What is the difference between students and learners – on the surface, it’s a matter of tone and compliance, but it also has to do with purpose – why are they learning? How much of themselves are invested in the process? And does it lead to personal change, or mere performance?
Given below are some habits or strategies, actions, or behaviors that can lead to that critical shift that moves students from mere students to learners who are able to think critically for themselves. Key issues are – Patience, Scale, and Perspective.
- Doesn’t always seek to please others
- Is a charismatic listener
- Can learn from anything
- Asks “Why?” almost annoyingly
- Is comfortable with uncertainty
- Writes for their own understanding, not performance
- Values questions over answers
- Thinks laterally, endlessly connecting this to that, here to there
- Uses divergent thinking
- Can move back and forth from micro to macro thinking
- Reads for pleasure
- Looks for patterns
- Studies the nuance of things (because it’s interesting)
- Sees every situation as something new
- Asks what they’re missing or haven’t considered
- Playfully reframes and/or improves questions
- Relates humility to learning, and vice-versa
- Can instantly separate fact from opinion
- Resists confirmation bias (they instead analyze then draw conclusions)
- Does not follow crowds
- Articulates their own thinking without prompting (often creatively)
- Designs learning pathways effortlessly–they just go
- Socializes thinking for collaboration rather than approval
- Sees learning as inseparable from living
- Reflects for analysis rather than judgment
- Uses emotion to catalyze their intellect
- Sees situations from multiple perspectives
- Plays with ideas (without being told)
- Can think with simplicity about complexity, and with complexity about simplicity
- Demonstrates an insatiable curiosity for something
- Seeks to be both rational and ridiculous in their thinking
- Shows patience (by “dwelling with” questions, texts, or problems)
- Finds the complexity within the mundane
