1. Lesson 2 - Introduction to Positive Psychology: Learning by Doing
2. Road Map
3. The Main Goal of PSYCH 243
4. The History of PSYCH 243
5. The History of Positive Psychology
6. Do Positive Psychologists Know More than Sunday School Teachers?
7. The Three Pillars of Positive Psychology
8. Active Learning
9. The Meaning of Free Choice
10. How Do We Achieve Freedom?
11. The Importance of Realism
12. Are You Ready for Change?
13. What Will You Change?
14. Lesson Activity

Active Learning

In Chapter 1, Peterson notes that psychology textbooks are often accompanied by an instructor's manual and student study guide containing exercises and applications. He explains that he placed his exercises and applications directly in the book rather than in a separate exercise book because doing activities and exercises is so essential to learning positive psychology. That is why Chapter 2 is titled "Learning About Positive Psychology: Not a Spectator Sport.”

You should understand that active learning applies even to listening to lectures, watching videos, or reading the textbook and these commentaries. Sometimes when we are watching and listening to a professor or reading a book, we expect the ideas to just naturally sink into our brain without any effort on our part. This is an old-fashioned view of learning, the knowledge is poured into a teacher's head from somewhere and then the teacher pours the knowledge into the student. Sort of like in the following video:

A number of inaccuracies about learning are represented in this video.

• First, the bit of knowledge just falls into the professor's head. He or she did not make any special effort to grasp this bit of knowledge. Neither did the student. The idea from the professor's head just flowed out of the professor's mouth and into the student's head. In reality, each of us must attend carefully to new information and actively bring it into our mind.
• Second, the professor's and student's heads were empty. In reality, any person's head is already full of pre-existing ideas. Furthermore, these ideas are connected to each other in a way that makes sense to the person. Any new idea can be understood only by connecting it to what we already know.

To get a more accurate view of the way active learning works, examine the video below. Note how the person's head already contains a set of interconnected ideas, how the person actively reaches out to grasp a new idea and connect it to what is already known:

You know, if you think about it, the expression active learning is really redundant. We must always be active in order to learn. There is no such thing as passive learning. We either learn actively or we do not learn at all.