Three Illusions of Learning - Part 1
All teachers and students must be aware of.
First, a bit of context:
This is a three-part series in which I will share with you three most common yet lethal illusions of learning that both teachers and students must be aware of.
Left in the hands of chance, these illusions become the reason why most students will perform poorly in their exams despite studying hard. Similarly, most students will also believe that they have learned and understood concepts but during application, they often fail and remain confused. They will be hit with “I thought I knew this one” realization. When taking the learning outside the context of school/college, they would be unable to transfer the knowledge and skills, the ones they were pretty confident about.
Unless teachers (and then students) deliberately attempt to understand the ominous effect of these illusions and plan to remove or minimize them from the learning process, most students will keep suffering from these.
The three illusions are:
Illusion of Attention
Illusion of Understanding
Illusion of Competence
In this post, let me take the first one down.
1. Illusion of Attention
Here’s the reality.
For every “biologically secondary knowledge/skills” we are trying to teach and learn in a formal educational set-up, attention plays a huge role. 1
We might have learnt how to speak our native language and how to sing songs naturally, without any effort. But we cannot learn how to read and write essays without any effort, persistence, and attention.
All cognitive scientists2 agree that we are able to attend to only one thing at a time. For instance, we can only listen to what a presenter is saying or we can only read the texts from his slides. We can’t do both.
Our attention is quite fragile, meaning, we get easily distracted. Similarly, it is limited, meaning, if one thing attracts our attention, we cannot pay attention in another area.
It would be like you trying to dribble two footballs in two directions at the same time. Which is impossible.
Selective Attention:
Here’s a video of a famous “Invisible Gorilla” experiment that demonstrates how we can only focus on one thing and how easily we miss even a huge gorilla right in front of us.
Also watch these similar videos here and here.
The original idea comes from a famous book published in 2010, titled “The Invisible Gorilla” by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.
Myth: Most of us think that we can multitask. You might say, I can walk (task 1) and also listen to a podcast (task 2) quite easily.
Reality: We can only attend to one thing at a time, especially if the both tasks require us to “THINK”. We cannot listen to a podcast (task 1) and also calculate the income expense we had in that month (task 2). Either you will be listening to the podcast, or you will be calculating the numbers, and not remember the content of the podcast.
What does this mean for teaching and learning?
Attention is the currency in the classroom. One of the most important jobs of a teacher would be to make sure no one is wasting their attention in irrelevant things or behaviors. Secure students’ attention, otherwise the quality of learning will degrade.
How to minimize the illusion of attention?
If you are a teacher:
Set clear rules and norms. For instance, in my class, no one is allowed to use their mobile phones (unless I instruct them to do so). Similarly, the default mode of the class is always silent. And most importantly, everyone writes on their notebooks, before they can respond or talk with their peers.
Also, I like my classroom walls clean, without any irrelevant posters or notices pasted over.
And, if you are a student:
Don’t be over-confident about your attentional capacity. Remember, you can get easily distracted by the things around you.
Just because you are in the classroom, and listening to your teacher or peers, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are also 100% attending to the information.
If you multi-task, the quality of your work (and thoughts) will worsen, you will spend more time, and you will also increase stress for no reason.
So declutter your table. Keep your phones away. And mono-task.
Check out my earlier posts on
how to secure attention in the class and being pro-active about attention.
Sweller, J. (2008). Instructional Implications of David C. Geary’s Evolutionary Educational Psychology. Educational Psychologist, 43(4), 214–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520802392208
My assumption. I have no idea whether Guy Claxton would agree with it or not. I hope he agrees.
You can't even learn your native language without perceiving ( paying attention) to your environment.