WORLD OF LEARNING: LEARNING, TEACHING, WIRING

"Smart Money in Tough Times: Improving Teacher Quality and Helping Kids Learn" Education Week 2/23/10

This article struck a chord due to my attendance of the Learning and the Brain Conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Friday and Saturday last week. One of the best presenters was John Medina, author of Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School--a book I now have on my "to-read" list.

Medina, a developmental molecular biologist at the University of Washington and director of Seattle Pacific University's Brain Center for Applied Learning, gave a wide-ranging, witty and provocative talk entitled, "Brain Rules: The Meaning of Memory, Intelligence and Stress for Schools."

He cautioned that the study of the human brain is a field in its infancy, so we cannot really say with any assurance what brain science tells about best educational practices. To quote from Brain Rules: "In truth, if we ever fully understood how the human brain knew how to pick up a glass of water, it would represent a major achievement."

However, Medina told us, we can say with some confidence that every brain is wired differently. That is one of the things that makes research so complex. It also is one of the connections I made to Mary-Dean Barringer's "Smart Money" piece in Education Week. Barringer posits that "20 percent of students struggle to learn." Furthermore, "many...struggle unnecessarily, simply because they learn differently—their brains aren’t 'wired' the way their classmates' are."

Medina went on to discuss what he called the "edge" of learning, when a student advances from one level to another, and how a critical gap can take place there when the student does not really understand new ideas, leaving "holes in conceptualization." Perhaps the mark of a good teacher, he hypothesized, is one who understands how his charges are understanding, and can adjust curriculum accordingly.

While Barringer argues that economic savings would flow from teachers "trained to understand, identify, and address learning variation," Medina made the intriguing case that perhaps one day we will identify people with the aptitude for such training. How? He referred to psychology's Theory of Mind, an ability to put oneself into other minds through the awareness that we have very different minds, thinking very different thoughts. If we could quantify that, and then find people with strong Theory of Mind, we might predict they would be good teachers.

In a sense, aren't we already quantifying? Don't most professionals dealing with autism make the assumption that part of that diagnosis is a lack of Theory of Mind?

The teachers we remember with admiration are usually those who were not only enthusiastic about their subject, but who were also truly empathetic. They understood if we were "getting it" or not. More importantly, they understood why and did something about it. They knew that all brains are not "wired" the same way.