Exploring mindfulness and meditation for the elementary classroom

Jane Rollin

ET/IL

Routhier-Martin, K. , Roberts, S. K. & Blanch, N. (2017). Exploring mindfulness and meditation for the elementary classroom: Intersections across current multidisciplinary research. Childhood Education, 93(2), 168-175. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00094056.2017.1300496.

This is a review of psychology research that provides evidence that meditation and mindfulness work to balance the often negative effects of students' social-emotional environments, stress, anxiety, and even poverty.

“Overall, the study finds the advantages as corroborated across disciplines encourage use of mindfulness and meditation exercises or schoolwide programs to achieve improved student behavior and academic benefits.”

http://www.tandfonline.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/doi/full/10.1080/00094056.2017.1300496

What Teachers Need from Researchers

Mary Fobbs-Guillory

ET

Saul, Roger. (2016) Education and the mediated subject: What today’s teacher’s need most from researchers of youth and media. Journal of Children and Media, 10(2). Pp.156-163

Roger Saul shares that the majority of today’s educators are still operating with archaic understanding of what young people are capable of and how to engage them in school.  He argues that researchers need to provide educators with a better understanding of their students’ potential to make meaningful contributions to their education.  He also shares that teachers may not realize they are marginalizing their students by not allowing students the opportunity to explore their identity and express themselves as they learn in school.

Saul has offers a balanced perspective in his argument as he shares that teachers too are regulated and may not have the autonomy to change how they address students needs.  He shares that districts need to trust teachers more and allow them to do what research says is best for students.  This was interesting to read as an educator because I often felt that in district schools, teacher’s don’t have much of a voice and they have to do what they are told or else find a new school to work at.  It is encouraging that some people see the need to empower teachers who can in turn empower students to be more involved and engaged in their education.

Neuromyths and Why They Persist in the Classroom

Neuromyths and Why They Persist in the Classroom

Binh Tran

Buch, Prateek. "Neuromyths and Why They Persist in the Classroom." Sense About Science. N.p., 7 Jan. 2014. Web. 21 July 2016. <http://www.senseaboutscience.org/blog.php/77/neuromyths-and-why-they-persist-in-the-classroom>.

Summary

The article discusses the many popular myths regarding neurology and how the relate to education. Popular conceptions such as Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory and also the left-right brain paradigm are rooted not in verifiable empirical evidence, but rather in spurious pseudoscience. Studies of the human brain through the use of neuroimaging technology reveals no truth to the idea that different sections of the human brain play a role in intelligence. Further studies suggest that different formats of learning: visual, auditory or kinesthetic, have no discernable difference on student performance or brain function. The author goes on to discuss major reasons why such myths continue to shape education even after decades of evidence have already disproven such claims. Often teachers and even academic researchers are poorly educated on matters of neuroscience and rely on word-of-mouth to get their information. This in turn leads to the creation of poorly thought out and outright incorrect theories on education being developed.

Evaluation

Buch’s article is very well written and informative, if harsh on this issue of neuromyths. The paper is well organized, and includes links to more in-depth studies on the matter. Much of the article’s claims seem inherently skeptical, if not outright hostile towards what has become a major foundation of educational theory. Also, more of the material deals not so much with educational theory so much as the ethics of using such neuromyths to shape educational theory itself. I find that while the article is extremely informative on a subject that I believe to be of great importance to the field of education, it also frustratingly presents a problem with no apparent solution. 

Dweck's "Mindset" - Growing through Failure

Fluetsch, Christopher

IL

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, New York: Ballentine Books.

Carol Dweck’s Mindset is almost a decade old, but it is currently enjoying a revival of interest in education circles. A number of posts on this blog cover articles written about this book, but no post has yet covered the book itself.

Dweck’s book concerns her research into how people approach problems. Dweck maintains that people take one of two approaches to problems. They either have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

At its most basic level, a fixed mindset occurs when a person believes that intelligence, ability or skill in some area is fixed, that is that it cannot be significantly changed. The person considers themselves either smart or dumb, talented or not. For a fixed mindset person, a problem is an insurmountable obstacle. A failure indicates that the person is simply not good enough.

A growth mindset individual, however, believes in limitless human potential. A problem becomes an opportunity for growth, a chance to learn a new skill or a new approach to a problem. Dweck maintains that growth mindset individuals are more likely to be successful in the long term, as they continue to learn new skills. Growth mindset people are also more likely to be happy and content, as they never feel as if a problem is unsolvable.

The recent revival of this book is directly related to the need for students to learn the 21st century skills of adaptability and life-long learning. A common phrase in modern education is “We are are teaching our students skills they will need for jobs that have not even been created.” The basic idea is that the pace of change is accelerating, and people can grow and adapt to new conditions will be more successful than people who cannot.

Unfortunately, Dweck tends to reason beyond her data. She has a potent idea with some research behind it, but she extrapolates the idea into a binary worldview, where one either is fixed or growth. Everything bad comes from having a fixed mindset, everything good from growth. She oversells her idea, ruining a bit of her credibility.

Nevertheless, Mindset has some excellent advice for helping students cope with change. It is probably not necessary to read the entire book, as a number of chapters become repetitive. However, the first three chapters and the chapter on teaching are valuable additions for anyone’s reading plan.

Applying the Science of Learning: Evidence-Based Principles for the Design of Multimedia Instruction

By Bailey, Rachel
ET
Mayer, R. (2008). Applying the science of learning: Evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction. American Psychologist, November, 760-769.

Summary: This article combines the science of learning and instruction. After conducting numerous research trials, the author concludes that some multi-media led instructional strategies are more conducive to learning than others. In the article he highlights 10 effective principles of multimedia instruction. Here are his findings:

1. Eliminate extraneous material.
2. Highlight essential material.
3. Present pictures and spoken words rather than pictures spoken words, and printed words.
4. Place printed text next to the corresponding part of the graphic.
5. Present corresponding graphics and words at the same time.
6. Break a continuous lesson into learner-paced parts.
7. Provide pre-training on the names, locations, and characteristics of key concepts.
8. Present graphics with spoken text rather than graphics with printed text.
9. Present words and pictures rather than words alone.
10. Present words in conversational style rather than formal style.

Evaluation: The author's findings make sense to me. I especially like number three, which reminds the instruction to not include all the printed words on a slide when given a presentation. This is too distracting for the listener and they have a hard time deciding what to focus on.  When I taught middle school, I noticed that students often put all the text on their presentation slide. This makes for a boring presentation for the listener. I also like number 10. If a presentation is more conversational, the learner is more likely to tune into what is being said. 

Cognitively Priming Students for Learning

Amy Jessica McMillan
ET

Willis, J. (2014). Cognitively Priming Students for Learning. Retrieved November 7, 2014, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/cognitively-priming-students-for-learning-judy-willis

Judy Willis, a neurologist turned elementary school teacher turned education professor, writes an ongoing blog for Edutopia about brain-based teaching strategies. This article explains how to grab students' attention so their brains will work to learn more. Willis's advice involves inviting students to make predictions about upcoming units. For example, the teacher might choose a particularly thought-provoking image or video and provide more hints and clues about it as the unit goes on. According to Willis, "When students want to know required information to create solutions to problems that interest them or to create products that they care about, the brain applies the effort to learn what is required to achieve desirable goals" (para. 8).  In other words, our brain is automatically set up to be curious and to take steps to satisfy this curiosity. We teachers have the job of making students want to know more.

I am a frequent reader of Dr. Willis's blog. She gives practical ways that we teachers can work with students' brains to help them learn. In this article, she reminds readers that students who have "relevant goals" are motivated to achieve them. Their brains are hardwired to work towards goals that make sense to them personally. On the other hand, students who don't see school as relevant, do not see the value in working hard. Then, they reinforce that feeling by failing and therefore seeing even less worth in trying. Their brains are telling them that the effort would be better served elsewhere. This explanation makes a lot much sense to me because I see this all the time in the classroom. The trick is to make the students curious, to make them want to know more. Their brains will take it from there.

ET: Inquiry--Five Ways to Integrate by Julia Marshall

Sullivan, Maureen
ET

Five Ways to Integrate
Dr. Julia Marshall

Summary: This article has been a staple of mine for the last six years when thinking about shifting pedagogy to integrate across content areas, particularly spanning art and science. The five creative strategies Dr. Julia Marshall describes are used by both artists and scientists alike in the real world, and are fantastic strategies to implement in the library setting to embrace student choice, collaboration, and synthesis of their ideas. They are cognitive strategies, that are used to communicate the creators' ideas through depiction, metaphor, mimicry, formatting, and projection.

Julia Marshall is an Art Education professor at San Francisco State University and I had the pleasure of working with her closely on a science and art integration initiative in San Francisco public schools.

Evaluation: In thinking about the cognitive processes that span art and science, Julia offers some specific ways in which both artists and scientists are manipulating information to communicate their thinking. I highly recommend it!

Five Ways to Integrate

Douthit, Chris

ET

Taking notes by hand for better long-term comprehension. (2014, April 24). Association for Psychological Science. Retrieved on April 24, 2014 from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/take-notes-by-hand-for-better-long-term-comprehension.html

Summary: According to psychologists Mueller and Oppenheimer, students who took notes via laptop did worse on tests than did students who took notes long hand.  While laptop users were more accurate in transcription and did just as well with questions regarding recall, their conceptual understanding was not as strong, causing them to fare worse on bigger picture questions.  For the study, students used computers only for taking notes—they were not connected to the internet.  The researchers think that those who take notes by hand do more processing and, therefore, develop better understanding.   Even when allowed to review notes, the laptop note-takers did worse. 

Evaluation: I would very much like to read the actual study, but I cannot access it.  While I am in favor of using technology as a tool in student learning, it is important to remember that old-fashioned methods sometimes have a place in our pedagogy.   This study goes to show that as educators we need to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each tool we ask our students to use while we also develop ways for students to integrate various levels of technology into their work.  Students need to be able to discern when paper and pencil is superior to a computer and visa versa. (This study is also covered in this article https://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/were-only-human/ink-on-paper-some-notes-on-note-taking.html)

Metaphors We Live By

Bang, Marisa

ET-Brain Research

Lakoff, G & Johnson, M. (1980). Excerpts from Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Summary: This article is about how the mind makes meaning through the use of metaphors. Ultimately, metaphors can shape our perceptions and actions. For example, we make meaning and understand new information through familiarity with known subjects. And in the realm of teaching and learning, this article is useful for developing a lesson plan for students to learn new concepts. By using helpful metaphors, it can aid students in learning and understanding new information.

Evaluation/Opinion: It is interesting how we tend to interpret the world and make meaning by the use of metaphors. Since metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experiences, it makes sense to use this technique through teaching and learning. I think that by understanding how we think and how we express our thoughts in language, it can help us effectively develop a well rounded lesson plan for students. I highly recommend this book.

The Forgotten Childhood: Why Early Memories Fade

Fleming, Giovanna

ET- Brain Research

 

Hamilton, J. (Writer). (2014, April 8). The Forgotten Childhood: Why Early Memories Fade [Radio episode]. In All Things Considered. Washington, D.C.: NPR.

Summary:
This radio episode broadcasted on NPR at the beginning of April on the All Things Considered morning program.  A research study was conducted to determine why childhood amnesia occurs in some children but not in others.  What was present in the children who had recall of young life experiences and wasn’t in the children who had experienced childhood amnesia.  This study had been conducted over a period of ten years.  The data showed the ones who remembered early childhood experiences had participated in discussions about the day’s events or the experience had been traumatic or emotional and left an impact on the child.  The children who had childhood amnesia rarely participated in retelling of the day’s events or in conversation with others about them. Certain parts of the brain were being used due to the discussion occurring and the information was being stored to be recalled at another date. It was believed prior to this study that a child’s brain hadn’t developed to a point of saving a memory. As soon as I heard the results of the study, it was easy to draw a direct correlation to the importance of discussion in the classroom in order for the students to have better recall of the information learned.

Evaluation:
Intriguing radio episode which was broadcasted a few weeks ago on NPR.  I felt it conveyed the importance of discussing events in order for the young brain to store the event and recall it at another date.  The conclusion of this research study can be used as evidence to support the value of having children discuss and retell events in stories they have just read in order to comprehend and remember the story (or any complex informational text) at a future date. I would highly recommend listening to this episode.

Bringing Brain Research Into Teaching

Young, Alice

ET - Brain Research

Bringing Brain Research Into Teaching.
Brown, B. (2012). Bringing Brain Research Into Teaching. Principal, 91(3), 34-35.

The article discusses the application into teaching of the Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) model, developed by Harvard professor Kurt Fischer, in Jacob Shapiro Brain Based Instruction Laboratory School in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It states that school staff members must learn two approaches to MBE implementation, such as regulating emotional states of learners and teach thinking skills. It says that the students indicate growth after three years of Measure of Academic Progress assessments.

The article indicates enabling teachers to understand how children think and learn can improve their problem-solving and reasoning skills. To apply the model, adults must understand that the system of the brain responsible for impulse control, critical thinking, and other self-regulation functions do not mature until around age 24. These teaching tools for the 21st century must be multidimensional. Using neuroscience as the foundation for learning may be essential to remain competitive in the global economy. The practice promotes techniques and concepts which gives optimistic insight for this type of teaching.

ET- Arenas of Practice

Benson, Jessica

ET

Schoenfeld, A. (1999). Looking toward the 21^st Century: Challenges of Educational Theory and Practice. Educational Researcher, 28 (7), 4-14. Retrieved from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-189X%28199910%2982%3A7%3C4%3ALTT2CC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0

Summary

In this paper Schoenfeld sets out to identify a series of arenas for investigation in which theoretical and practical progress can be made in the field of education. He argues that “pure” and “applied” work in research need not be in conflict, but that that contributions to knowledge and practice should complement and reinforce each other. Educational research can and should be conducted in contexts that are of practical import. He identifies the theoretical and practical issues in which progress needs to be made, and outlines his conceptual framework for joining theory and practice. Schoenfeld's question of the difficulties in unifying the cognitive and the social aspects of learning continues the discussion of how we think and act in the world, as well as offering ideas about the how the mind works in context. His quest for a truly integrated theoretical perspective on issues of self, identity, and social interactions has very practical applications: “The better you understand how someathing is done, the better you can help people do it” (p.6).

Evaluation

This article was one of the first that I encountered while creating my reading plan, and while it does not offer many solutions for the problems in educational theory, it does pose many interesting questions (which is arguably more important). He poses questions about the future of creating detailed models of teaching based on theoretical understanding, and I am focusing my reading on work that has come out of this question in the decade since this article was published. What I found interesting about this article was Schoenfeld's focus on creating not only a theory of learning but a theory of mechanism-- the processes by which learning take place. The discussion of how we make sense of the ways in which people use knowledge in differing circumstances (transfer) is an important factor in considering educational theory.

Reading incentive programs

Greene, Shannon

CA

“Accelerated Reader: Once again, evidence lacking", American Library Association, November 14, 2007. http://www.ala.org/aasl/aaslpubsandjournals/knowledgequest/kqwebarchives/v36/361/361krashen (Accessed October 30, 2013)

Stephen Krashen, famous to me through his theory of affective filters,  has made another argument against the use of reading incentive programs for encouraging children to read. Although he acknowledges there can be short term gains, in this, and his earlier article from 2005, “Accelerated Reader: Evidence Still Lacking”, he claims that the advantages of children spending more time reading and more access to books are good things, however there is not yet any proof that expensive software programs to test comprehension and/or prizes for reading are producing any tangible effects and instead, may be harmful in the long run.

This article interests me because with the roll out of Common Core, discussions of reading programs are occurring throughout our school district at all levels.

http://www.ala.org/aasl/aaslpubsandjournals/knowledgequest/kqwebarchives/v36/361/361krashen

How Brain Science and Technology Will Transform Schools

Chambers, Julia

Davidson, C.N. (2011). Now you see it: How technology and brain science will transform schools and business for the 21^st century. New York: Penguin Books.

Professor at Duke University and Co-chair of the Ph.D. Lab in Digital Knowledge, Cathy Davidson’s Now You See It makes a strong argument for transforming the way students are taught in the 21^st century. She leans heavily on recent findings in brain research to suggest that current teaching practices (which reward linear thinking and rote memorization) continue to prepare students for industry jobs, not for work in the digital age.

I found two points in her book particularly insightful as they relate to Educational Practices:

1)      Distraction is key to learning: Pointing to current brain research, Davidson writes that in infancy, neural pathways form and fuse to create automatic responses for repeated tasks like walking, running, eating with a fork, etc. -- tasks we don’t pay attention to. Davidson calls this “attention blindness.” She argues that the key to learning is to keep our brains away from repetition so we are forced to pay attention. This is one reason why many educators advocate gaming as a learning system. If learning tasks are exciting and/or require multiple levels of thinking at once, they awaken our attention and we’re more likely to remember and incorporate this new experience or knowledge into our frame of recognition. She argues that technology is not the source of distraction, as many pundits argue. The brain is naturally distracted – and that’s a good thing because it’s how we discover new patterns, new ideas. She advocates teaching practices that keep the brain distracted, precisely because this distraction promotes a different kind of thinking that’s based on association, pattern-recognition, interconnectivity. Using teaching techniques and tools that promote distraction may cause the brain to develop new neural pathways (new ways of thinking) throughout life.

2)      Current classrooms promote attention blindness: Davidson writes that most classrooms in the U.S. haven’t changed in physical appearance or practice in over 100 years and therefore don’t serve 21^st century students. She provides a nice overview of how our national educational system developed:

a)      Horace Mann championed national educational reform in the early 1800s and was key to creating “common schools” that served the population. The 1840s to early 1900s saw the beginnings of public education.

b)      By the late 1800s public education was becoming mandatory and directly linked to industrialization (school was the best way to cultivate workers by teaching them how to pay attention, how to be timely, how to focus on one single task at a time). This was the beginning of standardized curriculum and the focus was on elementary school level. Prior models of education were abandoned, and this included the Socratic method (question/answer teaching); the Agrarian method (problem-solving focused); and the Apprenticeship (imitating the skills of a master).

c)      1900 – 1950s state and regional schools replaced local schoolhouse upstarts. School became mandatory and the focus had shifted from preparing students for industry to creating leaders and filling the country with high school graduates.

d)     1950s ushered in the golden age of education in the U.S., triggered by Sputnik. Focus was on higher education, science, math. Progressive education and innovative approaches began to flourish.

e)      No Child Left Behind put an end to widespread educational innovation. Success was measured by test scores.

Davidson highlights several schools around the country that are trying innovative approaches to learning, including Manhattan’s Quest2Learn, in which classes are taught through gaming principles, and Voyager Academy, which uses the flipped classroom model and has students work on collaborative projects during class time.

Overall, Davison’s book makes a strong argument for innovative, differentiated teaching based on recent research on how the brain learns and through examples of schools that are doing this with great success. Her overall thesis makes a strong argument that cultivating associative, collaborative thinking and practices is critical for student success in the digital age.

ET-Brain Research

ET-New Trends

The Shallows: Recommended Summer Reading

Greco, Rebecca
ET, IL

Carr, N. (2011) The Shallows:What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Norton, 280 pages; ISBN 0393339750.
Nicholas Carr's Blog,  Rough Type: http://www.roughtype.com/

The series of short articles and infographics through which I've learned of many new tech tools and trends in education made me yearn for something longer and more fully developed, so I went old-school and read a book.  While I regret the 11th-hour nature of this posting, I think this book is a must-read for anyone working in education who thinks about technology and information literacy.  I highly recommend it to everyone as summer reading.

Carr traces brain development in human beings through varied communication forms across human history. His book is not as strident or skeptical of technology's impact on our minds as his blog is (see above address); nor is he sounding an overt alarm about technology's harm to children, as Jane Healey (1999) does in her book Failure to Connect.  However, Carr points out a key difference between reading linear, book-style text and reading online, with its links and sidebars: this second form of reading does keep us from reading one thing deeply; instead, it further develops our awareness to possible distractions and novel information.  Carr points out this this awareness to outside stimuli was crucial, for instance, for hunter-gatherers, who had to be constantly alert to new information all around them.  He describes his own experiences as a reader who came to miss the longer, deeper stretches of text immersion when he began to read--and skim-- online more, but he is careful not to privilege one form of reading over the other.  Instead, Carr points out that we are communicating in a  way that affects our brain wiring, and that the long term effects of these changes have yet to be seen.

I was surprised by Carr's measured tone in the book; I'd expected more of a rant. The brain research he cites does remind me of the changes I see in the middle school students I teach, though. Like many teachers, I see a big difference between the kids who read a lot independently and the kids who do not. In addition to having larger vocabularies and deeper background knowledge, the kids who read tend to be more patient, better able to venture a guess or prediction and see it through-- they are easier to sit next to in a movie because they're less apt to ask aloud what will happen next. In early adolescence-- a time of tremendous brain development the maxim is that "the neurons that fire together, wire together" is true.  Carr's work points out the difference between the kinds of wiring we develop through text exposure and through online "reading." While I know that I personally prefer deeper, longer reading, I can see as well that a more varied information field with multimedia availability has the potential to engage students who struggle with immersion in text.  What will it mean for their minds to be engaged in this way, rather than less engaged?  We will have to see.


 

Can Repetitive Exercises Actually Feed the Creative Process?

Jessica Jones

CA

Korbey, H. (2013, Febuary 22). Can repetitive exercises actually feed the creative process? MindShift. Retrieved from http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/teachers-students-digital-games-whats-the-right mix/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29

Summary: Repetitive exercises, commonly called “drill and kill” exercises, are known for killing any interest that a student might have in a subject, but there is a debate within the educational world that perhaps these exercise may be able to promote creativity. Korbey shows the different sides of the “drill and kill” argument by interviewing educators, from pro-repetitive exercises and Teach Like a Champion author Doug Lemov to anti-repetitive exercises arts and literacy educator Kurt Wootton. Lemov, as quoted by Korbey (2013), explains that, “creativity is play within a system of rules, and you can only play with the rules once you understand the system” (para. 16), which means that students must have memorized the rules through repetitive exercises before they can use creativity with a concept. Wootton, however, believes that “brining in the creative process shows students ‘the whole game’ and gives them a reason to go back and get better at specific skills that require rote practice” (Korbey, 2013, para. 11). Wootton’s beliefs stem from the scientific standpoint that John Kounios, Professor of Psychology at Drexel University, brings into the article. Kounios points out that often after people have mastered a subject, they have a more rigid, or locked in, way of thinking about it which makes it harder to use creativity with the subject (para. 8). Korbey’s presentation leaves the impression that it is possible for repetitive exercises to lead to creativity, as long as there is a balance of “drill and kill” exercises and engagement in creative play during the learning process.

Evaluation: After having read this article, I can see how the use of “drill and kill” exercises can be beneficial but not on their own as Lemov believes. There needs to be a balance between creative play and repetitive exercise for students to learn the content of the lesson but not lose their interest in it. At the end of the article, Korbey points out that the British government offers a poetry contest where they want the poem delivered “by heart” instead of by rote, which I believe sums up the importance of creativity and engagement in lessons. Although it is possible for students to memorize facts and recite them or write them down, it is more important for them to feel connected to them so that they will not lose that information as they age. 

Goodbye Behaviorists

Michelle Windell

ET

Yilmaz, K. (2011). The cognitive perspective on learning: Its theoretical underpinnings and implications for classroom practices.Clearing House, 84(5), 204-212.

This article begins by distinguishing behaviorism from cognitivism. Behaviorist learning theory asserts that learning is observable and measurable, encapsulated in the process of an organism responding to stimulus. In other words, it is a passive process. Conversely, cognitivism asserts that learning is an active process of making meaning out of new stimulus based on prior knowledge. The author distinguishes cognitivism from constructivism, indicating that teachers often confuse the two, but does not ever fully define constructivism. Instead, the two forerunners of cognitivism - Piaget and Vygotsky - are highlighted, along with implications for classroom instruction.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that humans from the earliest age actively seek to interact with their environment. This interaction results in the individual assimilating, accommodating, or rejecting new knowledge based upon the mental constructs (schema) s/he already possesses. Vygotsky’s theory of social cognitivism suggests that people learn through social interaction, and that individuals have different optimum readiness levels for different information (zone of proximal development). The idea of scaffolding was born from this theory. Several other cognitive theorists are mentioned in less detail.

Five teaching methods based on the instructional implications are defined:

1. Cognitive apprenticeship, which incorporates modeling, coaching, student articulation, reflection, and exploration.
2. Reciprocal teaching, in which students are guided in the use of cognitive techniques to enable them to make meaning while reading.
3. Inquiry learning, in which students employ higher order thinking skills to examine an issue or test a hypothesis.
4. Discovery learning, similar to inquiry learning, in which the process of discovery and responsibility for one’s learning is emphasized over the content learned.
5. Problem-based learning, in which students are presented with a problem to solve and a variety of potential resources, resulting in a myriad of possible solutions.

This article is a good refresher on cognitive theory, and simple enough for the novice to understand as well. The section on instructional implications and teaching methods correlates with our class texts and transformation work. I enjoyed connecting our process to its theoretical bases.

A Simple Guide To 4 Complex Learning Theories

Michelle Windell

ET

Jukes, I. (2013, January 30). A Simple Guide To 4 Complex Learning Theories. Retrieved from:
http://fluency21.com/blog/2013/01/30/a-simple-guide-to-4-complex-learning-theories/

This infographic found by Dr. Loertscher condenses an entire undergraduate program in psychology into one simple table! Great for the visual learner!

Connecting conditions of learning theory to brain/mind principles:

Frederick, Lauren

Rushton, S. P., Eitelgeorge, J., & Zickafoose, R. (2003). Connecting Brian Cambourne’s conditions of learning theory to brain/mind principles: implications for early childhood educators. Early Childhood Education Journal, 31.

Summary:

            This article connects Brain Cambourne’s Conditions of Learning to a constructivist philosophy of education as well as to established brain-based principles. Various classroom conversations between primary-aged children illustrate specific classroom activities that help link the brain principle to each of Cambourne’s conditions. Constructivists believe that the learner constructs understanding of the environment through active response to sensory experiences. Brian Cambourne, an Australian educator, developed a constructivist theory of how children learn literacy skills. After three years of field research he proposed the following Conditions of Learning:

a)              Immersion

b)             Demonstration

c)              Engagement

d)             Expectations

e)              Responsibility

f)              Employment

g)             Approximation

h)             Response

            In a constructivist, brain-based learning environment, the role of the teacher would be to act as a facilitator or guide to create meaningful opportunities and situations so that the children can explore, ponder, and actively engage in their learning.

Evaluation:

            This was a strong article, and though a bit dated, still has a lot of relevant information regarding the constructivist philosophy of education. There are large charts with valuable information surrounding the conditions of learning and he breaks down each one in a meaningful way.