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knowledge base, and to pull together different ideas to create an answer. Rote-learned solutions will rarely cover all of the required content or demonstrate genuine understanding, and as such, a surface learning approach is unlikely to be successful. For these sorts of modules, you need to adopt a deep learning approach if you want to do well.

Which types of learning are you being asked to do for your current modules? Do you need to adopt a deep learning approach, or will a surface learning approach be sufficient?

Applying Psychology to Learning Psychologists and educational theorists have proposed countless theories that try to explain how people learn. We certainly cannot deal with them all in one chapter; indeed, whole books have been written about each one of them separately. Here, I will introduce several key psychological perspectives on learning, and identify some of the ways in which you can apply them to your own learning. Let’s start by thinking about what you already know about learning, from your own experiences.

Activity

Think back to a specific time when you found learning something difficult. Perhaps you scored low marks in an exam or a piece of coursework.

 What do you think caused the problem? Was it something about the task? About you? About your circumstances at the time?

Now think back to a time when you found learning something easy or enjoyable. Perhaps you gained unusually good marks in an exam or a piece of coursework.

 What do you think helped you to succeed? Was it something about the task? About you? About your circumstances at the time?

Reflecting on the barriers that sometimes hinder our learning, and the factors that help us to learn, can help us to recognise when things are going wrong in advance, and to find ways to put them right.

Compare your notes answering the two questions above. Are there any similarities? Are there any differences?

Having thought about how your two experiences differed, what could you have done differently in your first example to correct the problem? What would have helped you?

© Oxford University Press, 2020