Reflective Learning

Some objects may reveal all details of interest to our organs of perception while others may not fully satisfy our curiosity. We need to supplement our cognitive learning with this step of reflection to compensate for our lack of attention while hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and touching. In listening, there are human errors caused by the lack of attention on the part of the speaker.

Reflective learning involves revisiting the memory of what we heard, saw, tasted, smelled, or touched as we go on with our lives in the waking state. This process is called reflection. We may want to sit in a quiet place to reflect on the memory to learn more, or more clearly, for the purpose of using the learning when the need arises.

For most learning related to human survival, these two steps are enough.  Homework that is assigned at school and project-related learning are tools the teachers use to coerce the students to use reflective learning to supplement cognitive learning in the classroom.

Like cognitive learning, reflective learning is also subjected to errors due to the lack of human attention during the waking state. In spite of being careful, we are just incapable of preventing the oscillations of the mind from disturbing and distracting our attention.

Reflection may reveal all those details of our interest which were not perceptible to our sense organs and leave us satisfied.  There may be times or objects so profound that we are not satisfied with the results of our deepest reflections. In those cases, our only recourse is contemplative learning.