A Postscript to Powerful Learning

2. A Postscript to Powerful Learning

3. Lynn Hoffman: “More often than not I have observed students . . . only peripherally engaged in the learning process .”

4. “Not meaningful or memorable” “Academics are described as boring, routine, and necessary . . . for college.”

5. “Students value their yearbook classes -- because they produce a real product, they expend extensive out-of-class time and effort that is clearly necessary and expected, and they determine their own … work activities.”

6. Ted Sizer: “Those ‘reforms were like ordering the Model T to drive 60 miles per hour. . . People who made those policies have not understood the necessity of fundamentally reshaping the way schools are run.”

7. New Country School • No required curriculum • Individual projects • No classes • Work stations

8. Conditions for Powerful Learning • What they learn • How they learn • The setting in which they learn

9. What they learn • is personally meaningful; they feel a need to learn it. • is challenging and they accept the challenge. • is appropriate for their developmental level.

10. How they learn • They can learn in their own way and have some degree of choice and control. • They use what they already know as they construct new knowledge.

11. How they learn • They have opportunities for social interaction. • They get helpful feedback. • They acquire and use strategies.

12. The setting in which they learn • They experience a positive emotional climate. • Their environment supports the intended learning.

13. What do you think? Accurate? Scientific? Useful?

14. Spelling & handwriting help “If you have to switch your attention to figuring out how to spell a word, that disrupts your planning process.” – Steve Graham, Maryland

15. “Active engagement” “Brain reorganization takes place only when the animal pays attention to the sensory input and to the task.” -- Bruer

16. Meaningful “Only those aspects of experience that are targets of elaborative encoding processes” are likely to be remembered. -- Schachter

17. Emotions “Our emotional system drives our attentional system, which drives learning and memory and everything else.” -- Sylwester

18. Emotions “. . . help us decide what to remember and what to forget.” -- Pert

19. Emotions “large, distributed neural ensembles . . . encode both external stimuli and the animal’s responses to them.” -- Brothers

20. So -- Emotions • are an integral part of learning. • are mostly unconscious, so environment is important. But • negative as well as positive.

21. The setting (People learn well when . . .) • They experience unusually strong emotions.

22. Personally meaningful • “Students are motivated to . . . learn complex subjects . . . they find interesting. Opportunities to create products and benefits for others are particularly motivating.” -- Bransford

23. What they already know “People construct new knowledge and understanding based on what they already know and believe.” -- How People Learn

24. What they already “know” “Pay attention to incomplete understandings, false beliefs, and naïve renditions” -- How People Learn

25. “A common misconception “. . . is that teachers should never tell students anything directly.” -- How People Learn

26. Feedback “. . . has long been identified as important . . . but it should not be regarded as a unidimensional concept.” -- How People Learn

27. “Frequent feedback “is critical: students need to monitor their learning and actively evaluate their strategies and their current levels of understanding.” – How People Learn, Bransford

28. “Metacognitive processes and self-regulatory capabilities” “such strategies as predicting outcomes, planning ahead, apportioning one’s time” --How People Learn, Bransford

29. Circumstances differ, so “Place less reliance on traditional educational research.” -- Hirsch

30. Instead: “Flexible application of deep general principles.”

31. Meaningful “The familiar distinction between ‘rote learning’ and ‘meaningful learning’ is well grounded – if understood liberally.” -- Hirsch

32. Prior knowledge “a profound mistake . . . to suppose that skillful thinking can be mastered independently of . . . knowledge.” -- Hirsch

33. Attention determines learning “. . . concentrating an immense wealth of individual elements into a single symbol or name that can be attended to all at once.” -- Hirsch

34. Rehearsal necessary “How long something will be remembered is typically determined by how often it has been attended to.” -- Hirsch

35. Automaticity “Rehearsal . . . serves to make certain operations non-conscious and automatic.” -- Hirsch

36. Rehearsal (practice) You can get a good deal from rehearsal If it just has the proper dispersal. You would just be an ass To do it en masse: Your remembering would turn out much worsal. -- Neisser (Hirsch)

37. Implicit instruction of beginners less effective “Should students be immersed right away in complex situations that simulate real life? . . . Answer complex: both implicit and explicit.” -- Hirsch

38. Vocabulary development “Implicit is superior . . . since word acquisition occurs over a very long period . . . (but) explicitly learning a few foundational words is much faster.” -- Hirsch

39. Powerful Learning • fairly accurate but • not complete. • Continuing challenge is how make school learning more like natural learning.

40. Research on learning “. . . that has implications for the design of formal instructional environments.” – How People Learn

41. Now what do you think? What do we know about learning, and How can we use it?

42. Knowledge about learning Applies to: • My own learning • Your learning • Other educators • Policy makers and the public.

43. Can “the new scienceof learning” help our whole society understand and support powerful learning?

44. Circumstances differ, so: “Flexible application of deep general principles.”