The gist of knowing.....

How do you know when you know something?

I have been wondering about this for a while. I notice, in myself and others, this tendency when we read or hear about something which we know a bit about, to then claim to be knowledgeable about it. However, from so many years as a person on this planet, and as a teacher of both children and adults, I believe that knowledge is built in layers and layers of learning through reading, viewing, listening, discovering, experiencing, experimenting, reflecting, doing, reconstructing misconceptions and understandings, etc. So I am often frustrated with myself, and others, when we claim knowledge, proudly and definitively, about things with which we often have limited experiences. And I wonder: is there a relationship between thinking we "know"something and how open and willing we are to learning more about it? What makes us decide we want to widen or deepen our knowledge of something?

For instance, recently someone was talking about the new exercise/dance class rage called Zumba. I was thrilled that I already knew about it from my daughter and her friends ( i.e. had heard of it). Now, I have never tried it, not even seen it practiced, but in the group I was with, I was the only other one that had even heard of it, so that put my knowledge of it far beyond the others in the group. I acted like I was "in the know." I was thinking I "knew" about Zumba because I had heard of it and knew the gist of what it is.

I wonder about all the concepts about which I probably convince myself that I know when in reality I just have the gist of. And does that tendency get in the way of my being open and willing to deepening my learning about some of those things?

How do we help ourselves, our teachers, and students discern the difference between having the "gist" of something and really "knowing" it? And then, how do we discern when it matters?

How do we know when we really don't know what we think we know?