Hair Color Education That Fills In the Gaps | Colors With Chemistry

Why Content Isn’t the Same as Learning

Do you see all the phases we go through to learn something?

Those phases look separate, but they’re actually all linked together.

It’s part of what’s so wild about learning. It isn’t about one class, one exposure to a concept, one post, one book, or one anything really.

The phases of learning separate things like information (content), remembering and retrieving info, applying it, and course correcting because they're interconnected, but they aren't the same thing.

Our industry doesn’t always give people time or room to move through all those phases.

A lot of hair education gives people beginning concepts, then we quickly get sent straight out into dealing with real-world complexity behind the chair and it’s kind of expected that you’ll do what you need to do to piece the rest of your education together by yourself.

So what do we do? We find something, anything we can that’ll help us because we have bills, loans, limited time, and we’ve got to build up a clientele to come sit in our chair.

So we go to what we think will help...social media posts (content). Tutorials (content)...Then more content and more and more and more. Posts, reels, books, podcasts, charts...anything we can find.

And all of that def matters.

WHAT CONTENT DOES DO

Content can introduce us to ideas, things we may not have known existed. Ways of thinking we haven't learned yet, language and patterns to see. It can make something feel like it clicks.

But content still isn’t the same thing as learning.

That’s where a lot of people get it mixed up.

WHY SOMETHING CLICKING STILL ISN’T THE SAME AS LEARNING

You can get really familiar with a concept by seeing it over and over.
You can hear the same terms, recognize the same examples,
then start feeling like you “know” it.

But being familiar with something isn’t the same thing as being able to pull up that content later when you're in a real-world situation, work with it, apply it, and use it without someone else leading you through it.

Seeing something, hearing something, or even understanding what someone said can feel like learning, but that still doesn’t mean you can do it on your own yet.

We’ve had stylists sit in a class and get the most detailed content and do NOTHING with it.

And we’ve had stylists take that same exact content, go through the after class guided support we provide, jump into the community to get feedback on their thinking, and keep working with it until it became usable and freeing for them.

Same exact content, same exact opportunities, different learning outcomes.

But there IS a way to get to the full on learning. It takes the right concepts, the right kind of practice, and feedback that helps you course-correct as you go so what you’re taking in can actually become usable to you.

WHAT LEARNING ACTUALLY IS

This is where the science of how people learn helps a lot, because it makes the difference really clear.

Information is available content.
Learning is being able to retrieve it, use it independently, and hold onto it over time.

There’s even a step in between all that...they call it "learned performance".

It’s when someone can do it, but only when they’ve got the right prompts, or there’s someone walking them through it.

If you want long lasting learning that builds your independence and gets stronger over time, you have to combine the concepts you take in with practice and feedback.

WHERE EXPERIENCE FITS INTO ALL THIS

So where does experience, or your years in, fall into all this?

Experience and practice don’t create full on learning by themselves. They build familiarity, pattern recognition, and repetition, but they still can’t fill in content you were never taught...this is why someone’s years in don't equal their learning stage.

Experience can sharpen your eye and teach you through repetition.

But again, it can’t fill in missing pieces you never got. Only content, knowledge, theory does that.

If a stylist has years behind the chair, that doesn’t automatically mean they were given the deeper why, the full concept, or the framework that helps all the puzzle pieces start working together for them.

It's why you can be years in, doing beautiful hair, and STILL be missing part of the story.

WHY BOTH MATTER

So what’s the big takeaway?

Content gives you theory, knowledge, that experience never teaches you.

Experience can give you pattern recognition and the ability to use what you learned...something content can't do alone. 

See how they BOTH matter?

Neither one can do the whole job by themselves.

Now let’s talk about what type of practice is most helpful...the learning experts tell us that learning happens when the right content gets worked together with the right practice.

That means getting feedback on your practice will help you course-correct before you accidentally embed something in that’s not really useful.

That’s a lot of pieces working together in learning.

WHAT “HELPFUL” MEANS TO US

It’s also why we at CWC define being “helpful” a little differently.

Some might feel like helpful means giving you something that feels good in the moment...telling you what to use in a formula is one of those. We call them quick tips. A, giving a fish moment.

Knowing what it actually takes for someone to move forward in their learning, we feel helpful means helping someone actually learn in a way that stays with them and helps them become independent in their formulation thinking. A, teaching them how to fish moment.

One tends to keep you on the merry go round of social media content and formulation dependency.

The other gets you off it.