Studying vs. Learning: The Psychology of Student Success

By Troy Dvorak

If you want to maximize your learning and success in college, you need quality thinking skills, learning skills, and psychological skills far more than you need studying tips. This book will help you develop those skills, making you more confident, efficient, and productive. It is a practical guide to developing essential skills for college, many you have never learned about before, with straight-forward suggestions you can put into practice right now.

When life is tough, you don’t make flashcards and memorize definitions. You need the personal skills and habits described in Studying vs. Learning to deal effectively with the challenges you face, inside and outside of school.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543918519

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 Troy Dvorak

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-54391-850-2 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-54391-851-9 (ebook)

DEDICATIONS

Mom

The confidence I have, goals I set, and things I achieve all stem from your unwavering love and support. Your faith in me is a cornerstone of my career choices and desire to help others. As a woman, professional, and mother, you are an amazing role model. I am grateful for you and love you more than I can ever express.

Big Sister

The learning books you made me when I was a kid paid off! You helped me value learning, be a good student, and (hopefully) become a good teacher. Baby Brother loves his Big Sister.

My Students

Thank you for teaching me something new every day. I hope to do the same for you. For those of you who shared your opinion for the title of this book, I appreciate your input. Is this the title you voted for?

Gail O’Kane

Sharing your insights, expertise, and experiences as a leader at our college made this book so much better. For all your time, advice, feedback, and editing, thank you!

In Memoriam

With gratitude to John Heinrichs for his unwavering support of Minneapolis Community & Technical College students. He is missed.

Table of Contents

SECTION 1: LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

ARE YOU LEARNING, OR JUST STUDYING?

YOUR LEARNING OBJECTIVES

SECTION 2:THINKING SKILLS

MOTIVATION – THE BEGINNING

KEY #1 – BELIEFS AND MINDSET

KEY #2 – ATTRIBUTIONS

KEY #3 – ACHIEVEMENT GOALS & INTEREST

KEY #4 – SELF-EFFICACY

KEY #5 – METACOGNITION

KEY #6 – SELF-REGULATED LEARNING

KEY #7 – AVOIDING THINKING ERRORS

CULTURE – THE THINKING SKILLS KEYCHAIN

SECTION 3:LEARNING SKILLS

POWERFUL LEARNING STRATEGIES

SECTION 4:PSYCHOLOGICAL SKILLS

PERSONAL GROWTH AND SUCCESS

NOTES

SECTION 1:

LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

ARE YOU LEARNING, OR JUST STUDYING?

Typical studying strategies are useless if you don’t know how to think and how to learn.

Schools spend a lot of time and energy teaching information to students, but often without instruction on how to learn the information.¹ That’s like giving you an unassembled car with no instructions on how to build it. You can know the names of all the parts and understand what they all do. You can know all the ways the car will be useful when it is built. But without knowing how to put it all together, the parts are useless.

In my experience, teachers give students a lot of advice about how to study. You know what I’m talking about, right? They tell you about studying skills such as re-reading, highlighting things you read, making flashcards, memorizing, summarizing, and doing practice questions. However, if you want to maximize your learning and success, you need quality thinking skills, learning skills, and psychological skills far more than you need studying tips.

Have you ever studied for a test, passed it (or better), and then two weeks later, realized you have forgotten most of it? I certainly had experiences like that when I was in school. That is a great example of how we can study but not learn very much. So, are you learning, or just studying?

In a perfect world, studying leads to learning. But as you can see, studying and learning are not necessarily the same thing. To learn, you must know how to think. Thinking skills are not the same as studying skills. Thinking skills will make your studying skills more effective.

Please consider this quotation: Learning how to learn cannot be left to students. It must be taught.² Most students think about learning information in school. If you are doing well in high school, or if you are attending college, you probably don’t think you need to learn how to learn. Some of you may be right.

Before you jump to that conclusion, consider this: A study in 1995 showed that 79 percent of students starting at a community college felt prepared for college-level work, but more than half left school with no degree two years later.³ Data from a 2011 study showed that only 20 percent of students who enrolled in a two-year public college had graduated three years later.⁴ Do you want to become part of these statistics? I’m confident your answer is, No!

Do not be discouraged by statistics like that. This book will help you develop thinking skills and psychological skills to succeed in high school, college, and your career. For example, having strong academic goals, motivation, confidence in your own abilities, and self-control will help you stay in school (i.e., persist) and graduate.⁵,⁶,⁷ Those aren’t studying skills. They are thinking and psychological skills that help you succeed.

I would be lying if I told you that hard work and good thinking skills will get all of you through to graduation and career success. There are many factors related to academic achievement. For example, many of my students have children and work part- or full-time. Others face significant hardships such as poverty and even homelessness.

Scholars and researchers have also looked at how intelligence is related to academic achievement (that is a huge topic and is not the focus of this book).⁸ Many students get worried when they see the word intelligence. Some worry that they aren’t smart enough to do well in school. If you are one of those students, there is a nice metaphor⁹ that might set your mind at ease. Each of us is like a rubber band when it comes to intelligence. We come in different sizes. There is nothing we can do to change the size of the rubber band we happen to be. However, we are all capable of stretching a lot. This book will help you develop the skills and strategies that will allow you to…

S - T - R - E - T - C - H .

Being smart is helpful, but hard work, practice, persistence, and developing specific skills really matter. For example, one study found that report card grades were predicted more by self-control and homework completion than by IQ scores.¹⁰ You need skill, will, and self-regulation¹¹ for learning and success. As for success in life, there is much research showing that emotional intelligence (i.e., recognizing, understanding, and managing emotions) can take you much further than IQ smarts.¹² You’ll read about that in the psychological skills section of this book.

So, what are your thoughts about being a successful student? Is academic success about intelligence? Studying hard? Getting good grades? Just passing? Memorizing stuff? Getting a degree? What exactly does a successful student look like? Would you know a successful student if you saw one? Is that student staring back at you in the mirror?

If you want the student in the mirror to be successful, keep reading and I will help you develop thinking skills, learning skills, and psychological skills that will help you stretch!

YOUR LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Studying is what you do to pass a test. Learning is what you do to be knowledgeable and useful in the real world.

Graduating high school and enrolling in college represents a chance to dramatically improve your life. But even the greatest schools and teachers cannot guarantee your success. The only true guarantor of your success (or failure) is you. When you start college, the expectation is that you can organize and manage your own life. It is critical that you make effective decisions about studying and adapt to the expectations of your instructors and college.¹ Enrolling in college is a declaration of your willingness to do all the work. College expectations don’t change if you lack skills or have too many other things to do.

Academic-intellectual work is heavily cognitive, requiring combinations of knowledge and reasoning skills.² What does that mean? I’m glad you asked because I’m going to tell you. Earning a college degree is hard work. It requires a lot of effort, studying, concentration, and a stick-with-it attitude. You need to develop some skills (that many students don’t know about) to keep up with the rigors of a college education. The first year of college is when you develop attitudes, approaches toward learning, and perceptions of yourself as a college student that can help (or hurt) you.³

Your Learning Objectives for This Book

The title of this book is Studying vs. Learning. I hope you already wondered what this means. Aren’t studying and learning kind of the same thing? At a minimum the two are closely related, right? Don’t you study to learn…learn by studying?

As a college instructor, I have seen a lot of students do poorly, not because they are stupid, but because they lack important thinking, learning, and psychological skills. They simply don’t realize that studying and learning are not always the same. Studying is what you do to pass a test; learning is what you do to be knowledgeable and useful in the world.

When a class begins at my college, the instructor explains to students what the learning outcomes are. That means we tell you what you can expect to learn and know by the end of the semester. These are called learning objectives. They are important to you because they help you organize, understand, and remember what you are learning and why you are learning it.

With this book, your learning objectives are:

Learn about and develop thinking, learning, and psychological skills (the what);

Understand why those skills and strategies are more important than basic studying strategies; and

Understand exactly how to learn in more effective ways.

The Thinking Skills

This book is going to help learn how to think. These thinking skills will make you a more effective student and serve you well in your career (and even your relationships, believe it or not). I call them the Psychological Keys to Student Success. They are:

Beliefs & Mindset

Attributions

Achievement Goals & Interest

Self-efficacy

Metacognition

Self-regulated Learning (SRL)

Avoiding Thinking Errors

The Learning Skills

After learning about the Psychological Keys to Student Success, you will learn some powerful learning strategies that psychologists and educators have known for years but that too few students know. I am going to give you insider information from the world of educational psychology that will help you learn more efficiently and at a deeper level. Remember, you don’t want to just study. You want to learn! You can study information about traffic, road signs, and how a car works and then pass a written test about that stuff. But that does not make you a good driver. You have to practice, pay careful attention, test yourself, and value the importance of what you are learning and why in order to be a good driver.

The Psychological Skills

With over twenty years’ experience in psychology, I believe there are some fundamental principles that will serve you well, in school and in life. Developing your capacity for self-awareness and using a handful of core concepts in psychology can make the thinking and learning skills in this book even more effective.

How You Will Achieve the Learning Objectives

By learning and practicing the thinking, learning, and psychological skills in this book, you will also develop important personal characteristics. That is the how part in the learning objectives. Let me highlight some of the characteristics for you.

First, let’s consider something called perceived academic control (PAC). This is how much you believe you can influence and predict your own academic success. In high school, a lot of work was done for you by the teacher (e.g., scheduling, monitoring attendance, recognizing you needed help). In college, you must do these things for yourself. Developing perceived academic control will allow you to:

meet the increased demands of college courses, engage more during classes, monitor and increase effort, increase critical thinking, use more effective studying methods, and obtain a better grades⁴,⁵,⁶

experience more enjoyment, pride, and hope and less boredom, anxiety, and anger⁷,⁸

persist and get higher grades⁹

improve your psychological well-being.¹⁰

As I said at the beginning of this chapter, even the best schools and teachers cannot guarantee your success. Guess what -- research shows that good teaching helps students higher in perceived academic control more than those lower in perceived academic control.¹¹ That is why it is so important for you to develop PAC. Think about it this way: it is easier for someone who can run ten miles to run an additional two miles than it is for someone who can only run one mile to suddenly run three. In both cases, you’re adding two miles of distance but the person with better training and endurance will do that more easily than someone with less training and endurance.

A second important personal characteristic is resilience, the ability to bounce back after setbacks. Research has shown it predicts academic achievement. Resilient people have:

positive coping strategies that are flexible and adaptive

a sense of control over their lives (psychologists would call this an internal locus of control)

a willingness to ask for help

self-confidence

impulse control

good communication and people skills

greater social maturity

sense of responsibility

desire to accomplish tasks.¹²

As you read this book and develop more effective thinking, learning, and psychology skills, you will be developing resilience at the same time.

Third, while personal control and resilience are particularly important characteristics for students, there are many others that will help you in school and throughout your life. Having a positive attitude, internal motivation, passion for your long-term goals, and maintaining effort despite setbacks are examples of personal characteristics associated with success.¹³,¹⁴,¹⁵,¹⁶

Students with a sense of responsibility, resourcefulness, determination, good time management skills, and who value education are more likely to successfully finish school.¹⁷,¹⁸ The more you practice the many skills in this book, the more you will be establishing positive habits that will help you succeed in the classroom and beyond!

Fourth is something called productive persistence. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching defines this as tenacity and the use of good strategies.¹⁹ Tenacity means you keep up with your studying and attendance even when the going gets tough. Work all day? You still study for an exam even though you are tired. Class not going well? You talk to your instructor, study harder, and refuse to give up. That’s tenacity.

When you’re dealing with hard classes, information you don’t understand, deadlines, low grades, negative feedback, bad teachers -- not to mention all the stuff in your life outside of school -- studying skills won’t help you. When life is tough, you don’t make flashcards and memorize definitions. But these personal characteristics will help deal with difficult circumstances, inside and outside of school.

So, Let’s Begin

The findings I am