Week 1 - Learners, Learning Theory and eLearning

Everything about learning has been a big focus in my household for some time now. My husband comes from a family of teachers so there has always been lots of 'school talk' at family gatherings. Also, my husband and I have studied either separately or for one memorable year - together at the same time - since we were married. Then as a parent, per the well know book title "You are your child's first teacher", I have developed a strong motivation and interest to give our children, both individually (my sons) and collectively (our community of tomorrow's leaders), a strong educational foundation. This interest in learning has continued to grow, as we have faced some learning challenges with both of our sons. The eldest has struggled considerably with learning to read and our youngest has autism. Thus, this week's topic immediately piqued my interest and resonated with the previous knowledge I gathered through considerable research, conducted a few years ago when our family was abruptly introduced to the world of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).

The Edutopia webinar, 'How the brain learns best: strategies to make learning stick' with Dr Judy Willis (neuroscientist and and teacher) talks about the neuroscience of learning and gives an overview of how information is received by our brains, how information is filtered by our brain and where it goes, how to encourage productive responses from students to this information and to increase students' ability to learn and retain new information and skills.

The first topic discussed how our brain receives all information (visual, hearing, feeling, basically all sensory stimulus and input) through our Reticular Activating System, which gives preference to things that are new, different, or changed and particularly dangerous or a threat. I loved the analogy that children are like foxes! Did anyone else think, ''They sure are;....cunning, quick, tricky!"?. The neural images and brain physiology immediately had me thinking of my son. Autism is a neurological condition and before it was properly understood, often misdiagnosed as brain damage. I know what sensory sensitivity looks like and have seen my son's flight, fight, freeze responses to sensory input that his brain receives. I wondered while listening, does his RAS misfunction, does it not filter properly or is it just not filtering anything and all sensory input causes a system overload? I know, of course, that it is more complex than that. For example, in the demonstration of how our RAS filters what is relevant to help our brain work more efficiently, I looked at the pyramid shown with the words 'a bird in the the bush' and saw only one 'the'. It seems my RAS works just fine! Evidently, so do my husband's and eldest son's, who both also saw one 'the'. However, it was interesting that my ASD son saw two 'the' words. Admittedly, this was not really surprising to me, who it familiar with his incredible visual (almost photographic) memory and attention to detail.

Going back to children are like foxes, it made a lot of sense that as teachers we need to ensure children are not in survival mode, but relaxed and comfortable enough to enable their brains to properly receive and process new information. I think to a degree we all instinctively establish things like our morning routines where sameness, stability and familiarity establishes a calm and receptive neural condition at the outset of our day. This really reinforced for me, why my son is obsessive about routines, likes to watch the same movie 100 times or can become upset when new things are introduced without proper warning. The big take away points for me here, were that we need to reduce stress first for our students to learn and that the RAS lets information through that is interesting and stimulating.

Great, so we have managed to get non-threatening, stimulating information through to our students, but wait, there's another filter! The Amygdala is an emotional filter and conductor that passes information on. If a person is stressed, anxious, frustrated, concerned  or unhappy then information is passed to our reactive, unconscious or non-thinking section of the brain. So, this is pretty relevant for  us as secondary teachers. We have to be mindful and aware that students walking into our classroom may bring problems from home, previous classes or the playground with them. Also, that there are aspects of our teaching or classroom activities and interactions that will cause students negative emotional responses or stress during class. Those mentioned in the video included fear of being wrong, embarrassment to read aloud or present oral assessment, anxiety over tests, frustration with difficult material or boredom. The good news was that there are strategies we can use to alleviate these issues, such as relaxation time, pauses for de-stressing or use of effective feedback.

However, if information is interesting and relevant and the student is happy, then information is filtered through the Amygdala to the Prefrontal Cortex (reflective, thinking) and memory regions of the brain. The study that used a frowny face and a happy face to demonstrate which groups of students retained knowledge better, was a poignant demonstrator.

 

 

Source: Google images

Classroom strategies that Dr Judy encouraged, included personalisation, multisensory activities and advertising. My interpretation was that the above Peanuts comic would be an example of the use of multisensory activities to stimulate interest. Knowing that my students will learn better when interested and properly stimulated, prompted me to start a folder on my laptop where I can begin collecting ideas relevant to my teaching areas, in addition to the ones Dr Judy mentions in this video. I've also made a note in my Prac Folder about 'Kid Watching' as a way of not only getting to know the students, but also to actively prepare lessons and base activities based on things that will appeal to the actual students in my classroom and their interests, sports, family and pets. I feel this is especially important for me as there seems to be a common perception that my areas of Maths and Business/Accounting are boring, dull, dry and not stimulating. I should point out - I don't agree!

The article 'Brain imagery probes the idea of diverse intelligences' by Grace Rubenstein was fascinating. I think it relates very well to Dr Judy's discussion about neuroplasticity in the Edutopia webinar. The evidence that the physiological composition of each individual person's brain is reflected in their learning strengths and weaknesses, is just a physical manifestation of what good teachers already knew - every child is different, learns differently and is good at different things. This article discusses the potential for teachers to improve children's ability through practicing certain skills and how this can 'morph' the brain. Dr Judy described neuroplasticity as the ability of the brain to grown more synapses and neural networks in areas of the brain that are used frequently, until the changes in the brain become permanent. For many years I have learned and played piano, so I wished I had a dollar for every time I heard the phrase, 'practice makes perfect' while growing up. I can now appreciate and get some humorous satisfaction from knowing that all those hours and hours of piano practice have actually helped my brain grow bigger and better ;).

I do have a passion for helping both my boys learn; and particularly for my ASD little boy to function in a socially acceptable way and become a positively contributing member of our society. So I can empathize with the parents of my future students that they want the same thing for their children. It has given me so much delight to see how getting through to my son in a way that allows his learning processes to occur, develop and improve has lead to him being able to excel in a number of areas. Despite having a significant speech delay, he can read several year levels above his age and has an incredible ability to hear, read and play music. Helping them learn has been and continues to be hard, hard work at times, but the rewards are lasting and they lead to further improvement. I think this sentiment will apply with perfect congruence to the teaching profession.