Learning How to Learn by Joseph D. Novak and D. Bob Gowin, Reviewed by Randy Schenkat and Doug Rosendahl

Abstract

Introduction:  Learning How to Learn offers a different lens to view learning.  The book represents learning from Ausubel's cognitive learning theory and from a phenomenological approach to philosophy.  In sharp contrast with a behaviorist model that fosters only "rote" learning, the authors see learning as a change in the meaning of experience.  For example, in learning photosynthesis, it is not merely memorizing the stages of the cycle and its terminology, but rather, it is the relating of the process of photosynthesis with previously known ideas to make meaning.  So knowing photosynthesis changes, forever, how the learner perceives an interaction of sunlight, green plants, oxygen.  The authors caution that learning is not an all or nothing proposition because learning is always being modified and being made more explicit.  (Oh, I hadn't thought of that relationship or application before!)