Creating Conditions for Flow: Optimal Learning

As an educator by profession, I find the idea of optimal learning opportunities quite intriguing. The teacher, the learning environment, and the kinds of learning opportunities provided, make all the difference in student success. Students and parents of students often have no control, however, over these factors. So, what can students, student advocates and teachers do to invite these optimal learning experiences?

Csikszentmihalyi's research on Flow, the psychology of optimal experiences, tells us that the ideal learning experience occurs when an individual is able to concentrate with relative ease on an interesting and challenging activity. The challenge needs to be fairly well matched to the learner’s skill level. When the learner’s skills are not high enough, frustration is likely to occur. On the other hand, when the skills are much greater than the challenge level of the activity, the learner will frequently lose interest, experience boredom, and turn attention elsewhere.

In other words, when someone is interested, challenged, and concentrating on an activity that is not too hard or too easy, optimal learning is likely to take place. At this point, a learner becomes so engaged that he or she is not likely to be distracted, seeks feedback to improve, and, the big bonus – experiences a feeling of enjoyment.

The factors, then, within the realm of influence by the learner, are: how interested one is in an activity and/or topic, and matching skills with a challenge. First, the learner needs to find a challenging environment, topic, and/or activity. Then, he or she can work on improving skills to meet the challenge.

For our younger learners, we adult educators need to take the role in providing challenge and helping our students learn skills to meet these challenges. As educators, we need to provide students with opportunities to share and explore interests within our curriculum, creating space for students to bring topics of interest into the classroom.

Young adult and adult learners can make the effort to intentionally look for what is interesting, seek challenges, and reflect and build on skills needed to meet these challenges.

Why go through the trouble? Because focused learning energizes, leads to creativity, and feels really good.

With creativity and enjoyment resulting from optimal learning, we can find solutions to the problems of our time. We can experience personal and communal success. Or can we?

This last question leads to another component necessary for all of this to take place, which is the belief that it is possible. This belief can be subconscious or conscious, but it needs to be there. If I am certain of my inability to write a novel, for example, it is highly likely that it will never happen.

This doesn’t mean that all it takes for me to become a famous writer is the belief that I can become one. Optimal learning is an experience in itself, rather than a destination or final product. However, it is much more likely that I will reach my goals if I believe that my efforts will eventually take me there. In addition, the enjoyment I experience along the way, when I am in the Flow, provides the ultimate success for me.

For learners, then, the success is in the Flow, with many surprising and wonderful destinations reached along the way.  

Welcome Educators, Students, and Life Long Learners!

A new school year is off and running once again. My daughter Katie started her first day of her 2nd year in high school yesterday and I started teaching classes at UVA on Tuesday. One of the things I love about working on an academic calendar is the fresh start fall brings. As the summer winds down, the promise of cooler fall days is welcome for many. Beginning the year in autumn, rather than the dead of winter, feels more natural to me.

The time is here for many to begin new classes, arrange new schedules, and prepare for another year of expanding the past into the present, with thoughts toward the future. Learning, in particular when the topic is of personal interest, is inherently enjoyable for most. That enjoyment, I contend, as an educator specializing in what engages learners most, is the key to the door of success.

When we find ourselves experiencing joy while engaged in some activity, we are glimpsing at a peak learning opportunity. Enjoyment is an excellent motivator for humans to lean even closer in to whatever it is we are doing, to engage in it more fully. Here is where we find our most fulfilling interests, where we find the activities that we are most intrinsically motivated to do. We don't need an external prize to motivate our concentration, it comes with ease. In fact, in this state of ease we rarely notice external distractions at all. This is that place where time begins to flex and can pass without us even noticing.

What can call this elusive, highly engaging and energizing state of peak concentration? Is it an ineffable experience? Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has been researching this very topic for decades and gave it a name: Flow.

Csikszentmihalyi's research defines this experience as universal to humans across culture, age, gender, class, race, and activity. Any and all of us can and likely have experienced this and know the good feeling that comes with Flow. Though we know what it is and how it feels, can we call a flow experience into our day? Is Flow random or predictable? Can invite and ask for more Flow in our lives?

I believe that we can do just that. We know what the typical conditions for Flow are and that these conditions are transferable to different types of activities, thanks to Csikszentmihalyi's research. Therefore, we certainly can invite Flow, watch for it, and celebrate it when we find it in our lives. The benefits of Flow to us as individuals, and in larger community (both local and global), are limitless. When we are in Flow, we are experiencing success. This is When Success Flows!