Relive: David Butler
Learning how to learn before we learn.
Has anyone taught you how to learn?
If you agree you, your family, clients are likely to have been victims of a learning experience. And you may have passed on your limited or faulty learning strategies to children, friends and patients. We have probably had learning errors for our lifespan. Is learning increasingly becoming a survival tool in the world of today? E.g. Medical knowledge doubles every around 73 days and half life if knowledge is shrinking. Think of virus research today! (Densen er al. 2011).
Our error with Explain Pain – I told them all how to put the lifejacket on, but did they learned it?
Dr. David Butler
If you see a client twice a week for half an hout that is 0.59% of the week. Sport coach with athletes are estimated at around 1-5%. What happens in the rest of the time? And in the chronic pain clientele, the processes constructing pain and inflammation, and long term medications are likely to affect learning. Educational psychology is one of those areas that rarely been intergrated in healthsciences. There is som much to learn. Start build a frame work or toolbox.
Educational science has broadly two areas. The learning and instruction area is definitely the biggest but a second area, the science of conceptual change is less common but probably most valuable in health. The most fundamental difference is that the conceptual change field focusses on the nature of existing knowledge (Vosniadou, 2017). This is also known as ‘androgogy’ – which refers to methods and principles used in adult education. Pedagogy on the contrary is obviously the better known big brother. Patients will bring their existing knowledge to the clinic too. And especially on health, patients bring a huge amount of experiences, beliefs en knowledge along with them. You can’t blame them. Healthcare providers have shown to be a big resource for common misconceptions too.
What is the ideal learning strategy or technique for adult learners in pain and for their deliverers? We need to address this question if we want to improve it. A philosophy that fits the context is the concept of constructivism which comes from the wider scope of learning theories. The learner is nog a passive recipient of knowledge, that knowledge is constructed by the learner. Therefore Self Regulated Learning seems to provide the ideal framework for paineducation. The Self stand for – you ultimately do it to yourself, its not done to you. The regulation parts are regulations of movements, exercises, cognitions, emotions, time, contexts, etc. Resources before, during and after the learning experience. This is getting seriously the next wave in the paineducation world. More will come soon!
Written by Bart van Buchem
