When it comes to our mental models of how instruction and learning take place, however, most of us have mental models which we have inherited or absorbed. Often we do not know where they came from or how they were formed and we rarely scrutinize, test and update them with any degree of rigor. The problem is that our actions with respect to instruction are heavily influenced by these faulty, implicit mental models of learning. Lifelong learning is the process of continually acquiring new data and information and using it to upgrade, test and refine our mental models. This testing is done by asking objectively if the new information is completely consistent with our current model.
Mental models are highly idiosyncratic.
Two people can focus on the same area but have widely varying models of how things work in that area. Mental models are often left unarticulated, leading to lack of clarity. Finally, mental models drive our behaviors and when the models are unarticulated, we may have difficulty in explaining our behavior. There are too many things for one person to learn, so we focus on a subset of specialty areas related to our profession or personal interests. On occasion, the process becomes faulty when we substitute experience which hasn't been examined relative to models.