Quotes About Knowledge

Putting new knowledge into a larger context helps learning. For example, the more of the unfolding story of history you know, the more of it you can learn. And the more ways you give that story meaning, say by connecting it to your understanding of human ambition and the untidiness of fate, the better the story stays with you.

Reflection can involve several cognitive activities that lead to stronger learning: retrieving knowledge and earlier training from memory, connecting these to new experiences, and visualizing and mentally rehearsing what you might do differently next time.

Mastery requires both the possession of ready knowledge and the conceptual understanding of how to use it.

This presumption by the professor that her students will readily follow something complex that appears fundamental in her own mind is a metacognitive error, a misjudgment of the matchup between what she knows and what her students know.

Dynamic testing has three steps. Step 1: a test of some kind—perhaps an experience or a paper exam—shows me where I come up short in knowledge or a skill. Step 2: I dedicate myself to becoming more competent, using reflection, practice, spacing, and the other techniques of effective learning. Step 3: I test myself again, paying attention to what works better now but also, and especially, to where I still need more work.

It's one thing to feel confident of your knowledge; it's something else to demonstrate mastery. Testing is not only a powerful learning strategy, it is a potent reality check on the accuracy of your own judgment of what you know how to do. When confidence is based on repeated performance, demonstrated through testing that simulates real-world conditions, you can lean into it.

a failure to know the areas where their learning is weak—that is, where they need to do more work to bring up their knowledge—and a preference for study methods that create a false sense of mastery.11

Pitting the learning of basic knowledge against creative thinking is a false choice

The illusion of mastery is an example of poor metacognition: what we know about what we know. Being accurate in your judgment of what you know and don't know is critical for decision making.

There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns—there are things we do not know we don't know.

the kind of retrieval practice that proves most effective is one that reflects what you'll be doing with the knowledge later. It's not just what you know, but how you practice what you know that determines how well the learning serves you later.

kind—perhaps an experience or a paper exam—shows me where I come up short in knowledge or a skill. Step 2: I dedicate myself to becoming more competent, using reflection, practice, spacing, and the other techniques of effective learning. Step 3: I test myself again, paying attention to what works better now but also, and especially, to where I still need more work.

factual knowledge," considered to be a lower level of learning than "conceptual knowledge." Conceptual knowledge requires an understanding of the interrelationships of the basic elements within a larger structure that enable them to function together.

Incompetent people lack the skills to improve because they are unable to distinguish between incompetence and competence.

When it comes to learning, what we choose to do is guided by our judgments of what works and what doesn't, and we are easily misled.

students need to take more control of their own learning by employing strategies like those we have discussed. For example, they need to test themselves, both to attain the direct benefits of increased retention and to determine what they know and don't know to more accurately judge their progress and focus on material that needs more work.

central challenge to improving the way we learn is finding a way to interrupt the process of forgetting.2

learning: we mean acquiring knowledge and skills and having them readily available from memory so you can make sense of future problems and opportunities.

First, to be useful, learning requires memory, so what we've learned is still there later when we need it. Second, we need to keep learning and remembering all our lives. We can't advance through middle school without some mastery of language arts, math, science, and social studies. Getting ahead at work takes mastery of job skills and difficult colleagues. In retirement, we pick up new interests. In our dotage, we move into simpler housing while we're still able to adapt.

rising familiarity with a text and fluency in reading it can create an illusion of mastery.

It's not just what you know, but how you practice what you know that determines how well the learning serves you later.

Third, learning is an acquired skill, and the most effective strategies are often counterintuitive.

One of the best habits a learner can instill in herself is regular self-quizzing to recalibrate her understanding of what she does and does not know.

Notwithstanding the pitfalls of standardized testing, what we really ought to ask is how to do better at building knowledge and creativity, for without knowledge you don't have the foundation for the higher-level skills of analysis, synthesis, and creative problem solving. As the psychologist Robert Sternberg and two colleagues put it, "one cannot apply what one knows in a practical manner if one does not know anything to apply."12