Neuroeducamente blog

Photo credit: <a href="http://foter.com/re/171dcc">Foter.com</a> As I read about learning and its intricacies, I keep wondering how interconnected, and interdependent, everything that is related to learning is, by nature and design. From the prism of arts, we can take, for starters, the idea that no new learning happens if not based upon prior knowledge ( Tokuhama - Espinosa , 2010; 2014). The fact that Aristotle has developed the same idea through the notion of schemas seems only to confirm that nature lends itself to a kind of observation to the keen eyes of true educators who are willingly to dissect its secrets. It is only when each student's vast array of previously learned content is accessed that what is known (content to be learned) will find a way to bind into what is already familiar. As each one of us has a different repertoire of previous experiences, it makes sense to use arts to hook what is known to what is to be learned by ...

Photo credit: Steve took it via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA Our brains learn by contrasting what is new to what is known. It is the resulting factor that will account for a longer attentional focus and memory encoding that will lead to learning.  In considering this, the next challenge for a teacher is how to create novelty within the boundaries of some predictability so that kids feel safe to pay attention to the novel stimulus. Let me tell you a very successful example I had once the chance of video recording. In this class, 10 kids aged between 24 and 36 months were learning English as a second language. The teacher had for the class the objective of teaching hot and cold, concepts that they were already familiar with but that had to be attractive enough in the presentation stage so that they would feel motivated to use the content language (It’s hot/It feels hot or cold) in the second langue (English).  The teacher divided the room into two corners, prepare...

Photo credit: Ochre Jelly via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA Sometimes I wish emoticons were valued in education. Although it has been stated that “we will never know how any other animal or any other human actually feels” (Davis & Panksepp, 2011, p. 1947), I think they are a direct route to our amygdalae giving us an opportunity to gauge our emotional memory and prepare us for the get-go.  This ‘impulse that induces action’ (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2016) is still very immaturely dealt within our society; no wonder when affective neuroscience is in its beginning (Davidson Films, 2010) and emotional intelligence is but a baby boomer. Whereas humans are still ahead in identifying emotions (Ekman, 1973 but Balkenius and Morin, 2001) but compete with other species in mirror neurons that fire for both action and observation modes (Gallese & Goldman, 1998), we still lack in cultivating emotional intelligence since infancy properly. It’s not a tradition to start the day by...

Photo credit: Foter.com Our brain is a very organic and complex system much like a beehive. To begin with, it is in constant connection with its surroundings. From the environment, elements are filtered in and out of it, like the input that our sensorial channels capture from our surroundings to be filtered by our perception. Also, the beehive is densely packed, formed by cells that store food and nurture their colony. The same can be said about our brain, with its kilometer worth of gyruses set in intricate ridges made so in order to improve cognitive function (Burrows, 2016; Nuwer, 2013), populated by cells that store information and processes and nurture our 'self' (Damasio, 2010). Inside a beehive, there's also a basic architecture that runs from top down; polen, the rich produce of the beehive, is stored in the upper part, much like our pre frontal cortex houses cognition; below that, the pollen-storage cells, just like the associative networks betwee...

What’s your take on big data and decision-making? Photo credit: Foter.com   Mine ranges from a very humane appeal, courtesy of Etlinger (2015) for the need to analyze data critically, to a call for appropriateness and validity, thanks to Gill, Borden & Halgren (2014) to the traps in decision-making, issued by Hammond, Keeney and Raiffa (1998); and still pass by an appeal for DDDM (Data-Driven Decision Making) to form teaching professionals for an informed instruction supplied by Mandinach (2012). The point made about data being useless if not carefully analyzed in a given setting with explicit understanding and preparedness seems uncontroversial. After all, numbers can be anything to anyone depending of the context in which they occur as numbers do not, and will not, mean something if deprived from the obvious but often times easily forgotten idea that they are translated and related to students that we have the power and the responsibility to form and inform...

Photo credit: shareski via Foter.com / CC BY-NC With great te aching, o ne does never ge t tired of o bserving the details...in a class plan of an adaptive expert teacher, i.e., a GREAT teacher (Hattie, 2012; Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014), it is clear for all to see the pre, while and po st teaching s teps that have been ca refully crafted fo r each stage. After all, "great teaching leaves nothing to chance" (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014) It is really adamant that we, teachers , consider where our st udents are (their previous knowledge), how to as sess that (diagnostic tools), where we want the class to go (objectives) and how to co nvey that to st udents (success criteria). After that, there ne eds to be a s tructured guidance so that students know what is ex pected of them, what th ey n eed to 'grab' along the w ay to perform the task and who th ey can count on every st ep of the w ay . This s tability in the fa ce of ch ange ...

Photo credit: Foter.com Attention & learning For learning to take place , attention and memory have to be in place (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014). As a teacher, we have to carefully plan by choosing topics or means that most effectively lead to the desired outcome. Sensorial input, especially with young learners, has to be cleverly used by designers so that the process of perception gets amplified (National Geographic, 2014). For success, count on “emotionally charged stimuli (to) capture attention” (Chun, Golomb & Turk-Browne, 2011, p. 89) and this is what a fellow teacher did when preparing a class on hot/cold concepts for a group of 2 year-olds learning English. T o capture their attention, she brought to class ice cubes and a hair drier. She presented the concepts unitarily using a different location corner in the room. Students felt the stimulus while the teacher enunciated the concept out loud many times (Ex.: Can you feel the cold? Is it too cold for you? D...