Does good teaching equal good learning? By Irina Tolchenova, Lead Practitioner Mathematics
I think that there is much confusion about this mystery of the school process: parents and students think that if they are being taught a subject, for example a foreign language then they will learn it. We teachers want to believe that if we prepared a good lesson with clearly defined learning objectives (even written on the white board), various interactive materials, questions and answers and the children were all very happy about the lesson then we did a really good job: we taught a good lesson! But did they really learn anything new? It was quite frustrating for me to witness how some students, despite their efforts and mine, make little or no progress in understanding what had been taught. We emphasise a lot about teaching or how to teach. But must we not first understand how people learn? Is the way I teach actually matching how people learn? Are people learning French in the same way as they learn mathematics? According to research into the brain, learning, memory and emotional intelligence, our students’ classroom experiences are too often far from how the brain perceives and processes, stores and retrieves information, which seriously affects the students’ attitude, and the ways in which they think and learn. I have discovered that despite the differences between individual learners there are critical conditions that must be met in order for the brain to change, including the following: 1. The brain develops better in environments with high levels of sensory stimulation and sustained cognitive challenge. Through enriched experiences, neural synapses, the junctions in the brain through which information passes, can sprout new branches
and connections which continually change, reprogramming the brain to improve learning. 2. High challenge but low threat. The mid-brain floods with electrochemical activity under conditions of perceived threat. Higher-orderthinking functions and memory are inhibited by such conditions. Low self-esteem and lack of self- belief contribute to such a “survival” response. 3. The brain thrives on the immediacy of feedback, on diversity and on choice. So marking the students’ h/w and then asking them to address the issues is a delayed response: ideally the feedback and response should not be separated by a few days. This is why flipped homework delivers a 50% increase in grades in 1 year as students always get what they need most: immediate feedback, high challenge and low threat 4. Both hemispheres should be engaged in simultaneous parallel processing so there is no need for using VAK styles separately as the whole brain should be involved. 5. Expectations shape outcomes. Learning takes place at both the conscious and the unconscious level. Therefore motivation accelerates once the learner consciously adapts a positive, learning goal. In which case how do we help our learners to develop one? Do we watch our language to be sure that it shows no doubt in their success? 6. Emotions direct the conscience’s attention! I had to realize that if I want my students to know, for example, cumulative frequency graphs then I have to teach the topic in such a way as they would consider nothing to be more amazing than cumulative frequency graphs. They would have to love them, not just learn them. 7. Uniqueness and types of memory. Each brain has a high degree of plasticity, developing and interacting with experience in ways which are unique to itself. There may be different types of memory involving different pathways in the brain. Only diversity and various strategies for improving recall can accommodate this. 5|Page