Dear Christopher,

It is now very much in vogue to say that students should learn how to learn more than to simply learn.

As I see it, the idea of learning how to learn risks being a kind of an otiose idea or even slogan. The best way to learn how to learn is just learning some contents. So, before we learn how to learn we should learn something or even many things. This also means that the idea that school teachers should teach student to learn how to learn, which reminds me of pedagogy and pedagogical methods, should not not be emphasized at the cost of what students have to learn, whic reminds me of curriculum. To put it simple, students have to learn before they learn and to learn. How could a teacher to teach their students to learn how to learn if s/he didn't teach them facts, concepts, rules, principles and so forth? if the were not the case, them s/he was putting the cars before the cows. So, be cautious with the idea of learning to learn because it easily leads to nowhere. Noboby can learn how to learn is s/he does not learns first facts, ideas, rules, principle and the like. And good luck for your research.

Kind regards,

Orlando Lourenço

Dear Christopher Klecker

Perhaps the main thing to keep in mind is that "learning" is not all one thing; it differs with qualitative stages of cognition, unfolding sequentially and hierarchically during ontogeny (mostly, to say the least, during child development).

It continues to mystify me that people use the word "learning" as if it is a ubiquitous KIND OF THING. The only thing that is ubiquitous is associative learning (a more or less constant ASPECT of learning BUT ONLY AN ASPECT): And, THAT changes in its contents and dimensions as OTHER guiding aspects of species-typical learning are going on and changing. Lacking awareness of this is lacking awareness of even the nature of development and of learning itself. It is important to know that this is where psychology "is" (actually, not even a science yet). [ Psychology has several more ways of being empirical and being more empirical (related to clear, testable hypotheses and related to what I have just said), that they have not even tried. They seem to prefer nonsense concepts (e.g. embodiment) to discovery and to good empiricism SO THAT THEY SEE ALL AS "learning" -- but, again, in a real sense they don't even know what learning is, so biased are they in the position that "all is learning" AS THEY "UNDERSTAND" IT (this is a false assumption, aka presumption, which is NOT BIOLOGICALLY LIKELY nor likely to ever end the irrational totally ill-framed and useless/destructive dualist nature/nurture arguments). The science of Psychology has yet to begin. ] See my stuff:

Ethogram Theory by Brad Jesness (stuff can be gotten through researchgate.net : especially see: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Human-Ethology-and-Development-Ethogram-Theory

See especially:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286920820_A_Human_Ethogram_Its_Scientific_Acceptability_and_Importance_now_NEW_because_new_technology_allows_investigation_of_the_hypotheses_an_early_MUST_READ

and

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322818578_NOW_the_nearly_complete_collection_of_essays_RIGHT_HERE_BUT_STILL_ALSO_SEE_THE_Comments_1_for_a_copy_of_some_important_more_recent_posts_not_in_the_Collection_include_reading_the_2_Replies_to_the_Comm

AND

the Comments to (under) the second-to the-newest Update on the Project page: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Human-Ethology-and-Development-Ethogram-Theory (for EVERYTHING but the larger papers and some smaller papers, those all easily found under my Projects and esp. under the Ethogram Theory Project).

Be sure to read all that is associated with the 2 recent Updates (Log Entries) to the Project, https://www.researchgate.net/project/Human-Ethology-and-Development-Ethogram-Theory (there is a couple of ways to get more to read THERE: 100s of pages). My other Projects are also related to my perspective and approach, and so more may be gleaned from those also.