Transcript Slide 1

LEARNING AND
THE BRAIN
Teaching that Works:
Issues in Vocational & Technical Education Instruction
Central Carolina Community College
November 17, 2005
Primary Sources
•Caine, Caine, McClintic and Klimek (2004)
•Leamnson (1999)
•Zull (2002)
THE BRAIN’S ABILITY TO VISUALIZE IS ARGUABLY THE
MOST SIGNIFICANT ASPECT OF COGNITION. WHEN WE
WANT PEOPLE TO LEARN, WE WANT THEM TO “GET THE
PICTURE.”
James Zull (2002). The Art of Changing
the Brain, P. 138.
“Comprehension often requires us to make
images out of language. This is possibly the
ultimate in integration by the human brain.”
Zull, P. 171
Draw a picture
of your
typical
student(s).
Then…add some
descriptive
language.
POWERFUL LEARNING
1. Use note cards
2. Reflect about a powerful learning experience
3. On the card: Briefly describe the experience. What did you do
that was powerful? Others do? Leader or teacher do?
4. What was the ESSENCE of the experience?
5. In groups at your tables: Consolidate the qualities and
characteristics of your experiences onto the large sheet of paper.
6. Put the sheet on the wall.
• Strategy: Museum Walk
What do you notice?
Powerful Learning
•What you learn…
•How you learn…
•Where you learn…
NATURAL LEARNING
What...
What are powerful learning
experiences for your
students?
•Personally meaningful
•Challenging (and they accept the challenge)
•Appropriate for developmental level
How…
PROCESSING…
•In their own way, with choices and in control
•Use what they already know…construct
•Social interaction
•Get helpful feedback
•Acquire and use strategies
Where…
•Positive emotional climate
•Environment supports the intended learning
Brandt, R. (1998). Powerful Learning.
BASED UPON OUR DIALOGUE ABOUT
POWERFUL LEARNING:
•WHAT DO YOU WISH FOR YOUR
STUDENTS? (In your discipline/area)
•WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL STUDENT LOOK
LIKE? SOUND LIKE?
PROCESSING…
DIFFERENTIATION…
•How well prepared are
students to
learn the content in your class?
•What are their interests?
•What are their learning
profiles?
•What is their typical
physical/emotional state
when learning? How do they
feel about themselves and their
work?
What do we know
about how the brain
learns and processes
information?
Strategies:
•Note Cards
•Think/Pair/Share
Listen for key ideas and words….
VIDEO: DISCOVERY CHANNEL
The Brain/Our Universe Within
Evolution and Perception
1997, Discovery Communication, Inc.
PROCESSING…
At your tables: What did you already know?
What did you learn? What surprised you?
THINKING MEANS CONNECTING THINGS,
AND
STOPS IF THEY CANNOT BE CONNECTED.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
•So what?
Four Powerful
Questions
Adam Robinson (1993) What Smart Students Know.
•Says who?
•What if…?
•What does this remind me of?
The brain
searches
for
connections.
What is brain-based
learning?
•Expanded notion of what learning is that has been
reframed by neuroscience research.
•Maximizes everything that is natural about learning.
•Involves acknowledging the brain’s rules for
meaningful learning and organizing teaching with
those rules in mind.
Caine & Caine, 2004
Zull, J. (2002). The Art of Changing the Brain
•Kolb: The Learning Cycle
•Ideas for learning from the structure of the brain
Teaching/Learning Academy: Valencia Community College
Can’t Separate
Emotion and
Cognition
Emotion and
Thought
Shape Each
Other —
Cannot be
Separated
Teaching/Learning Academy
Valencia Community College
Creative Sources
THE 12 PRINCIPLES OF
BRAIN/MIND LEARNING
Geoffrey and Renate Nummela-Caine
The principles provide a framework for “…selecting the
methodologies that will maximize learning and make
teaching more effective and fulfilling.”
Caine & Caine
Three Interactive Teaching Elements
Relaxed Alertness
Active Processing
Orchestrated
Immersion
Relaxed Alertness
(Emotional Climate)
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The learner is experiencing low threat and high
challenge
The learner is both relaxed and emotionally engaged
Is a psychopysiological state…can be temporary
Optimal climate and state of mind for learner and
teacher
Once the physical patterns have been set by previous
experiences, only new experiences can alter them.
Principles #2, 3 ,5, & 11
Orchestrated
Immersion
in Complex Experience
(Instruction)
 Key…to
have the learners
immersed in rich and complex
environments as a way of life…
Principles #1, 4, 6, & 10
Creative Sources
ACTIVE PROCESSING
(Consolidation)
•Digesting…
•Thinking about…
•Reflecting on…
•Making sense of experience…
And consolidating learning.
Principles #7, 8, 9 & 12.
What is Knowledge?
•Brain imaging technology allows us to see
knowledge
•Connections we make through our own experience
•Experiences mapped in unique ways
•Complicated connections
•Networks unique to each learner and teacher
Zull, James. League for Innovations Conference. March, 2005
From: Teaching/Learning Academy, Valencia Community College
Relaxed-Alert State * Immersion in Complex Experience *
Active Processing
Best Practices:
•Student-Centered
•Experiential
•Holistic
•Authentic
•Expressive
•Reflective
•Social
•Collaborative
•Democratic
•Cognitive
•Developmental
•Constructivist
•Challenging
James Zull:
•Sensory/Experience
•Integration
•Developing
Abstraction/Exec Functions
•Active Testing of
Abstractions/Application
www.2perspectives.org
Learning Capacities
Engage:
•Social Interactions
•The physiology
Executive Functions
The ability to:
•reason
•assess risk
•make sense of ideas and behavior
•moderate their emotions
•make a plan and develop a timeline
•know when to ask for help and know how to
use resources
•adapt their goals based upon new info or
understandings along their journey
•think critically and creatively
•reflect and be self-critical
•understand their own approaches to learning
•take other people’s points of view
•anticipate potential problems and
opportunities that effect the outcome
of their goals
•access their working memory to lead their
thinking and next steps in planning
•Their search for
meaning
•Capacity to master
essential patterns
•Emotional connections
•Ability to perceive parts
and wholes
•Focus attention/learn
from peripheral content
•Conscious and
unconscious processing
•Capacity to learn from
memorizing isolated facts
and bio events
•Developmental steps
and shifts
•Reduce threat, enhance
self-efficacy
•Individual styles and
uniqueness
Leamnson…
Learning: Stabilizing, through repeated
use, certain appropriate and desirable
synapses in the brain. Building new
brain connections.
Leamnson, R. (1999). Thinking About Teaching
and Learning.
PROCESSING…
IDEAS
•Energizers: Get up from the chair
often.
•Honor diversity: Use both variety
and choice.
•Use peripherals.
•Set goals.
•Provide a topic template or model
(patterns).
•Use positive suggestion.
•Absence of threat is critical.
•Smile.
•Get global.
•Engage emotions.
•Build relationships.
Strategies/Skills
•WRITING & COMMUNICATION
•THE LECTURE
Fundamentals:
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Relaxed alert state
Experience
Reflection/Consolidation
Developing abstractions
Active testing of abstractions
A context rich in resources of all kinds
Modeling and guidance, coupled with examples
of expert work
Complexity that exposes students to both basic
and sophisticated performance
Creative Sources
It’s
a
powerful
experience!