Never try to understand and deal with differences in learning until I know how learning works when it’s working

"Never try to understand and deal with differences in learning until I know how learning works when it’s working" a. This quote can be interpreted at two different levels, the level of learning in general human learning, or the level of an individual’s learning. Both are important for different reasons, and in some ways it mirrors the notion of the importance of both lab and in vivo studies.

b. The former side relates to understanding learning when all conditions are ideal and there are no severe impediments to learning. The other side relates to understanding the effects of individual differences on the conditions needed for learning and understanding the learning that occurs when those conditions are met. When attempting to solve problems with an individual’s learning, it should be known how their brain is wired to learn. Another way of seeing this is as the inverse of “if something’s not broken, don’t fix it”. This is, “if you know something is broken, learn how it worked when it worked properly before attempting to fix it.” (Levine, 2002, p. 28)