對于學習者來說，學習是無形的嗎？
 

回顧一下在你童年時期你所學到和看到的所有事情，看你是否還記得的他們？如果記得的話，想一下你當初是怎樣學習這些的，你有沒有意識到，你所遇到的這些經歷時至今日還依然伴隨著你嗎？或者你有沒有想過你從公司學到的還圍繞著你。
 

好吧，是那些能夠明白他們怎樣學習，從誰身上學習從而能成為更好的學習者的人們才能有更好的理解力?；蛟S如果你有更好的理解力，知道你是怎樣學習，向誰學習，你就可能成為一位更好的學習者。史密斯，格魯巴和加德納是提出問題這個的三位作家。史密斯作家說到：“我們是在沒有了解到底學習什么的過程中而學習”，他認為，我們的公司驅使我們繼續學習。這種學習方式就像把我們歸屬于一個俱樂部，從我們的童年開始，我們就通過俱樂部的成員們而建立一個身份。
 

Is Learning Invisible to the Learner? 

 

 

Think back to all the things that you learned during your childhood and see if you remember them? If you do remember them, think about how you learned them. Did you ever realize that the experiences that you encountered would still be with you today? Or did you even realize that you were learning from the company around you. 

 

Well, people who get a better understanding of how they learn and who they learn from can become better learners themselves. Maybe if you would have had a better understanding for how you learn and whom you learn from you would have been a better learner. Smith, Golub, and Gardner are three authors who address this issue. 

 

Smith is one author who says that we learn without realizing we’re learning. He believes that we learn by the company we keep. This kind of learning puts us in a category of belonging to a club. At the start of our childhood we start to develop an identity through the members of our club. How many times did you do something because of the actions of others? This is the type of thing that influences us in the way we learn. While growing up, I mainly stayed around one group of friends. I established an identity through these people and I felt comfortable around them. This group of friends was considered my club. This group of people influenced much of my action whether it was in a positive or negative way. But regardless of how I was being influenced, I was still learning something new. For example, there was once a cactus in my 5th grade classroom that I always wanted to touch. I wanted to touch it because I knew it was sharp and I wanted to see if it would prick me and make me bleed. Now I realize that would have been very dumb because of the action of one of my friends. Unfortunately he decided to touch the cactus for the same reason, only to find out that it had poisonous needles that caused his skin to break out in hives. Luckily I learned from his actions instead of making the same mistake. This person along with all the others around me taught me so many different things that I was never even aware of. Did I ever consider that I learned from them? At the time I never realized it. They just seemed to be the people that I hung out with and associated with. Little did I know they would help me to learn from them in such positive ways. #p#分頁標題#e#

 

Smith refers to this classic kind of learning as growth. This states that as we grow we learn "new things" by the company we keep by making them part of what we already know. Learning from the people around us may seem invisible at the time, but it will soon be remembered as something to stay with into your adulthood. 

 

Golub is the next author I read about who relates closely with Smith. He believes that our learning process is invisible to us, and he feels that the learners need to make the process of learning visible to themselves. He wants the learners to be aware of this process to better their chances of becoming someone who advances more confidently when learning. 

 

To make a child’s intellectual thinking skills better he must first be aware of the way his mind thinks and how it is controlled. Golub talks about some of the many ways to make a child aware of his own thinking. One of the ways he talks about is reflection. "One of the most powerful and effective instructional strategies for helping students gain a measure of control over their own thinking," said Golub. How many times did you write a paper, turn it in, and forget about it? This type of process is not focused on the important aspects that went into doing that piece of work. By reflecting on your own work, you will be able to identify the strong points and the weak points of the paper. Golub believes that the goal of this is to become a reflective learner. There has been many times when I got one of my writing assignments back and I stuck it in my folder and completely forgot about it. It wasn’t until I read the article by Golub that I realized how important it is to reflect on your own work. Students that can not reflect upon their own work are learning very little from that piece. Students are often dumbfounded when asked, "What did you learn from writing that piece?" 

 

Golub suggests some ways to engage students in reflecting on their work and making the invisible thinking visible to them. Before the students hand in their work, they must be asked some important questions about their paper. By answering these questions, the students are thinking about what they wrote about. This will also cause the students to be aware of the strong and weak parts of their work, so they can improve before they write their next paper. This might help them realize they’re more intelligent than they realized. 

 

Gardner is someone who brings a whole new meaning to the word intelligence. Gardner believes that there are many different intelligences that people have, many of which they are not even aware. Just like Smith and Golub discussed the invisible learning that occurs throughout our lives, Gardner talks about the different intelligences that we use when we are learning an immense amount of information. 

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Gardner also believes that people are constrained by a concept he calls the "uniform view." He says that students are being placed into classes, and are only looked upon through two intelligence levels. These two intelligences are the linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences. These are the two intelligences often used when taking either and IQ test or an SAT test. These are the types of tests that categorize an individual as intelligent or unintelligent. Are these students even aware of the other intelligences that can categorize them in many different ways? This way of placing these students into categories has caused them to be unaware of the different intelligences that they may have. How many times did the kid that sits next to you score higher than you did on a test? Well, possibly he is smarter, but possibly not. There have been times I can remember feeling down about the test that I got back. I felt like I just wasn’t as smart as the kid that sat next to me who received a higher grade than I did. This is why Gardner explains the different intelligences that each individual student has. 

 

According to Gardner, the child that scored high on the test may have had a very strong linguistic or logical-mathematical intelligence. What about this child’s spatial intelligence or his bodily-kinesthetic intelligence? The intelligences that are not commonly looked at may seem irrelevant to most people, but that is only because they are not even aware that they have them. The child with the lower score might have an edge on intelligence and doesn’t even realize it. This is why Gardner believes that the goal of the schools should be to develop these different intelligences in order to keep students motivated. As they become more motivated, they will in turn reach the appropriate goals for their particular intelligence. 

 

Gardner describes an ideal school of the future as a place that would provide a student with the individual help that is needed. This school would match the students of similar curricular areas, as well as match them to particular ways of teaching. Gardner believes that there would be individuals in the school to assist in the understanding of the abilities and interests of each student. This whole idea is to encourage the students and the people around them to understand particular strengths of each individual person. Making people aware of this concept could help the society in multiple ways that were never visible before. 

 

Students are often unaware of the invisible learning that takes place throughout their lives. As students, we need to concentrate more on making the invisible learning more visible to ourselves. As we make this learning visible to ourselves, we will demonstrate a much greater control over learning, and have a much better appreciation for the many different ways that we learn. These many different factors could lead to a much more confident and outgoing person.