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A Great Time to be a Trainer |
I've been reviewing articles about Brain-Based Learning. All the rage now of course and as trainers, it is simply exciting to think that we will be discovering more and more about the way we learn. Some of the articles however suggested that we might be going over-board with all this right brain, left brain functionality, and modifying classroom learning to take advantage of science that at times appears more inferential than exacting. One article, "Brain Research and Education: Fad or Foundation?" by Pat Wolfe, Ed.D., cited several examples of scientific studies in which the media, and trainers/educator types have seemed to take the discovery and run rather than prudently scrutinizing the findings. "For example", Wolfe writes, "a report in a Minneapolis newspaper reported that Fran Rauscher and Gordon Shaw at the University of California, Irvine found that 17 of 19 school children who received music lessons for 8 months increased their IQs by an average of 46 percent." The actual research done by Rauscher and Shaw found that a specific type of music lesson increased spatial temporal reasoning in the students, not IQ scores.
Another article reported that Paul Gold, a researcher at the University of Virginia, had found evidence that glucose, a sugar, improves alertness and memory. The actual research on which this report was based was conducted with elderly people who drank lemonade sweetened either with glucose or with saccharin. It is true that the subjects whose lemonade was sweetened with glucose recalled almost twice as much from a narrative prose passage as their counterparts who drank the saccharin-sweetened drink.
What was not reported, however, was that these findings did not prove true for college students and that no research has been conducted with K-12 students. Wolfe goes on to stress that we'd better understand the data before bringing it into the classroom and tells us that based on the Gold articles teachers began feeding students peppermint candies claiming "Research has shown that candy improves memory". Wait 'til the Hershey people find out!
Wolfe is right of course, we can't whimsically transform and transfer scientific findings through assumption. "If this is true then this MUST be true also. I gotta try it". A misguided approach to say the least.
But what is gratifying is that over time (the past decade) we have been able to settle upon accepted truths in regard to how we learn, and these are legitimately working their way towards improved learning and education. This is why I believe it is an exciting time to be involved as a trainer or a teacher. Wolfe goes on to talk about and explain these brain based truths. To begin we know that our brains are re-shaped, their structure and physiology actually reorganized, by our experiences. Of course we learn by reading, hearing and visualizing, but all these are actually trumped by concrete experience. It is the difference between reading about an experiment in "Science Digest" and actually performing the experiment yourself. The learning difference can be dramatic. Contrast this with a stuffy lecture hall. Some guy steps up to the lectern, he's speaking or maybe even reading to a massive class (some of whom are inconspicuously dozing). "I know all this stuff" he says. "I'm telling you all this stuff so that you might know it also. Listen, learn and be amazed. Don't ask questions, don't inject your own thoughts. In fact the less you're involved, the faster I can deliver my message, and consequently, the more you'll be able to learn". It seems funny when you look at it but that indeed was, and in some cases still is, the established approach to education.
Memory is not housed in one location of our brains. It is actually "deconstructed and distributed" says Wolfe throughout the cortex. To remember we need to reconstruct the information scattered throughout the brain and this lends support to using multi-sensory training modalities. If information is stored and represented in many different ways within our brain, we have a better chance of reconstructing the knowledge. Indeed if our information connections are varied (visual, hearing, experiences etc.), and widely distributed, we will have an ability to better conceptualize and creatively think.
Wolfe tells us that memory is not static but dynamic, changing with different experiences, and decaying over time. But this natural decay can be strengthened through diverse learning strategies like visualizing, writing, symbolizing, drawing, singing, semantic mapping, simulating and devising mnemonics strategies that can be used to reinforce and increase the likelihood of recall.
There are two types of memory, Declarative, and Procedural. When we think of memory, we typically think of Declarative Memory, remembering our phone number, the names of our Presidents, or how to solve for the area of an Isosceles triangle. An example of Procedural Memory might be "riding a bicycle". This type of memory relies on rote rehearsal, but Declarative Memory is more reliant on elaborate rehearsal strategies. Again, having a number of different experiences to pull from strengthens Declarative Memory. Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter writes, "For better or for worse, our recollections are largely at the mercy of our elaborations; only those aspects of experience that are targets of elaborative encoding processes have a high likelihood of being remembered subsequently."
Lastly Wolfe tells us that "positive emotional experiences are better remembered. Some of the most important findings from neuroscience have elucidated the role of emotion in learning and memory".
When we think about many of these above mentioned learning strategies they seem logical. Using multi-sensory teaching techniques and engrossing trainees in experiential learning seems, well, logical. Then why, one might ask, do they represent a new approach, a new way to learn? Perhaps, as the facts are revealed, we can no longer sit still while long-winded lecturers with white-knuckled determination refuse to relinquish their lecterns. Honestly it is a great time to be a trainer. |
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