Learning About Learning

So here’s something I love: when the material in my classes happen to align.

What I mean by that is, sometimes I’ll be taking classes in two or three completely different disciplines, and they’ll all be following their own separate tracks, but at certain exciting moments they’ll happen to cover or reference the same thing(s), from different angles. It’s rare, to be sure, but I’ve noticed it happens a bit more frequently at Carleton. I’d genuinely like to figure out why that is.

But anyway, over the past week or so, I’ve noticed a major commonality between my Atomic and Nuclear Physics and Introduction to Educational Studies courses: they’re both covering the science of learning.

This is super cool to me. I love science and I love learning, so I guess it’s kind of perfect for me. Throughout the term, my physics professor Marty Baylor has made a few asides about learning itself: how it works, why it works, and what we can do to learn better. If you take a look at her Moodle page for the course (which I guess you can’t), you’ll find a ton of extra resources. Not just on physics, but on effective study habits and habits of mind. It’s a pretty awesome bonus from a class that’s requiring me to learn on a completely different level than I’ve ever had to before.

Intro to Educational Studies is a bit more straightforward, but up until now, we’ve spent more time learning about the philosophy and history of learning than on the mechanisms of learning itself. Late last week that all changed as we entered our “psychology” unit of the course. We’re now reading a book by cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham entitled Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means to the Classroom. Firstly, shout-out to my Ed Studies professor Jeff Snyder (who I also cited in a paper I wrote last year without realizing it?!): he embodies a number of the recommendations Willingham proposes in his book. But in reference to those recommendations themselves, they’re surprisingly familiar thanks to my physics class, of all places!

I’m not going to try to get into explaining the actual science and techniques of it, because I simply don’t think I’m enough of an expert to do so properly. Besides, there are a bunch of other people who study the matter for a living and are obviously way better at it (that link is a video by a visiting speaker from last year at Carleton — an optional assignment I recently completed in my physics class was literally to watch the talk and practice applying a few of the new techniques presented in it). But I’m pretty impressed that between two completely unrelated courses, Carleton’s managed to teach me a lot about things like working and long-term memory, Bloom’s taxonomy, and the like through the very classes that demand a good handle on such things in order to keep up. I knew coming to Carleton that my professors would be pretty great at teaching. What I didn’t expect was an overarching course in learning how to teach myself.

Lucas just entered his sophomore year at Carleton, bringing with him a passion for all things nerdy and a talent for overthinking and awkwardness (and self-deprecation). He hails from Pasadena, California, and yes, he realizes it gets cold out here. He currently sees himself majoring in Physics, although he hopes to explore Cinema and Media Studies, Chemistry, Economics, and Computer Science (among many other subjects) as well. He misses his bearded dragon. Meet the other bloggers!