After reading Backwards Bicycle, I came across a very interesting statement. The author compares the skill of riding a bicycle to an algorithm and compares learning to ride a bicycle to solving an equation as if it were an equation. This also explains very well his belief that learning knowledge is not the same as understanding it.
This reminded me of my learning experience in economics class. There are quite a few calculations and various equations involved in many economics classes. However, whenever I memorized all the formulas and algorithms, I would still come across questions on the test that I didn’t know how I should calculate. These questions often use examples from life or integrate multiple formulas. We need to fully understand the meaning of the formulas we learned to solve the problems. I agree with the author that just because I learned a formula doesn’t mean I understand it or can use it well.
However, in this video, I don’t agree with the author’s attribution of his difficulty learning to ride a bike all to the complexity of the bike’s algorithm and conflict with his other algorithms. Perhaps this is one of the reasons or even a large part of the reason, but I don’t think it is the whole reason. It seems to me that the author’s delay in mastering the skill of riding a bicycle may also be because learning to ride a bicycle does not give the author a sufficient sense of accomplishment.
For example, in the ‘Motivation Theories and Instructional Design‘ section of the material, it is also mentioned that students’ expectations of success and task value beliefs can have an impact on their achievement. So in the video ‘Backwards Bicycle’, the authors and others who learn to ride bicycles have difficulty mastering the skill quickly, possibly because learning to ride a bicycle is not necessary for them, and learning the skill gives them little sense of accomplishment and helps them in life.
This also explains the author’s point that ‘children are more malleable than adults. Because the sense of accomplishment of a child learning to ride a bike is relatively large, often greater than that of an adult learning to ride a bike. That’s why his child could do what he could only do in eight months in two weeks.
Reference:
Park, S. (2018). Motivation Theories and Instructional Design. In R. E. West, Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology: The Past, Present, and Future of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. EdTech Books. Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/motivation_theories_and_instructional_design
After reading your post, my new thought is that a sense of accomplishment or interest can help people understand and learn knowledge. Because in your post, you mentioned the author’s point that learning knowledge is not the same as understanding knowledge, and you also mentioned that you learned the steps to solve the problem in your economics class, but you didn’t know why you did it in that way. And I have a similar experience to you, I was in the economics class I took last semester, because I was interested in those points, so I would try to understand the way and method of it, but when I went to understand them because of my interest and sense of accomplishment, I learned at the same time. So I think the sense of accomplishment and interest can help people understand knowledge and learn it in the process of understanding. I agree that learning knowledge and understanding knowledge are not the same, but at the same time they are strongly connected and both are influenced by interest and a sense of accomplishment.