The process of learning: Improving how students learn (part 2)

In the first part of this series on “how to learn”, I attempted to answer the question, What is learning?
Although it’s a simple question, it is not easy to answer because learning is multi-faceted. Some forms of learning, like learning to ride a bike, are immediate and observable but other types of learning are neither of these things. A pupil’s immediate demonstration of knowledge or skill could be mere performance, mimicry rather than mastery.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with mimicry if it helps a pupil pass a test and get a qualification but, assuming we want to do more than teach to the test and assuming we regard education as something meaningful and life-long, a way of becoming an engaged and active citizen, and an inquisitive, cultured adult, then surely we must aim to move beyond mimicry and towards mastery.