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.