Learning How to Learn

This book describes classroom-tested strategies for improving thinking, feeling and acting in students.

Joseph D. Novak (Author), D. Bob Gowin (Author), Jane Butler Kahle (Foreword by)

9780521319263, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 September 1984

216 pages, 75 b/w illus. 10 tables
20.9 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.262 kg

"The authors discuss the need to integrate feeling with knowing and acting if experience is to have meaning, and how their views require changes in teachers, curriculum, and school governance." The Education Digest

For almost a century, educational theory and practice have been influenced by the view of behavioural psychologists that learning is synonymous with behaviour change. In this book, the authors argue for the practical importance of an alternate view, that learning is synonymous with a change in the meaning of experience. They develop their theory of the conceptual nature of knowledge and describe classroom-tested strategies for helping students to construct new and more powerful meanings and to integrate thinking, feeling, and acting. In their research, they have found consistently that standard educational practices that do not lead learners to grasp the meaning of tasks usually fail to give them confidence in their abilities. It is necessary to understand why and how new information is related to what one already knows. All those concerned with the improvement of education will find something of interest in Learning How to Learn.

Foreword Jane Kahle
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Learning about learning
2. Concept mapping for meaningful learning
3. The Vee heuristic for understanding knowledge and knowledge production
4. New strategies for instructional planning
5. New strategies for evaluation: concept mapping
6. The use of the Vee for evaluation
7. The interview as an evaluation tool
8. Improving educational research
Appendixes
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Child & developmental psychology [JMC]