Transforming into an Expert Learner

Learning is not just a means to end. It should transform and provide a person with the means for a fulfilled life. Dr. Lee Rademacher has written "Learning to Learn: A Philosophical Guide to Learning" to help learners improve their potential to succeed.

Crown Point IN (PRWEB) September 14, 2004 -- Transformation has always been at the center of Dr. Lee Rademacher's life."I was well into a career hanging heating duct," said Lee Rademacher, "and I thought my life was pretty much over at 21 years old. It was either do something better or die a slow existential death."

Rademacher did change. He went to college, pursued a Ph.D. and is now helping students who also want a better future.

As an academic counselor and instructor at Purdue University Calumet, in Hammond, Indiana, Rademacher has worked with incoming freshmen for over eight years. Much of his work has centered on teaching a freshman orientation course that helps improve the success of new students. While this course includes topics such as time management and goal setting, Rademacher has created a course that also focuses on the exploration of values as they relate to learning.

His work with students in this course has recently resulted in the publication of a book on learning titled, "Learning to Learn: A Philosophical Guide to Learning" (IUniverse, 2004).

"I want learners to explore their value for learning,"says Rademacher, " I want them to realize that learning on all levels can change who they are for the good."

"Many people undertake learning for a better job or more money," states Rademacher, "But there is an existential and social good that can come from it as well. I think all learners need to consider these issues."

As a teacher and advisor, Rademacher has attempted to help his students become independent learners, persons who can solve problems, think critically, and become personally fulfilled.

"Becoming an expert learner doesn't necessarily mean you know everything," he claims, "but that you can navigate yourself through life with a minimal amount of problems, and that you feel confident that you know what you're doing."

There are practical exercises in this book, which Rademacher admits are necessary for organizing one's learning environment. But he attempts to take the reader on an analytical journey by encouraging journaling and by including critical thinking questions to help focus the reader's thoughts.

"Self-Help should be more than providing advice by providing bulleted points", states Rademacher. "I don't want to be Suze Orman or Dr. Phil, they seem to have too many answers in my opinion." He emphasizes that a cookie cutter approach to self-help assumes that learners all start in the same place.

"By allowing the reader to comprehend where he or she is as an existent - as a learner" he says, "they can develop strategies and ways of thinking about learning that apply to the core of their own individual being. Therefore, I try to stay away from anything seems to pontificate."

Additionally, "Learning to Learn" also focuses on cooperative rather than competetive learning, and he emphasizes communication and connecting with others as means of learning.

Says Rademacher, "It is a myth that we learn alone. Learners need to figure out how to mine knowledge and information by working and thinking with other people."

"Learning to Learn" uses philosophy, but it is easily accessible to readers. Its positive approach draws the reader into a self-analysis as a means to transform, to offer hope that a person can become a more fulfilled human being. The book also includes several values explorations, a goal-setting organizer, and a time management chart. It is appropriate for students and adult learners.

BIO:
Lee Rademacher earned a Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1999. He was a reader-columnist for the Post-Tribune in Merrillville, Indiana and has written for Lake Magazine. He also co-edits "Retention Success" a journal published by Noel Levitz. He has a previously published book from Edwin Mellen Press titled, "Structualism and Humanism in the Formation of the Political Self: The Political Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser."

He lives in Crown Point Indiana with his wife, Lisa Goodnight, who is an associate professor of communication at Purdue University Calumet, and his daughter, Hannah, who is in second grade and doing rather well academically.

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