The Art of Failure Response

      

      Malcolm Gladwell, author of The New Yorker article “The Art of Failure,” introduces, explains, and differentiates Daniel Willingham’s concept of implicit and explicit learning.

      According to Willingham, implicit learning is the learning of intricate information and tasks without awareness of what has been learned.   This form of learning can be occur after an individual learns a task or it can be something that was unmindfully picked up an person who is frequently present such as family or friends or from an entity that is frequently observed such as television shows and websites. For instance, when I learned to play the clarinet, my music instructor helped me connect certain sounds with keys. As time progressed, I went from consciously moving my fingers key to key while looking down to mimicking a song played by a person playing a clarinet without reading the keys, or making a conscious decision as to where I should place my fingers.

      However, explicit learning requires concentration and consciousness. Movement is slower and hesitant. For instance, when I was in the License Practical Nursing program in my high school my instructor taught my class how to insert an IV line into a patient. When it was time to implement what I learned in clinical, my movements where very slow and hesitant, and I was conscious of every move that I made. Eventually, I became accustomed to the task and I began to move more fluidly. Although the lesson did not ease the pressure I felt when it was time to perform in a hospital setting, the fact that my instructor told me ahead of time what is going to take place helped me prepare mentally for the task.

      According to Gladwell, understanding of the two types of learning is crucial when trying to figure out why a person failed to exceptionally perform a task that was previously learned.