What Socrates Taught Us About Brain-Based Learning
Once upon a time, learning theory was limited to the imaginings of scholars. No one had any way to study what went on inside the brain during any kind of learning process. In the last twenty years, the advent of sophisticated imaging technology and massive computing power ushered in an explosion in rigorous scientific research on brain-based learning. Long before the onset of this scientific investigation of how the brain actually learns, people all over the world have been challenging the traditional approach to educating others – the teacher-tell model. “Teacher-tell” is an efficient means of transferring knowledge in the mind of the expert teacher into the minds of large numbers of novice students. University classrooms in every corner of the planet feature auditorium seating for students sometimes numbering in the hundreds. Students sit patiently in their seats while the teacher spews forth his or her knowledge in the expectation … Read More..
Asking Questions: Tools for Brain-Based Learning
Although much of what we are now discovering about how the brain learns is new, the idea of asking questions as a way to keep students’ attention is not. Indeed, some teachers have been asking questions of their students for decades, even in the hallowed lecture halls of the world’s great universities. So why is there such discontent with much of what we call “higher learning?” Why are so many students so bored and so uninvolved in their own classroom instruction? A question should elicit a response and thinking of the appropriate response should actively engage the mind of the students, so what so often goes wrong with this picture? Some teachers and industrial trainers are adamant in their belief that they make effective use of questioning in their educational settings. Anyone involved in teaching of any kind needs to ask themselves the following questions: Why are you asking the … Read More..
Linking, Learning and Leading
Born to be a leader – this has been a common description for successful leaders. But does it always have to be that way? Do all leaders have innate leadership skills? Or can learning be a possible avenue for success in leadership? The truth is, leadership does not necessarily come from genes. Instead it is possible to learn leadership. All of us have the potential of becoming a great leader in the same way that we possess the capability of singing and running. Some people could be better in certain areas but everyone gets that chance to learn, to be trained and to practice becoming a leader. Each one of us can become a leader in our own simple yet unique way and learning is a big part of it. What is Leadership? Leadership is in fact a learning process. It involves not just one person but a team of … Read More..
Hashtagging the Brain: Continuing the New Neurological Narrative
How do we describe such a complex thing as the brain? As it is, the primary mechanism for this banks on our capacity to create a cohesive narrative – a metaphor, if you will – of what will make sense for us. In turn, metaphor is a function of whatever it is that it is the ubiquitous norm. Different times would require different metaphors, and in this day and age, it is expected that the metaphors we use will fit our time. A recent Physorg.com article serves to reiterate this idea. At a lecture for the Cambridge Science Festival, Professor Ed Bullmore, a professor of neuroscience, showed the audience a latest iteration of brain metaphor, that is, that the brain can be viewed as a series of networked nodes to, of all things, Twitter accounts. Since Twitter began in 2006, the popular narrative is that it has allowed people a … Read More..
Socratic Questions – Guides for Going Beyond Knowledge and Understanding
Educators in all settings are becoming more and more aware of recent research on brain-based learning. This research seems to confirm what some have believed for decades – active involvement produces better learning than passive attendance. Questioning has long been a way to involve learners but upon examination, it would appear the vast majority of the kinds of questions teachers and instructors ask are limited to the lower-level intellectual processes of recall and comprehension. If students could remember a concept and then restate what it means in their own words, they had learned. However, we now know the importance of including higher-level questions in our instruction. Unfortunately, there is often a gap between knowing we need to do something and knowing how to do it. Yes, you know you need to ask different questions, but how do you know you are asking the right questions? The kinds of questions needed … Read More..
