Thoughts on the value of repetition in learning and instruction

Time changes things. Technologies change. Technologies change what people can do and are doing. Technologies change what people will want to do. And, technologies can also change what people will want to avoid doing. That is one of my mantras. A second on is this: It is not about the technology; it is about learning; it is about the use of technology to support learning; and what counts as learning is a stable and persistent change in what a person knows and can do, as Gagné and others have said on many occasions. Do it again, the coach says. Say it again, the language teacher says. Read it again nearly every teacher says. Watch it again the movie enthusiast says. I omit the things my parents used to tell me for the sake of brevity. Repetition seems to be an important principle of learning (see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228318502_Repetition_is_the_First_Principle_of_All_Learning ... and https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/10/01/repetition-repetition-repetition and many more) … but, repetition can lead to boredom … as noted in the first reference … but bringing new eyes and ears to the same activities and resources can deepen one’s understanding … SO … the critical factor may not be the same or different activities and resources but wide eyes and tuned in ears … aka, an open mind … just a passing thought. I think of things I have read multiple times … such as Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus and Gagné’s Conditions of Learning … and each time I stumble across something new or puzzling, such as “We picture facts to ourselves” (Tractatus 2.1) and yet many often picture things that are not facts to themselves … or “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” … why is that when his fate is endless and tiresome labor … or why was Gagné so intent on separating verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor skills and attitudes when they seem so often interconnected. Gagné and Merrill did write about enterprises which involve interconnected kinds of tasks. Keep reading and keep thinking. Read it again. Discuss it again with a colleague. Insights seem to happen irregularly and at unexpected moments. To understand Tolstoy, one should read A Confession. To understand Wittgenstein, it is important to look into his family life after reading Tractatus 7 … “whereof one cannot speak, whereof one must remain silent” and then he goes on to write extensively about language games. Why? Repetition can lead to boredom but it can also lead to improved memory and performance and occasionally to important insights. What matters? The technology? What matters is the learning. What matters? What one already believes or knows. Learning involves a persistent and stable change in … if no change … then no learning. Children are masterful learners as they do not typically let their beliefs and prior knowledge get in the way of learning something new, and they are generally open to change. As T. S. Eliot notes in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. … Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. … I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. … I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. … That poem is something else I have read perhaps a 100 times or more, and each time I seem to focus on somewhat different parts of that remarkable poem. In the shuffle and scuffle of life, I have learned that I know very little even though I have had the remarkable pleasure of having had amazing teachers and mentors. “Whereof one cannot speak, whereof one must remain silent.” Why is it so hard to remain silent?

Yom Kippur – 16 September 2021

I have to say this on this day of atonement and forgiveness … I ask forgiveness for my country. I ask forgiveness for the blind ones who want to condemn a general who helped avoid a war with China … General Milley should be praised and not condemned … the world is upside down thanks to #45 who put himself on top of all things and crushed so many of those who did not agree or jump on board the Trump train. For the critics of General Milley, a Princeton graduate with a graduate degree from Columbia University and a distinguished military career … can any of the records of his attackers hold a faint candle to his record? The stone throwers trip over the pebbles of their lives while trying to diminish others. Okay … I have my own shortcomings to admit and seek forgiveness. I have not been such a great parent or spouse or sibling … too many things to mention specifically … I have helped some students but not helped others in need of help … I anger too easily, and I often say what I am thinking without considering better ways to express myself. I make jokes about serious issues to draw attention to things I regard as stupid or wrongheaded. Sometimes my jokes are offensive or in bad taste. Bite my tongue. I have lapses of memory and sometimes forget that I have lapses of memory. The point is that I am a skeptic at heart … a person in search of meaning and truth and admitting to knowing less than I sometimes pretend to know. Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death …. All men are ready to invest their money But most expect dividends. I say to you: Make perfect your will . I say: take no thought of the harvest, But only of proper sowing … The desert is not remote in southern tropics, The desert is not only around the corner, The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you, The desert is in the heart of your brother. The good man is the builder, if he build what is good. (from T. S. Eliot’s “Choruses from the Rock”) I have no great words or thoughts of my own … I steal from others who have gone before. Most often from Bob Dylan: "It's never been my duty to remake the world at large, nor is it my intention to sound the battle charge." Before I go I can at least say that I have not killed another person … I have not caused physical harm to another person … I have loved and been loved … mostly by my children and grandchildren … and I have had amazing friends who live in various places across this threatened planet that we can temporarily call home.