I think my belief of successful learning requiring an open mind was really expressed in our discussion on Thursday. We all came into that room with an idea in our head. Some had a few similar phrases in their deffinitions but there was a lot of variety in what people bleived to be learning. An open mind would have enabled you to be receptive to those newely presented phrases and you would then be able to process that information in your head and use it to develop your own definition even if you didn't agree with theirs.
The chapter in How Students Learn discussed a students ability to question an experiment done on frogs. They were encouraged to think of reasons as to why the data was not acurate or why they wouldn't believe it to be true. I think this hits a point very different that the one just stated. I think that part of learning is questioning. If we just believed every bit of information we were ever presented with, we wouldn't be learning. We would be agree and cooperating until we reached a point of memorization. One's willingness to question is what keeps them comming back for more suport or prof that that material is correct. It's almost as if you need to be in a state of disbieaf and have to be proven wrong.
I would add that learning is a healthy balance between pushing (questioning) and pulling (wanting to hear more) at the information presented to you. Without this balance, I don't realy feel like much, if any, learning would be accomplished.
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