I’ve been thinking about the importance of attitude recently, and reading around the subject. I came across some interesting research which explained something I’ve noticed. There are a number of different attitudes or ‘styles’ to learning, which psychologists recognise and measure. Different ones have strengths and weaknesses in different circumstances. However, there’s one attitude which experience suggests is a ‘failing’ one, and which is confirmed by research to correlate with poor performance.

Psychologists call this a ‘surface’ approach, but I think a better name might be a ‘passive learner’. It’s the sort of approach where someone expects to be spoon-fed, or has the attitude ‘teach me’ rather than ‘help me to learn’. Surface learners often attend classes well, and hand in all their homework on time, but do it because they confuse process and outcome " they seem to believe that the process of attending class and handing in homework IS learning, rather than being a means to an end. As one researcher who studied people adopting this attitude put it “students who did not get ‘the point’ failed to do so simply because they were not looking for it.”

Surface learners tend to believe that they are passive recipients of education, like empty bottles that knowledge has to be poured into. To them the teachers’ job is simply to pour the knowledge in. Like a baby waiting to be spoon-fed, all they have to do is to sit in their high chair with their bib on, and open their mouth. People with this attitude have a viewpoint called external locus of control " they believe that control over their lives is mostly external " outside of their control, and so believe that poor outcomes are due to bad luck, mean people ‘getting at them’, in fact anything apart from themselves.

I will tell you more about recognising and developing learning styles later, but the first lesson if you want to succeed is to recognise that you are in control of your own life. You are responsible for a lot of what happens to you. In the context of exams, you need to actively engage with your learning and performing. Don’t sit waiting to be spoon fed, grab the spoon and start feeding yourself!