But I think even in layman's terms, you will find almost universal interest in education that has real-life application.

As a high school and then a post-secondary student, the days where eating African food in the gym was an effective educational motive for me were past. (Though, come to think of it, I think it still might work. Maybe we can do that for class next week?) But other things got me motivated to work in the midst of an environment that was, frankly, usually pretty unmotivational.

I find it ironic that to this day I spend most of my academic energy in discovering and then constructing a way to fulfill the bare minimum requirements for courses that I take. Very rarely is it the actual material, the actual content that I end up learning. It's so easy to default to the "learn to the test" mode. I think that's a pretty common problem - American students are very good at figuring out what to learn to pass the school model and then spending their energy doing so. Too often, the actual content - the art, the math, the history - is a tenuously connected sidecar to "learning the system."

The times that I have really learned, really grown and really progressed have been the times that I was doing something real. In the workplace this happens almost naturally. 90% of my expertise on Adobe design software comes from the things I had to figure out to make an ad print correctly in the 4-color press or manipulate an image quickly for a picky poster client. Even though I spent four years in school learning the software, I never really learned anything until I needed to. This isn't limited to the "real world," however. Academia can become the real world and can prove extremely effective when the situations are right. As an undergraduate in an advanced French grammar course, I helped translate a website from French to English for a nonprofit humanitarian organization my professor worked for. She saw a real world need - a way for this organization to reach an anglophone audience - and combined it with our need to learn effective ways to translate. We were actually motivated to do a good job - to do more than the bare minimun - when we realized that our work was meaningful and real.

It's funny that this concept is driving me right now as well. Rather than simply reporting on two factors for learning to fill the requirements for my class, I'm aware of the fact that my mom and a friend from high school and who knows who else can access and read this blog, and so I'm being more conscientious in the way I write and present my ideas. Theory in action, ladies and gentlemen!