MEMORIZING

UNDERSTANDING

• Limits learning of ideas and concepts to word for word recall.

• Converts ideas and concepts into own words.

• Limits ability to generate insight or creative ideas.

• Creates a basis for generating insights and creative syntheses.

• Limits learning to actual words recalled.

• Advances the depth of learning.

• Inability to deduce or induce.

• Develops insights that come from deduction or induction.

• Has trouble seeing beyond the basic concept or idea.

• Can see meaning, effects, results, consequences beyond the basic idea or concept.

• Difficult to explain ideas to someone else other than word for word.

• Able to use own words to explain something clearly to someone else.

• Difficult to see how ideas apply in real-life situations.

• Can apply ideas to real life situations.

• Relevance of ideas outside the classroom is difficult to see.

• Ability to seek connections between knowledge learned in classroom and the outside world.

• Does not see differences, similarities, and implications of ideas.

• Can identify differences, similarities between ideas and implications of these ideas.

• Interprets ideas literally.

• Realizes that there can be figurative as well as literal interpretations of ideas.

• Strives for rote learning and has trouble solving problems when numbers or components are changed.

• Strives for understand and can solve problems even when numbers or components are changed.

• Believes there is one right answer to every question.

• Accepts that there may be more than 1 “right” answer to a question depending on circumstances.