Do threat and anxiety impair learning?
That’s the kind of question that might scare a student. It would really scare me if I had to take a test on this material. Because the answer I would give from experience is wrong, according to Brain-Based Learning: Possible Implications for Online Instruction Stephanie A. Clemons http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm
8. Threat, high anxiety, and a sense of helplessness impairs learning.
For starters, try this scenario. Night. A curving rural road. A blind curve. A car approaching in its proper lane. I enter the curve and see headlights approaching in my lane. I swerve into the ditch just in time to avoid the crash. Will this experience impair my learning about the risks of blind curves?
The question does not threaten me because I know the answer. And it is not the one given by Clemons. Threat and anxiety are excellent at teaching you to avoid circumstances like those that produce the threat and anxiety. They are not good at teaching you to to make fine discriminations about the conditions or to find the best way to avoid the threat.
A few people might respond to the road experience by trying to avoid driving on a curved rural road at night. Most people would respond with a cognitive analysis of the conditions. That would lead them to the conclusion that “I want to notice blind curves and be careful in approaching them.” If you had to go to a therapist to figure that out, you would call it cognitive therapy and pay a bunch of money for it. If you can figure it out for yourself, you call it common sense. Common sense is free. At least for some people.
Now back to brain-based learning. Would education be designed to induce threat and anxiety? I doubt it. The most likely thing you would learn from such threat and anxiety is to avoid education. In an educational situation, threat and anxiety are not induced by learning but by tests. And they do not come from what you learned but from what you did not learn.
A cognitive analysis of this situation indicates that the best way to avoid threat and anxiety is to learn the material. And to know that you have learned the material. Sometimes people don't get that right. Then they may pick a failure mode.
One failure mode is like avoiding country roads at night. Psychologists would call that over-generalizing. At this point, trying to study the material might well induce anxiety. That could cause the person to study less. Or to study less effectively, because threat and anxiety do interfere with effective study methods.
If you dig yourself into a hole, stop digging.
The difference between a trial run and a failure lies in what you get out of it.
Thinking about what you can’t do is worry. Thinking about what you can do is planning. Trouble-shooting
A second failure mode is to “study harder.” What? Will we tell people that “study harder” is not good advice? Well, here’s some other good advice:
If you always do what you've always done, you’ll always get what you've always got.
The Bounce-Back Routine.
Or they may find the winning mode: Don’t study harder. Study smarter. In the long run, smarter works better than harder. And smarter is easier.
8. Threat, high anxiety, and a sense of helplessness impairs learning.
For starters, try this scenario. Night. A curving rural road. A blind curve. A car approaching in its proper lane. I enter the curve and see headlights approaching in my lane. I swerve into the ditch just in time to avoid the crash. Will this experience impair my learning about the risks of blind curves?
The question does not threaten me because I know the answer. And it is not the one given by Clemons. Threat and anxiety are excellent at teaching you to avoid circumstances like those that produce the threat and anxiety. They are not good at teaching you to to make fine discriminations about the conditions or to find the best way to avoid the threat.
A few people might respond to the road experience by trying to avoid driving on a curved rural road at night. Most people would respond with a cognitive analysis of the conditions. That would lead them to the conclusion that “I want to notice blind curves and be careful in approaching them.” If you had to go to a therapist to figure that out, you would call it cognitive therapy and pay a bunch of money for it. If you can figure it out for yourself, you call it common sense. Common sense is free. At least for some people.
Now back to brain-based learning. Would education be designed to induce threat and anxiety? I doubt it. The most likely thing you would learn from such threat and anxiety is to avoid education. In an educational situation, threat and anxiety are not induced by learning but by tests. And they do not come from what you learned but from what you did not learn.
A cognitive analysis of this situation indicates that the best way to avoid threat and anxiety is to learn the material. And to know that you have learned the material. Sometimes people don't get that right. Then they may pick a failure mode.
One failure mode is like avoiding country roads at night. Psychologists would call that over-generalizing. At this point, trying to study the material might well induce anxiety. That could cause the person to study less. Or to study less effectively, because threat and anxiety do interfere with effective study methods.
If you dig yourself into a hole, stop digging.
The difference between a trial run and a failure lies in what you get out of it.
Thinking about what you can’t do is worry. Thinking about what you can do is planning. Trouble-shooting
A second failure mode is to “study harder.” What? Will we tell people that “study harder” is not good advice? Well, here’s some other good advice:
If you always do what you've always done, you’ll always get what you've always got.
The Bounce-Back Routine.
Or they may find the winning mode: Don’t study harder. Study smarter. In the long run, smarter works better than harder. And smarter is easier.
posted by Selby Evans at 8:59 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home