Physical hardship is often reported in popular press articles along with associated calls-for-action. Poverty is serious. It is a well recognized devastating condition with high impact knock-on effects right across the spectrum.
So too is cognitive hardship. Many students carry a lifetime of stunted mental growth because they failed to engage successfully with advancing their learning potential.
It need not be that way.
A small team of educational researchers offer a practical means for equipping students and tutors with a design for learning how to learn.
Although they focus on delivering an online, do-it-yourself program best suited for senior high school, college and university students, their scheme can be applied at any time to any willing learner, right across the board.
In a nutshell, they propose six learning levers arranged as distinct vertically stacked layers of increasing complexity.
By way of a metaphor, imagine a person entering a six-level building at ground level. Inside this imaginary building they may climb to any level, carry out their business, return to level one again, leave and continue with other errands.
Easing cognitive hardship begins from developing an entry level basic skill, just as it is with leaving the outside and going into a multi-story building.
At the mental foyer this skill has to do with making patterns. Pattern detection and recognition is essential for distinguishing signal from the noise. Patterns may be picked up from applying any of the body’s sensory systems (touch, smell, taste and so forth).
This meaning-making process is at the core of learning to learn. That is, knowing how to go about the business of making a difference to improve and develop advanced mental competencies.
[Prepared and written by John@designschool.ac.nz, one of the course designers, without any assistance from AI GPT]