What skills should the "ideal learner" have?

One persistent question I have might find a home for conversation in this blog, as I read this book and think about how learning really does work, and that quesiton is--what skills should the "ideal learner" have? With this question, the word "skill" is extremely important. I almost found myself typing the word "traits," only to realize that a trait is something innate and not acquired through exposure and practice. If I were to address learning abilities as traits, what would that say about my teaching?

A colleague of mine and I started talking about this today and I feel like this is a good place to expand on this idea. I'm compiling a list of things that I believe make someone a good learner, not just a critical thinker. Of course I believe both of these abilities are important in an educated person, and some skills may overlap, but some of them make people particularly receptive to information. I envision myself approaching my discussion of the book we're reading from this perspective, although I will assume that people will be reading these blog posts without having read "How Learning Works."

Let me put out there the list that I have begun to compose for what I believe makes someone a good learner in one of my classes:

1. Uses empirical work, and uses it correctly. Does the person, in making a claim, seek out/cite empirical work? Do they cite it correctly and at the appropriate times?

2. Explicity understands the dialectic process. This person understands that not everything is black and white, and that ideas are not "either/or."

3. Open to new information. Can the person, even when uncomfortable, open themselves up to new ideas and new ways of thinking?

4. Understands everything is contextual. Can the person understand that behavior is a product and not an ingredient, and that product is a result of a variety of contextual factors that may not be obvious to them?

The difficulty is that all of these things take a lot of energy. They are exciting to many people, inconvenient and possibly scary to others, but exhausting for everyone who engages in them properly. We are asking our students to exhaust themselves mentally, but I think that in order to do it right, you have to do it that way.

We have to go deeper (chapter one)

This blog is part of a larger circle that is reviewing and discussing chapters in Ambrose et al's (2010) How Learning Works.

In the classroom, I'm like Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Inception. I realize that in order to identify and conquer student misconceptions about material (such as: "we use 10% of our brain!," "I'm left-brained!" or "hypnosis helps us recover repressed memories"), I need to get inside their heads and make them think that the life-altering, mind-changing event happened in their own mind, of their own volition. Otherwise, it just won't work.

We have plenty of research over here in Cog Psych indicating that when a person is presented with information that counters their beliefs, it doesn't ameliorate the misconception. It can be counterproductive, actually, in that it can "backfire" and make those misbelievers believe those beliefs even harder (Nyhan & Reifler, 2010). THAT'S CRAZY.

So how do we handle this in the classroom? We carefully, skillfully, artfully, and other -ullys, guide our students toward the correct conclusion (such as "I use my WHOLE BRAIN!"). But, in order to do that, they need to think it's their idea. We can't jump in and solve the problem for them, they have to come to the "right" conclusion themselves. Ideas are worthless until they are believed, and they can't be believed in a context that is too vague or that is antithetical to the current mental state.