Think about something in which you consider yourself to be an expert. Maybe it is cooking. I strongly suspect that even if you are an expert in cooking, you have sometimes failed. Maybe you’ve had a few catastrophes, in which you burnt the meal, or your cake didn’t rise properly, or maybe you used salt instead of sugar. Or maybe they were small matters, such as a soup that didn’t taste quite right, or the pasta was a little overcooked. Not exactly a failure, but not exactly how you wanted it to come out. Or perhaps you experimented, whether through necessity or by choice - using honey instead of sugar, oil instead of butter, onions instead of shallots.
This is all experimentation, and through each experiment we learn something. It may be that we don’t learn it at that moment. Maybe there are too many factors involved, or it takes a while to realise that the issue is that your oven is always slightly too hot, or you realise that sifting the flour is actually an essential step. The point is that we learn by doing things over and over again. Not mindlessly, but by paying attention to what we’re doing, and reflecting throughout the process and afterwards, looking back on it.
Many people claim to be able to multi-task, and that may indeed be possible if we are not trying to learn something. For instance, many like to have music playing while they work, and perhaps a video playing at the same time. But I suspect that very little is truly being learned in that situation, and that if you find yourself needing to concentrate on one thing in particular, the others disappear. For instance, if I get totally lost in something I’m focusing on, I completely lose track of any music playing. That’s great if I was focusing on my essay, not so great if I was focusing on a video! Personally, I usually find that the music distracts me - I tried writing this with some music on and had to turn it off!
As we reflect with our Grade 10 & 12 students on the experiences of their mock examinations, one thing to keep in mind will be the nature of the time spent studying. If students claim to have spent lots of time studying, but are unhappy with the outcome, something to explore would be whether their studying involved merely practice, or deliberate practice. The latter is harder, but more likely to result in deep learning, and therefore stronger outcomes. And may require less time, overall.
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