Live 2013 at UFV TEP

Best Practices in Teaching and Learning 

Vs.

The Student Brain

Part 1 – The Basics 

The Brain and Learning – the basics of physiological psychology

One questions that has puzzled scientists for decades is exactly what is a memory and how is it stored in the brain.

The first experiments to give a clue were done by James McConnell and his students who experimented on planarians (i.e., flatworms). As you can imagine, these also had a simple nervous system with few neurons. Their approach was to train planarians to find food in a T Maze and then to feed them to untrained planarians.

Their principal discovery was that the naïve planarians were no longer naïve after their meal. They, or at least their memory, appeared to have benefited from eating the trained animals.

The next experiments

Later experiments by George Unger showed that proteins had a role in a similar memory transfer in rats. As it turned out, these proteins (specific amino acid sequences) could be artificially synthesized and worked just as well as the actual proteins from trained rats.

Their data indicated that both RNA and protein play a role in memory storage, particularly in the transformation from short- to long-term memory.

How Memory Works

Learning Model

According to this model, short-term memory is represented by a transient neuroelectrical code that is vulnerable to interference. Long-term memory is represented by a durable, neurochemical code which is thought to be based on synaptic growth and chemical alteration, and which is resistant to interference.

The limbic system (hippocampus and amygdala), also responsible for emotions, plays an important role in consolidating a memory from short term to long term.

Recall of a memory involves the stimulation of the appropriate neural pathway. Data suggests that although information may be forgotten, it is still in the nervous system and is capable of being retrieved by either electrical current or certain chemicals (like acetylcholine). Both are thought to reactivate the memory by restoring synaptic sensitivity.

Factors that Determine Your Personal Teaching Style

Our personality, background, tastes, and attitudes;

Our own experiences as a student in school; and

What we learn as a student of teaching.

General Principles of Child Development

People develop at different rates.

Development is relatively orderly.

Development takes place gradually.

The Problem

Each brain is unique. There are sexual differences, size differences, connection differences and experience differences. These all influence the way the brain takes in information, processes it and stores it in what we call learning.

“There is no such thing as “the” human brain – no generic brain. What we know and how we know it differs significantly from person to person. There are as many ways to learn as there are learners. And this is what makes the teacher’s task impossible.”

Constructivism

“The learner constructs knowledge and understanding through interacting with meaningful experiences.”

Stages or Steps in Constructivist Learning

Orientation – get the students’ attention

Elicitation – find out what they already know

Restructuring – get into the lesson

Application – find out if the students can apply the new knowledge in related situations

Review – students reflect on new learning and compare it to previous understanding

The Brain and Constructivism

Orientation – Get the students attention

Emotions are critical to learning – they drive our attention, health, learning, meaning and memory.

Impact of threat or high stress can alter and impair learning and even kill brain cells.

There is a need to get the student brain engaged before learning can take place.

How can you ensure that the student brain is engaged in your own classroom?

The Brain and Constructivism

Elicitation – Find out what the students already know.

The brain is meaning-driven – meaning is more important to the brain than information.

Information is stored and retrieved through multiple memory and neural pathways.

Context may be more important than content.

How can your teaching strategies ensure that the student brain sees the connections between today’s lesson with yesterday’s and tomorrow’s?

The Brain and Constructivism

Restructuring – get into the lesson

All learning is mind-body – movement, foods, attention cycles, drugs and chemicals all have powerful modulating effects on learning.

The brain develops better in concert with other brains – intelligence is valued in the context of the society in which we live.

Enrichment – the brain can grow new connections at any age. Complex, challenging experiences with feedback are best.

The Brain and Constructivism

Application – find out if the students can apply the new knowledge in related situations

Patterns and programs drive our understanding – intelligence is the ability to elicit and to construct useful patterns.

The Brain and Constructivism

Review – reflect on new learning and compare it to previous understanding

The brain is a complex and adaptive system – effective change involves the entire complex system

Yogi Berra on Teaching

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.

You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.

Best Methods in Teaching and Learning

Reading as thinking

Representing to learn

Small group activities

Classroom workshop

Authentic experience

Reflective assessment

Integrative units

Common Features of “Best Practices”

Choice

Responsibility

Expression

Community

Diversity

Technology

Reading as thinking

Reading is thinking.

Initially, it was thought that the reader receives the “correct meaning” of the author.

Reading is Constructive. Now many think that proficient readers are co-creators of meaning and text may have more than one intended meaning or interpretation.

Reading should be interactive.

Reading is Strategic. Some student need to learn how to read and recognize different types of reading.

Representing to learn

Representing our world seems to help us engage and enjoy life more deeply.

Writing down words is not the only way for students to seek, engage, construct, probe and store knowledge and share ideas.

Other representational strategies, such as drawing, mapping, drama, dance and song, turn out to be equally powerful cognitive levers. They can be used alone or with words.

Small group activities

Organizes classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences.

Tasks are completed collectively as students share information, ideas and skills.

Students can teach each other.

Emphasis is cooperation not competition.

Brain Study

A 17 year old had to go to the hospital for some medical tests – PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography). They gave him some radioactive glucose and then ask him to do different things. The parts of the brain that are active, metabolize the glucose and the radioactivity lights up to show which parts are active.

His tests lasted about one hour, but the radioactivity lasts for about 4 hours. The doctors arranged to do some educational research after his medical tests were done.

Student Reading a Textbook

Student Listening to a Teacher

Student Talking about Himself

Student Teaching another Student

Classroom workshop

The classroom is not merely a location where information is transmitted, but can be working laboratories where genuine knowledge is created, real products are made and authentic inquiry is pursued.

Students and teachers together reinvent whatever field of knowledge they are engaged in.

Authentic experience

Think of the best unit or lesson you’ve ever taught. What are the key elements that made it effective? Did it involve a real life experience?

Authentic experience is not actually a method. It is more of a structure.

It recognizes that the best teaching always makes kids experiences tangible, real or genuine.

Can take many forms from a letter to an author, a school wide project, investigating local sources of pollution or relating a lesson to life outside school.

Reflective assessment

“Assess what you value and value what you assess.”

Helps students become self-monitoring and self-regulating individuals who take charge of their own learning.

Mostly formative – assessment is used to help students learn better and teachers teach more effectively.

Can take many forms, but portfolios, conferences, anecdotal records, checklists, performance rubrics, and classroom tests are the most common.

Integrative units

The move is from single subject teaching to more complex, cross-disciplinary investigations that involve skills and knowledge from all subject areas.

Integration can be accomplished by inserting appropriate knowledge from one curriculum area into the framework of another or by correlating and drawing connections between different subject areas.

Integration helps students understand the complexities of the world in which they live, see the relations between the different subjects they are taught, and transform fragmented bits of information into a seamless web of knowledge.

One Final Thought

“In education, look for trouble. If you can’t find any, make some.”