One of the reasons there is so much debate about teaching and learning and what we should have students spend their time doing when they are in schools is that there are different theories about human learning. By theories, of course, I mean ideas supported by evidence that accurately predict and explain what we observed. Read More
We have heard for a generation “your students will have jobs that don’t exist yet.” I paid attention as my children (who are now much closer to 30 than 20) graduated from high school, went to college, and entered the workforce, and they and their friends entered fields that existed previously. Now, however, they and Read More
The culture that learners experience contributes to their views and perspectives that determine what is important to them and the people around them. These become the learned behaviors that determine what learners value, how they define learning, and other decisions about how learning occurs. Educators observe how deviation from cultural expectations affect learners’ actions in Read More
145: Social Aspects of Learning Normal brain development depends on social interaction, and the social nature of human learning continues throughout life, and deeper learning has social components. In recent decades, cognitive and learning scientists have converged on the conclusion that human cognitions is a strongly social phenomenon. Michael Gazzaniga (2008), a noted neuroscientist who Read More
While learning is familiar to all, it has become the subject of serious scientific inquiry in the last several decades. New imaging technologies have provided cognitive scientists a view into the functioning brains and they can see the results of learning as differences in patterns of brain activities. This has led both cognitive and learning Read More
The idea of deeper learning has been kicking around for a couple of decades. Various authors and groups have presented their version. Here is one that I have discovered in some past writing: Collen Carmean and Jeremy Haefner (2002), scholars from the western United States, suggested that curriculum and instruction in the 21st century will Read More
The rationale to approach the curriculum as integrated content is grounded in the observation that few problems encountered—and little of the information use in—the real-world conforms to the boundaries that delimit subjects in schools. Herrenkohl and Polman (2018) reason, “people do not experience the world from a singular disciplinary perspective” (p. 108), and they conclude Read More
Psychologists and others who study multitasking and its effects on human attention, learning, and cognition have yet to decide if the effects are “good” or “bad.” Much of the difficulty comes from the differences between the observations made in the highly controlled environments of the laboratory and the observations that are made in the real Read More
The brain functions associated with learning occur when neurons communicate with each other by the release and uptake of neurotransmitters. Many chemicals are known to function as neurotransmitters, and also many chemicals are known to influence the functioning of neurotransmitters. Further, cognitive scientists have identified several environmental factors that are associated with the production and Read More
This post continues the theme that has appeared previously in my blog… see the embedded posts at the bottom on the page. Behaviorism is only one concepts of how learning occurs, and many cognitive and learning scientists concur it does not accurately explain and predict most of what happens in schools and classrooms. Cognitive psychology Read More