Learners Who Thrive

As a learner, you may have observed that some students really enjoy school, others dislike it and most fall between these two extremes. Studies have shown that learners’ cognitive and emotional disposition toward learning, school, or classroom experiences is often a result of innate beliefs of self-efficacy and the overall importance of the subject of study towards personal or professional growth as judged by the learner. Overall, students must understand that the success of their learning experiences in school or outside largely depends on them as individuals.

Instructors can initiate and encourage students learning in a school setting. But once out of school, students would have to initiate and manage their own learning to become valuable in a changing world with changing circumstances. To do this, they need to develop attitudes and skills to set their own learning goals, persevere through learning difficulties, monitor their progress, adjust learning strategies to overcome difficulties and be successful learners. Here are a few approaches to being a learner who thrives.

• Believe in yourself and the power of your mind. Believing in you is foundational to learning. If you don’t believe in yourself, it’s hard to grow and learn. You cannot be comfortable doing anything without your own approval. Start with positive talk about yourself and your ability to learn and understand. Then debunk any negative voice about how poor you perform or how difficult a subject is. This prepares your brain to receive and function at its best.
• Consider every subject as relevant to your holistic development. All learners are inclined to judge the importance of a subject of study. Most learners however judge a subject’s relevance by their career plans which in most cases is a fraction of their holistic development. Be aware that every subject awakens reasoning in a way that is unique to it; developing in learners the criticality needed for effective reasoning and for questioning and accepting the reasoning of others.
• Set Learning Goals: You may be tempted to centre your learning goals on scores but that is a narrow focus. Rather, let your goals focus on understanding a concept at a time, explaining to other learners and looking for situations where those concepts can be applied. This will not just make you successful at the subject but also develop a love for it.
• Take Responsibility for Every Outcome (Good/Bad): Identifying the impact of external factors on your learning outcome is good. Nonetheless, once identified, you must take steps to minimize the impact of these factors if they affect your learning negatively while reinforcing the positive. Complaining about a teacher who lacks command over a subject for instance can be replaced with taking ownership and learning more on your own, consulting better performing learners, doing a lot more research and making use of libraries and internet to fill the knowledge gap.

Author: EDUCATION 360

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