One of the most under-mentioned key skills is knowing how to learn. Openness to learn is in itself a skill, a mental process to develop that can improve our personal and professional lives.
We already know that learning isn’t just about passively following a lecture or listening and taking notes. Just as everyday experiences and interactions offer enormous learning opportunities.
But what characterizes the ability to “knowing how to learn” is that this ability develops only if learning is practiced “intentionally”. That is, learning in a motivated and intentional way, which in this case means “non-incidental” (which is also important, because it is self-motivating and pushes us to have new experiences that generate new knowledge, but is not sufficient because it produces imprecise and disorganized knowledge).
It can be simplified by stating that intentional learning is the activity in which learning occurs through a person’s choice, which identifies learning as a deliberate and primary objective. This learning produces effects more quickly, better organized, and more long-lasting.
Among the characteristics of this attitude, two are particularly relevant:
Motivation, which can be intrinsic, as when a person wants to better understand a certain concept in order to learn more, or extrinsic, as when he wants to better understand a concept in order to obtain a good professional result (efficiency at work, approval of the “boss “, etc).
The analytical commitment, the active attempt to analyze the new things one encounters, instead of relying only on your intuition or on what you know only superficially, from hearsay.
This allows us to state that intentional learning is associated with active and autonomous learning, which involves planning, executing, and monitoring one’s own learning process.
To fuel intentional subjects there are two mindsets: that of growth and that of curiosity.
Developing a growth mindset means being aware that one can grow and change by practicing reflecting regularly and moving from beliefs about your abilities to beliefs about opportunities and needs.
To be curious one needs to face fears, seek out new experiences, ideas, new environments, and exposure to new groups of people to learn from.
As mentioned, reflection is a fundamental moment in the intentional learning process: when we reflect we realize what is happening and we can learn and experiment in the moment, also making the necessary changes. Retrospective reflection is also useful: it allows us to look at a past situation, to consider how effective our actions were and therefore to project ourselves on how we would approach a similar event or situation in the future.
Reflection should be “ritualized” in the sense of creating coherent and predictable patterns, both for when you reflect and what you think.
Intentional learning is an attitude that can also be implemented in corporate or professional training. In fact, there are many similarities between the way one should promote intentional learning in others and the way one promotes it in oneself.
Having to simplify here, I will simply point out that to encourage intentional learning in others, starting from shared knowledge (very useful for this purpose), people can be helped to recognize the need to learn, increase their motivation to do so, and develop their confidence in their ability to learn, while also helping them identify their goals, plan their learning and use effective learning strategies.
Great post, Aldo
Two key points in your post attracted my wildest attention.
The first one is “But what characterizes the ability to “knowing how to learn” is that this ability develops only if learning is practiced “intentionally”.
This is so important and vital thought. Not knowing how to learn may lead to the wrong or irrelevant learning. You explained this thouroughly.
The second pont is
“To fuel intentional subjects there are two mindsets: that of growth and that of curiosity.:
Reading your explanation of both I daresay that some people have both mindsets but not necessarily at equal levels.
This stems from my belief that curiosity is a cornerstone of learning. If coupled with the right mindset learning becomes rewarding.
Thank you for adding your insights. Most appreciated.
Looking around and asking questions about what surrounds us is one of the fundamental ingredients of being curious. The ability to concentrate on something by grasping its different facets is what makes the idea or work we are doing unique. In short, it is an active mental predisposition that questions everything in a proactive way.
To do new things, build new paths, change, grow etc. you have to have the desire to search, discover, invent, you have to be driven by the curiosity to know, learn, add a piece to your knowledge and experience every day, asking quality questions, wanting to look at things from new points of view to see and make visible to others what until then was “hidden”. On the other hand, Einstein himself said that he had no special talents, but that he was just crazy curious.
My heartfelt thanks for your time and appreciation.