willingham

Dan Willingham (cognitive scientists and neuroscientist, professor at University of Virginia)

http://www.danielwillingham.com/

[|Learning styles don't exist] (You Tube video)

There have been lots of suggestions about different learning styles over the years with the associated idea that if you teach a learner in their preferred learning style then they will learn better

eg. visual v. auditory v. kinesthenic learners is the best known one

Learning style theories assert: The way that information is organised and the way you think about it matters and how easily you understand or learn it

eg. to understand the building of a house visual learner needs to look at the plans auditory learner needs to hear a description kinesthenic learner needs to build a model

The brain doesn't work that way

It's true that some people have better visual memories than others, etc. But that fact is not all that important because learning is mainly about meanings.

When you ask people to learn a list of words what they learn is meanings. The meaning is independent of the modality. When tests are done to present the list in different modalities they don't result in better learning for so-called visual, auditory or kinesthenic learners

Most of what is in your head is meaning based.

Sometimes students might learn things which are essentially visual, eg. the shapes of countries, or essentially auditory, eg. a correct French accent,

But the prediction of Learning style theory is that auditory style learners will always learn better if you present things auditorily, because that is their best modality, etc. This is the part that is wrong. If you want to learn the shape of Algeria then you need a visual presentation.

If the theory is wrong then why does it seem so right? 1) 90% of people believe it 2) Something close to the theory is right. Some people are particularly good at learning certain types of information. But the specific predictions of the theory and the way you would apply it in the classroom are wrong. 3) If you already believe it then you'll probably interpret ambiguous situations as consistent with the theory, eg. a solar system analogy of atomic structure might help any student, but could be interpreted as that student is a visual learner

Teachers don't need to adjust their teaching to individual learning styles

[|Brain based education: Fad or breakthrough - high quality] (You Tube video)

You shouldn't be paying attention to 95% of what you hear about brain based education

It is so difficult to bring knowledge of neuroscience to educational problems

Levels of analysis (behaviour):

District School Classroom Child's Mind Cognitive process

Tug of war - the strength of a team is about half of the individual strengths combined Jogging - when jogging with a friend you may work harder and feel better at the end than jogging on your own

Individuals and groups are different levels of analysis

Knowing a lot about children's individual minds does not translate to setting up an effective classroom. It might be useful but there is no guarantee it will transfer to a different level of analysis.

Cognitive process (eg. learning, attention, problem solving) is another level of analysis

We might find that repetition is good for learning. But that doesn't mean that a classroom should include lots and lots of repetition. Repetition is good for learning but is not good for motivation.

The Brain Neuroscientists also deal with levels of analysis

Brain Anatomic structure network Anatomic structure (hippo campus, cerebellum) Nuclei Neurons (cells)

If you know how neurons work it doesn't mean you know how Anatomic structures work

Neuroscientists don't study whole brains So, all the neuroscience levels are at a lower level than the behavioural levels

This is what makes brain based education so hard

Lots of books about brain based education Problems 1) Not really brain based education 2) Just plain wrong

Is it possible to use neuroscience to inform education? Yes, but it requires more careful analysis than the pop neuroscience that is often featured in books

[|Teaching Content is Teaching Reading] (You Tube video)

What do you need to know in order to read?

What about meaning?

The cat is on the mat The feline is on the mat

You need vocabulary

You need more than vocabulary to read with understanding. You need knowledge of the world. Why?

1) Bridging gaps: People leav o t inf rmat on w en they rite. They expect that your knowledge will fill in the gaps

Examples given

2) Resolving ambiguity: Much of what we read would be ambiguous without prior knowledge

KNOWLEDGE MATTERS TO READING!!

"Poor" readers who know about baseball then you will understand text about baseball better then "good" readers

"Good readers" are people who know a bit about everything, who have a good general knowledge

General cultural knowledge correlates about 0.50 with reading comprehension test scores

So, we need to spend more class time on general knowledge! US first grade / third grade classrooms: social studies 2% / 5% science 4% / 5% language arts 62% / 47%

Too much time goes to reading strategies - find the main idea, activate prior knowledge, identify the author's purpose

Reading strategies do help But it's a one time boost. Practicing reading strategies doesn't help. There's no point in spending more than 10 lessons on them

SUMMARY Once students learn decoding they can decode anything But they can't understand what they read. Comprehension requires prior knowledge Attempts to boost comprehension through reading strategies will fail Use reading materials that teach something about the world Don't neglect other subjects

[|Inflexible Knowledge: The first step to expertise] or why transfer is hard

.... when new material is first learned, the mind is biased to remember things in concrete forms that are difficult to apply to new situations. //This bias seems best overcome by the accumulation of a greater store of related knowledge, facts, and examples.//

 rote knowledge: "memorizing form in the absence of meaning."

inflexible knowledge is meaningful, but narrow; it’s narrow in that it is tied to the concept’s surface structure, and the deep structure of the concept is not easily accessed. "Deep structure" refers to a principle that transcends specific examples; "surface structure" refers to the particulars of an example meant to illustrate deep structure

Knowledge is flexible when it can be accessed out of the context in which it was learned and applied in new contexts

[|Review] of //A Mind at a Time// by Mel Levine

Levine’s broad-strokes account of the mind agrees with that of most researchers (and for that matter, with the observant layman): there is a memory system, an attention system, and so on. But it’s the detailed structure Levine claims to see within each of those systems that really drives his proposed treatments for disabled children, and on those details Levine is often wrong ...

... there is currently no evidence regarding the effectiveness of the Schools Attuned program, and the inaccuracy of the theory makes it inevitable that some kids are going to be misdiagnosed and some interventions are going to be misapplied or faulty. Further, Levine does not acknowledge that a sizable fraction of the kids in special-education classes identified as learning disabled don’t have a cognitive problem; they have an emotional disturbance or a chaotic home life. 