How I learn

I see myself as a  person who never stops learning. I like the idea of that. What I am not sure about is whether I am learning as much or as well as I could be. 

I have some insight into what works well for me. I have some insight into what does not work well.

Classroom learning does not work well for me. I recognise a pattern in which I start off thinking that things are going too slowly and everything is obvious. Then I hit a block - an issue or idea or technique which I do not properly understand, After this, I feel the course is going too fast, running away from me.

I seem to be much better with self-directed learning. I can teach myself by reading, thinking and experimenting. If the learning is quite technical then it is helpful to be able to call on help occasionally if I get stuck. But, generally, I can work through technical material quite well, so long as I control the pace.

Another pattern I recognise when learning in a group revolves around my perception of how well I am learning in comparison to my peers.  Early on, there can often be one or two prominent individuals who appear to have grasped the material immediately and are confidently reflecting it back to the facilitators. At this point I may still be struggling to assimilate new concepts or language. As time progresses, my understanding and confidence improve. Later, I start to feel, on occasions,  that the prominent individuals  understand this stuff a lot less well than I do. I do not feel the need to demonstrate that I understand the material. I can go further into darker thoughts that prominent individuals are asking questions not because they want to know the answers to anything but more that they simply want to be noticed.

So there is clearly something going on with the amount of  time and the amount of detail I need. I think what I am doing is checking and testing every aspect of an idea until I am happy with it. Then I relax.

I looked recently at Honey and Mumford's leaning styles. I assessed myself as being predominantly a Reflector/Theorist rather than an Activist/Pragmatist. But the assessment showed me that I have elements of all four learning styles.

As I get older, my learning, and my beliefs, seem increasingly shaped into patterns. My experience becomes generalised. I can be 'clear' what my experience tells me but if asked, sometimes I can struggle to recall details of a single actual example. It is as if the detail is no longer important, once I have the pattern, I dismiss it

There is an increasing shift towards e-Learning. I welcome this because it allows me flexibility in time and place and access to a wider range of choices. A couple of years ago I decided to teach myself R. I discovered a wealth of e-Learning courses online and subscribed to DataCamp where I completed about 20 courses. My observation of my behaviour with e-Learning is that I can complete modules quite quickly  and usually get very high marks (hooray!). But  I notice I may not retain a lot of the knowledge. I think my primary learning  can drift into how to complete the assessments - there are clearly techniques for this - rather than remaining on the intended subject matter. 

One specific area of learning which I have a lot of experience of is music. I had music lessons as a child and found them unsatisfying. Later, as a young adult, I wanted to learn to play. I mostly taught myself, with a little peer to peer learning, such as swapping guitar chords and riffs. Over the years, I have dabbled in a wide range of instruments and styles. Most recently I have tried to limit the range. I have also pushed myself increasingly into playing without sheet music and learning tunes by ear. I have played in public as well as in pub sessions and private house gatherings. I can improvise and compose music, some of which is played by other people.

One important observation about my own music learning concerns practice. I used to over-practice - sometimes play for several hours, desperate to master a particular tune or technique. Now I do the opposite. I practice for very short periods, quite often but not to any regular pattern. Experience has shown me that this works best.  There is something interesting that continues processing in my brain after I have stopped playing. The following day I can often play better than I did when I was last practicing. It is as if my brain is still working on the task when it is no longer in my focus. Over-practising may be detrimental in blocking out this processing or overloading it.

Another thing I have spotted is that I have shifted  in how I learn tunes. Initially it was repetition of psychomotor patterns. Now I need to have the tune in my head before worrying about actually trying to play it on any particular instrument. Once I know how the tune goes  - such as that I could hum it to myself - it is a short step to being able to play it. 

I think I am learning - to some extent - all the time. There are points where I go into a mode of deliberate learning - attending a course or webinar, seeking out knowledge, but even outside of this there is learning going on

I learn from watching what other people do. I learn a lot from observing other people's mistakes. I do this from the relative comfort of the sidelines. I have heard much talk over many years of 'blame free culture', 'learning organisations' and many other things pivoting around learning from things that go wrong. I also see the primordial career instinct to avoid admitting or drawing attention to mistakes.

When things have conspicuously gone wrong, it is not unusual to hear the managers caught up in it come out with the phrase 'lessons have been learned'. This has two interesting nuances. Firstly it can appear to be an acknowledgement that things went wrong, without really acknowledging any individual responsibility. Secondly, it suggests some process of reflection and learning  - measures which we would all hope and expect will help prevent a recurrence. But if asked specifically what lessons have been learned and by whom, there can be a unnerving silence. 

There are techniques used in investigating explicit incidents, e.g. root cause analysis, which can help make valuable learning available. But getting people to see its relevance to them can often break down 

So a major factor in learning is seeing the relevance of something. If I can see the point of learning, I am halfway there. The converse is also true: if I can't see the point of something, I can build a big pile of negativity in front of it

Edgar Bolton. 

15/03/2021

Any views expressed above are purely mine and should not be mistaken for those of any organisations or individuals I have been associated with