Short #41 – Context in Education (Podcast)

In today's short live podcast, Bryan discusses the importance of context in education and the challenge presented by information.

When we learn, we do ourselves a disservice by searching for information alone. Just-in-time education allows us to “search instead of research,” and it works in a limited and inefficient way. Instead, we'd be much more effective if we knew how to learn efficiently. To learn efficiently, we need to bring context to the learning process.

Instead of focusing on raw facts or abstract information, we need to know about the surrounding information. It's also beneficial to use similes and metaphors to grasp how something works. In other words, we need to connect new information to past experiences. Therefore, the learning process that most of us accept seems rather backward. Instead of feeding people answers immediately, we can supply them with experiences that can help them draw similarities between those experiences and demonstrations and the theoretical elements.

The goal of context in education is to equip us to understand situations and solve problems repeatedly. As humans, we are likely to forget information that is fed to us directly and not connected to our experiences.

Ideally, a learning process would begin with observation. We would show students how to do something or how something works. Then, we explain the theory behind why that thing works. Finally, the student or apprentice would be given the space to apply the principles themselves and work with their own hands.

We also answer questions and respond to comments about:

• The value of schooling
• MeasureQuick compatibility
• Self-driven curiosity
• Companies working with educators