Dvorak Studying vs. Learning

The Psychology of Student Success
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5439-1851-9
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 220 Seiten

If you want to maximize your learning and success in college, you need quality thinking skills, learning skills, and psychological skills far more than you need studying tips. This book will help you develop those skills, making you more confident, efficient, and productive. It is a practical guide to developing essential skills for college, many you have never learned about before, with straight-forward suggestions you can put into practice right now. When life is tough, you don't make flashcards and memorize definitions. You need the personal skills and habits described in Studying vs. Learning to deal effectively with the challenges you face, inside and outside of school.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dvorak, Troy

Leseproben

YOUR LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Studying is what you do to pass a test. Learning is what you do to be knowledgeable and useful in the real world.

Graduating high school and enrolling in college represents a chance to dramatically improve your life. But even the greatest schools and teachers cannot guarantee your success. The only true guarantor of your success (or failure) is you. When you start college, the expectation is that you can organize and manage your own life. It is critical that you make effective decisions about studying and adapt to the expectations of your instructors and college.1 Enrolling in college is a declaration of your willingness to do all the work. College expectations don’t change if you lack skills or have too many other things to do.

“Academic-intellectual work is heavily cognitive, requiring combinations of knowledge and reasoning skills.”2 What does that mean? I’m glad you asked because I’m going to tell you. Earning a college degree is hard work. It requires a lot of effort, studying, concentration, and a stick-with-it attitude. You need to develop some skills (that many students don’t know about) to keep up with the rigors of a college education. The first year of college is when you develop attitudes, approaches toward learning, and perceptions of yourself as a college student that can help (or hurt) you.3

Your Learning Objectives for This Book

The title of this book is Studying vs. Learning. I hope you already wondered what this means. Aren’t studying and learning kind of the same thing? At a minimum the two are closely related, right? Don’t you study to learn…learn by studying?

As a college instructor, I have seen a lot of students do poorly, not because they are stupid, but because they lack important thinking, learning, and psychological skills. They simply don’t realize that studying and learning are not always the same. Studying is what you do to pass a test; learning is what you do to be knowledgeable and useful in the world.

When a class begins at my college, the instructor explains to students what the learning outcomes are. That means we tell you what you can expect to learn and know by the end of the semester. These are called learning objectives. They are important to you because they help you organize, understand, and remember what you are learning and why you are learning it.

With this book, your learning objectives are:

1. Learn about and develop thinking, learning, and psychological skills (the “what”);
2. Understand why those skills and strategies are more important than basic studying strategies; and
3. Understand exactly how to learn in more effective ways.

The Thinking Skills

This book is going to help learn how to think. These thinking skills will make you a more effective student and serve you well in your career (and even your relationships, believe it or not). I call them the Psychological Keys to Student Success. They are:

1. Beliefs & Mindset
2. Attributions
3. Achievement Goals & Interest
4. Self-efficacy
5. Metacognition
6. Self-regulated Learning (SRL)
7. Avoiding Thinking Errors

The Learning Skills

After learning about the Psychological Keys to Student Success, you will learn some powerful learning strategies that psychologists and educators have known for years but that too few students know. I am going to give you insider information from the world of educational psychology that will help you learn more efficiently and at a deeper level. Remember, you don’t want to just study. You want to learn! You can study information about traffic, road signs, and how a car works and then pass a written test about that stuff. But that does not make you a good driver. You have to practice, pay careful attention, test yourself, and value the importance of what you are learning and why in order to be a good driver.

The Psychological Skills

With over twenty years’ experience in psychology, I believe there are some fundamental principles that will serve you well, in school and in life. Developing your capacity for self-awareness and using a handful of core concepts in psychology can make the thinking and learning skills in this book even more effective.

How You Will Achieve the Learning Objectives

By learning and practicing the thinking, learning, and psychological skills in this book, you will also develop important personal characteristics. That is the “how” part in the learning objectives. Let me highlight some of the characteristics for you.

First, let’s consider something called perceived academic control (PAC). This is how much you believe you can influence and predict your own academic success. In high school, a lot of work was done for you by the teacher (e.g., scheduling, monitoring attendance, recognizing you needed help). In college, you must do these things for yourself. Developing perceived academic control will allow you to:

• meet the increased demands of college courses, engage more during classes, monitor and increase effort, increase critical thinking, use more effective studying methods, and obtain a better grades4,5,6
• experience more enjoyment, pride, and hope and less boredom, anxiety, and anger7,8
• persist and get higher grades9
• improve your psychological well-being.10

As I said at the beginning of this chapter, even the best schools and teachers cannot guarantee your success. Guess what -- research shows that good teaching helps students higher in perceived academic control more than those lower in perceived academic control.11 That is why it is so important for you to develop PAC. Think about it this way: it is easier for someone who can run ten miles to run an additional two miles than it is for someone who can only run one mile to suddenly run three. In both cases, you’re adding two miles of distance but the person with better training and endurance will do that more easily than someone with less training and endurance.

A second important personal characteristic is resilience, the ability to bounce back after setbacks. Research has shown it predicts academic achievement. Resilient people have:

• positive coping strategies that are flexible and adaptive
• a sense of control over their lives (psychologists would call this an internal “locus of control”)
• a willingness to ask for help
• self-confidence
• impulse control
• good communication and people skills
• greater social maturity
• sense of responsibility
• desire to accomplish tasks.12

As you read this book and develop more effective thinking, learning, and psychology skills, you will be developing resilience at the same time.

Third, while personal control and resilience are particularly important characteristics for students, there are many others that will help you in school and throughout your life. Having a positive attitude, internal motivation, passion for your long-term goals, and maintaining effort despite setbacks are examples of personal characteristics associated with success.13,14,15,16

Students with a sense of responsibility, resourcefulness, determination, good time management skills, and who value education are more likely to successfully finish school.17,18 The more you practice the many skills in this book, the more you will be establishing positive habits that will help you succeed in the classroom and beyond!

Fourth is something called productive persistence. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching defines this as tenacity and the use of good strategies.19 Tenacity means you keep up with your studying and attendance even when the going gets tough. Work all day? You still study for an exam even though you are tired. Class not going well? You talk to your instructor, study harder, and refuse to give up. That’s tenacity.

When you’re dealing with hard classes, information you don’t understand, deadlines, low grades, negative feedback, bad teachers -- not to mention all the stuff in your life outside of school -- studying skills won’t help you. When life is tough, you don’t make flashcards and memorize definitions. But these personal characteristics will help deal with difficult circumstances, inside and outside of school.

So, Let’s Begin

The findings I am sharing in this book are based on research, not opinions. The tiny numbers you see after many sentences refer to actual research done by scientific experts in the psychology and education fields. I’ve pulled together hundreds of these scientific discoveries (all...