The Power of Mindful Learning

Publisher: Da Capo Press Lifelong Books
Year: 2016
Pages: 156 
Genres: Self-help, education, and teaching 

Book Review:

"The Power of Mindful Learning," is a book written by Ellen J.Langer who is the Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.

This is a book about the research study done by the writer to prove that mindful learning can help people master new skills and knowledge effectively and efficiently. Meanwhile, the writer also reveals the true facts about rote learning created by school teachers to pass the examination are not the best way to learn new skills and it will cause students thinking become rigid and framed. 

Important Notes: 

A generation that questions mindless rules, is skeptical of grades, and is comfortable with uncertainty could change the world. That is the power of mindful learning

This book is about learning mindfully by concerning why rather than how to while you are exploring new skills or knowledge

7 myth about learning

The basics must be learned so well that they become second nature

1. Paying attention means staying focused on one thing at a time
2. Delaying gratification is important
3. Rote memorization is necessary in education
4. Forgetting is a problem
5. Intelligence is knowing “what’s out there.”
6. There are right and wrong answers.

The writer mentions that these myths undermine true learning. They stifle creativity, silence people questions, and diminish self-esteem. 

Topic 1 When Practice Makes Imperfect

Overlearned Skills

• Don’t overlearn, learn it correctly
• When we are learning new skill, we always need to master the basics while proceeding to advance. Nevertheless, if we overlearn the basic knowledge, it will not increase our efficiency to handle the skill. For example, while driving a car, if we want to turn left, we have to turn the signal on first and then we turn left. This is the basic step we need to learn and follow. However, to avoid misguided, if our car is out of control, we should turn on the double signal while turning left so that the driver behind aware that the car is out of control.
• If we learn the basics but do not overlearn them, we can vary them as we change or as the situation changes.

Whose basics?

Basic needs to be questioned, to enhance the creativity

The value of doubt

• Ask yourself first while learning new skills
• The more rigidly we learn the original information, the harder it may be open up those closed packages to accommodate the new information

Sideways Learning

Sideways learning aims at maintaining a mindful state. As we saw, the concept of mindfulness revolves around certain psychological states that are really different versions of the same thing:

1. Openness to novelty
2. Alertness to distinction
3. Sensitivity to different contexts
4. Implicit, if not explicit, awareness of multiple perspectives
5. Orientation in the present
6. Awareness of alternatives at the early of learning a skill give a conditional quality to the learning, which, again, increases mindfulness

Can a text teach mindfully? 

Yes. For example, while doing CPR towards a person, if you are following the full instructions provided in words, you can better prepared and adapt to the situation. 

Topic 2 Creative distraction

The puzzle of attention

• It is about the difficulty of paying attention to something
• Why? This is because poor understanding of the instruction or focusing on something too long
• Therefore, changing of context or perspective can help to lead people to novelty

Enhancing novelty

According to the writer, the people who had been asked to vary what they read, those in the mindfulness groups, remembered significantly more details than did members of the other groups.

The most effective way to increase the ability to pay attention is to look for the novelty within the stimulus situation, whether it is a story, a map or a painting

Soft Vigilance

• Psychological circles or when danger is involved, attention is often called vigilance. Vigilance is considered effortful and seen to decline over time. In contrast, attention to the things we enjoy may be energizing and possible to sustain for long periods of time
• With vigilance, the target of attention is static, with soft vigilance the mind, without detailed prescription, is open to take in more information

Rethinking Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

• Mindfully varying perspective helps us to pay attention
• It means that novelty can help people pay mindful attention to something and lead to enhance performance

Topic 3 The myth of delayed gratification

If you work hard now, rewards will follow later

All work and no play

Why you are willing to work for a tedious task thoroughly?

The writer highlights that work that we do in order to gain future rewards often turns out to be absorbing and rewords. The idea of delayed gratification often put into work and study for people so that they will contribute to it until completed. For example, if you have done the assignment this week, you can extra 10 marks as compared to another student. As a result, you will skip to watch a new movie and complete the assignment on time.

   

Turning play into work

The pleasure of activities depending on the context or the label we put on them. Mindful engagement is the key to master something. For example, if you are learning Mathematics in fun and creative ways can make yourself learning the knowledge effectively and efficiently.

Pleasure is the state of being

Brought about by what you learn.

Learning is the process of entering into the experience of this kind of pleasure

No pleasure, no learning

No learning, no pleasure 

Song of Joy Wang Ken 

Topic 4 1066 What? Or The Hazards of Rote Memory

In this chapter, the writer mentions that student relies on rote learning may cause themselves feel helpless.

Locking up information

Memorizing is a strategy for taking in material that has no personal meaning. Students able to do it succeed in passing most tests on the material, but when they want to make use of that material in some new context they have a problem.

Keeping information available

Mindful ways to learn information can serve both the purpose of passing tests in school and that of keeping the information available for future creative use.

Drawing distinctions

• Teaching students to draw distinctions set the stage for mindful learning that is for creating new categories, being open to new information and being aware of different perspectives. Students learn to create working definitions that are continually revised and do not exhaust the potential phenomena. This kind of conditionally learned information is potentially accessible, even when not in the forefront of one’s mind.
• Conditional learning resulted in better memory
• In summary, memorization was impossible, but a mindful scan of the surroundings will often help you navigate successfully.

Topic 5 A new look at forgetting

Staying in the present

• Providing examples can enhance learning
• Persuasive messages can make people remember the point easily
• Example:

1. Peter likes to eat cake
2. Peter with a white hat likes to eat cake

True facts:

Over time people are more likely to make dispositional than situational attributions

When people forget details, they often supply their own in ways that fit their particular interpretation of events.

The danger of mindless memory

When we have learned something mindlessly, however, either by accepting information unconditionally or by overlearning or memorizing it, we may be better off forgetting such context-free facts so that we are not bound by them

Absentminded versus other minded

Most often, if we have learned something mindfully we needn’t worry about remembering it. The information is likely to be there when we need it.

Does memory decline?

No, although Biology aging will cause memory loss but it is not the main reason

Alternative views of memory and aging

• The negative assumption about mental capacity in old age can be seen in many adult education courses.
• Actually, aging is not the main factor that affects memory loss

Topic 6 Mindfulness and Intelligence

Nineteenth-century theories of Intelligence

Intelligence is an ability to retain and organize perceptions that enhance our chances for survival. The perspective we automatically impose on our perceptions is not merely an arbitrary construct, but an adaptive response determined by natural selection. The more closely our conceptual map corresponds to the contingencies of our environment, the greater our chances for survival.

The notion of optimum fit

The most important task for future theorizing about intelligence is to specify better the interrelations between environmental context, on the other hand, and mental functioning, on the other. 

Differences between Intelligence and mindfulness

Topic 7 The Illusion of Right Answers

Hobbled by Outcomes

The capacity to achieve an outcome is different from the ability to explore the world and understand experience. Trying to solve a math problem in a way dictated by the teacher is different from attempting to test one’s own hypothesis. The teacher who tells students to solve a math problem in a prescribed manner is limiting their ability to investigate their surroundings and to test novel ideas.

Actor/Observer and other perspectives

Thinking tends to be framed when data, description, and other information provided

Uncertainty and creative thought

When we are mindful, we recognize that every inadequate answer is adequate in another context. In the perspective of every person lies a lens through which we may better understand ourselves. If we respect student abilities to define their own experiences, to generate their own hypotheses, and to discover new ways of categorizing the world, we might not be so quick to evaluate the adequacy of their answers. We might, instead, begin listening to their questions. Out of the questions of students come some of the most creative ideas and discoveries.

Mindfulness and self-definition

People accept the ways others have been shown to be better than they by identifying ways in which they are better than others.

By valuing some activities-subjects, sports, courses-and devaluing others, we ignore the many perspectives from which any activity may be viewed. At every moment in a mindful state, we are learning something, we are changing in some way, we are interacting with the environment so that both we and the environment are changed.

Learning and re-imaging the world

One day Soshi was walking on the bank of a river with a friend. “How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water,” exclaimed by Soshi. His friend spoke to him thus, “You are not a fish, how do you know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?” “You are not myself,” returned Soshi, “How do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?”

Kakuzo Okakura

Japanese Philosopher

Key point: How can we know if we do not ask? Why should we ask if we are certain we know? All answer comes out of the question. If we pay attention to our questions, we increase the power of mindful learning.

My thoughts: 

Through this book, the writer reveals mindful learning can enhance performance through understanding the purpose of learning the skills or knowledge. To make it clearer, I have a simple process map and as follow: 

In conclusion, the writer encourages readers that take learning as an enjoyable process. In the world, there are a lot of things we can explore and learn but if we have mindless thinking, the gained knowledge and skills will not bring any reliable values and benefits to us. Therefore, start mindful learning today! You will realize, actually you can gain a lot of experiences as compared to before! 

If you are interested in this book, you can click this link to know more details.