Welcome! What follows is being shared with the hope of helping advance insights into the topics of learning and teaching. Perhaps the most useful way to view this presentation is to keep in mind “that we can learn from each other’s experiences.” What will be shared here is based mostly on what I have learned from others and their research into the nature of learning and brain compatible information delivery systems. Why are we going to discuss the brain? Because it runs the show. The brain is the gateway to learning anything, and everything else we do! Lets start with two realities: 1. Why in schools, businesses, and sports, there are many more individuals who do not reach their potential than do!? 2. Why is information that is geared for helping someone is not as valuable as information that is good for helping someone to help themselves!? Some answers to these questions can be found in insights into brain compatible approaches to learning. When approaches to learning are not compatible with how our brain best decodes, encodes and remembers information they are less efficient than they could be. Two hypothesis: 1. Perhaps the most important responsibility when it comes to learning is that a parent, educator, employer, coach or trainer should make receivers of information feel smart. With this hypothesis in mind, how often do approaches to education make individuals feel insecure? 2. What do educators, parents, employers, and coaches hope the individuals they are sharing information with develop? 1. I suggest a healthy moral compass, and 2. Self-reliance skills, for real world ever changing environments. Because of my interest in learning all I could about subject matter content during the first half of my career as a teacher (a term I no longer use replaced with learnest), I was overlooking the value of gaining accurate insights into the nature of the learning process. I now recognize this was clearly an unfortunate omission. How one goes from not knowing is at the heart of learning and teaching. Trying to change poor grades or unwanted outcomes will pay less in long-term dividends than enhancing an individual learning potential. Performance potentials only improve when learning potential improves. A master of anything was first a master learner. Experimental evidence from several studies performed at numerous universities and research centers was ¬¬¬noted by University of Florida’s professor Michael Rees who said, “some fascinating and important information about the nature of learning is now available from modern science.” Insights into the nature of the learning process can provide both givers and receives of information with a toolbox for making progress they never knew existed. Play with the hypothesis that a teaching – fixing to get something right approach to learning is not only different from a learning developing approach, studies show it gives a lower return on the investment of the time and resources when it comes to long term learning Unfortunately, unwanted outcomes are often seen as failure and overlooked for how valuable they are as meaningful feedback for future reference. It is also unfortunate that many view making a change as fixing. Studies show that fixing is not a meaningful act of learning. Cognitive science has revealed that most learning happens unconsciously and is grounded in the indirect preparation of both, workable and unworkable past experiences. Play with this insight: The conscious mind takes in about 50 bits of information in the same amount of time that the unconscious mind is taking in thousands of bits. When it comes to long-term learning, the conscious mind has no past experiences and is therefore less valuable than the unconscious mind where past experiences are encoded. The prevailing wisdom points out that a teaching fixing to get something right approach to progress often has competing agendas. One that is trying to teach and one that is hoping individuals will learn. Studies show some long held traditional beliefs about approaches to teaching are slowing down the rate at which individuals could be learning. I have learned that many of traditional tools and approaches that I had been using for almost 20 years (and seemed like a good idea at the time) can create the kind of stress that fragments progress at a rate that would keep individuals motivated and engaged while learning. Meaningful learning happens in smart classrooms. Where the reality that Student’s Minds Are Really Talented is recognized. Meaningful learning happens in safe environment where a Student’s Always First Environment exists. copyright Michael Hebron, Learning Golf Inc. 2009, all rights reserved. |
