We Are All Learners but We Learn in Different Ways

8/12/2019 We Are All Learners but We Learn in Different Ways

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BIRMINGHAM LEAAfro-Caribbean and Asian Achievement Groups

WE ARE ALL LEARNERS ...

BUT WE LEARN INDIFFERENT WAYSMartineau Centre, HarborneFebruary 10th 2005THIS LISTING INCLUDES SOME SLIDES THAT WERE IN-TENDED TO BE USED, BUT WERENT. A FEW MAY NOT BEIN EXACTLY THE ORDER THEY WERE SHOWN.

2005 The 21st Century Learning Initiative

For additional reference, please see the followingtwo articles, both available on the Initiatives web-site.

Adolescence; a critical Evolutionary Adaptation

When will we ever learn?

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Te 21st Century Learning Initiative

A1


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E403

Criticizing parents doesn't improve their ca-pacity to respond positively to their children

... I believe that the real source of many par-

enting difficulties is the separation of work

and home, of public and private, which has

had the result of isolating mothers in theirhomes without string networks of adult sup-

port.

Women face the artificial choice of devoting

themselves to their working lives, or to theirbabies, when the evidence is they want both.

Sue Gerhardt

"Why Love Matters:

How affection shapes the human brain"

2004


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B25

Research from the Kellogg Foundation, con-

ducted in the State of Michigan, into the

predictors of success at the age of 18

"[This] compared the relative influence that

family, community and other factors have on

student performance. Amazingly it con-

cluded that factors outside the school are four

times more important in determining a

student's success on standardized tests than

are factors within the school,"

"The most significant predictor was thequantity and quality of dialogue in the child's

home before the age of five."

Quoted at The White House Conference

on Early Childhood Development and Learning

April 1997


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B26

S Bowler, H Gintes and M Osborne in 'The Deter-

minants of Earnings: A Behavioral Approach",

published in The Journal of Economic Literature,

vol..XXXIX pp1137-76, December 2001

* Over 50% of variance in earning capacity of indi-

viduals cannot be accounted for by educational attain-

ment, cognitive ability, experience and other recog-

nized and measured variables

* In understanding wage differences, socio-economicbackground, years of schooling and standard IQ tests

are not as significant as motivational traits of industri-

ousness, delayed gratification, punctuality, persever-

ance, leadership and adaptability

* Parental education, income and occupation remain

significant predictors of the earning capacity of chil-dren; however, the association between parental back-

ground and earnings is not explained mainly by IQ or

years of schooling

* Economic returns to schooling (higher labor market

earnings for individuals) appears to be mediated

mainly through non-cognitive ability rather than cogni-tive ability

Note also Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Literacy" and

the marshmallow test.


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B5

By the time children reach the age of formal

schooling, they have forged elaborate learn-

ing skills and their minds are prodigiously

complex repositories of knowledge. The feel-ing that a parent has, on watching a young

child grow, that "my child is brilliant, quite

possibly even a genius, is entirely valid. Each

child is extraordinary. Nature has equipped

every child with learning capabilities that far

exceed anyone's ability to describe them.

Unfortunately, the education system - based

as it is on out-dated, incorrect, over simpli-

fied, psychological principles, all to often

collides catastrophically with children's natu-ral learning skills, teaches them to mistrust

and repress those skills, and moves countless

numbers of children through 15,000 hours of

systematic training in learning not to learn.

Sylvia FarnhamSchooling

1990


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B24

Tell me, and I forget;

show me, and I remember;let me do and I understand.

Chinese Proverb


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E140

Social Capital

This was first defined in 1916 by L.J.Hanifan inWest Virginia as

"those tangible substances [that] count for most in

the daily lives of people: namely good will, fel-

lowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among

the individuals and families who make up a social

unit ... The individual is helpless socially, if left to

himself ... If he comes into contact with his neigh-

bor, and they with other neighbors, there will be

an accumulation of social capital, which may im-

mediately satisfy his social needs and which may

bear a social , potentiality sufficient to the sub-

stantial improvement of Jiving conditions in thewhole community. The community as a whole

will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts,

while the individual will find in his associations

the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the

fellowship of his neighbors."

Quoted inBowling Aloneby Robert Putnam, 2001


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E60

Every 10 minutes of commuting time cuts all

forms of civic engagement by 10%

Why social capital matters

Research has begun to show how powerfully

social capital, or its absence, affects the well-

being of individuals, organizations, and nations.

Economic studies demonstrate that social capital

makes workers more productive, firms more com-petitive, and nations more prosperous. Psycho-

logical research indicates that abundant social

capital makes individuals less prone to depression

and more inclined to help others. Epidemiological

reports show that social capital decreases the rate

of suicide, colds, heart attacks, strokes, and

cancer, and improves individuals' ability to fightor recover from illnesses once they have struck.

Sociology studies suggest that social capital re-

duces crime, juvenile delinquency, teenage preg-

nancy, child abuse, welfare dependency, and drug

abuse, and increases student test scores and

graduation rates.

From Saguara Seminars:

Civic Engagement in America, 2001


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The work of Jordan Peterson and Alan Fiske (1999)

suggests four skill sets for human transactions

- Communal Sharing (the hunter/gatherer)

- Authority Ranking (relationship of inequal

ity)

- Equality Matching (scratch my back, and

Ill scratch yours)

- Market Pricing (bartering)

...(some) evidence that those four modes are mani-

fested in maturing children in the order they are pre-

sented, in a spontaneous, uncoached manner starting

roughly with three year olds for Communal Sharing

and proceeding to eight year olds for Market Pricing.

Driven

Lawrence & Nahria

2002

E392


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A12

What was your most powerful learningexperience?

How did this shape the way you think

about your own learning?


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A13

Learning and schooling are notsynonymous.


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"Learning ... that reflective activity which

enables the learner to draw upon previous ex-perience to understand and evaluate the pres-

ent, so as to shape future action and formu-

late new knowledge."


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A21

Evolutionary Intelligence

"Human beings, together with all their likes

and dislikes, their senses and sensibilities,

did not fall ready-made from the sky; nor

were they born with minds and bodies that

bare no imprints of the history of then- spe-

cies. Many of our abilities and susceptibili-ties are specific adaptations to ancient envi-

ronmental problems, rather than separate

manifestations of a general intelligence for

all Seasons."

John D. Barrow

The Artful Universe, 1996


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A22

Our bodies and minds are not of recent

origin. They are the direct consequence ofmillions of years of surviving in Africa and

adapting to the dramatic changes this conti-

nent has seen in the course of the last five

million years. Africa has shaped not only our

physical bodies, but the societies within

which we live. The way we interact today ata social and cultural level is in many ways the

result of organisational skills developed by

our hominid ancestors in Africa over millions

of years.

Cradle of Humankind

Brett Hilton-Barber and Lee R. Berger,

South Africa, 2002


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Infants weaned on T.V. cannot con-

centrate

Commenting on the research by Dr. Dimitri

Christakis of the Childrens Hospital in Seattle

on the impact of T.V. on young children, the

Guardian stated; Children under two should

not watch television because it increases therisk of them developing attention deficit disor-

ders. Quoting the Journal of Paediatrics,

Watching too much television increased the

childs likelihood of being unable to pay atten-

tion in school. For every hour of T.V. watched

daily by children at ages 1 to 3 the risk of atten-

tion problems at age 7 increases by nearly

10%

(current estimates in the US suggest that be-

tween 4 and 12% of youngsters suffer from

ADHD. At present three-year-olds in the US

watch an average of 3.6 hours of TV a day.)

Seattle Times 5th April 2004

The Guardian 6th April 2004

E368


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E198

Upside Down and Inside Out

A possible description of the assumption we

have inherited about systems of learning,

namely, that older students should be taken

more seriously than younger students and

that the only learning that really matters is

that which is formal. This presentation will

call for these assumptions to be reversed in

the light of modern understanding about how

humans learn.


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A25

Key Issue 1

Pregnancy and the Developing Brain

"There is no period of parenthood with a

more direct and formative effect on a child's

brain, than the nine months of pregnancy

leading to the birth of a full term baby. Themother's emotions affect the foetus, and so do

her general habits and the parent's physical

environment. (Probably) half of birth defects

are due to avoidable exposure to medicinal

drugs, recreational drugs, alcohol, tobacco

smoke, and toxic agents at work and at

home."

Marian Diamond

The Magic Trees of the Mind, 1998


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Key Issue I

"We have unequivocal evidence that breast-

fed children are physically stronger than non-

breast-fed children, that they have greater

verbal, quantitative, and memory abilities as

pre-schoolers and significantly higher I.Q.

scores during their school years. This is duenot simply to healthy substances in the milk,

as many assume, but also to the early mother-

child relationship that breast-feeding im-

plies."

Karl Zinsmesiter,The American Enterprise, May/June 1998


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A27

Key Issue 1

Mechanisation? Big Brother?

"Almost three hundred American employers,

including Aetna, Eastman Kodak, Cigna and

Home Depot, now offer "Lactation Support

Rooms" where female employees can nowtake regular breaks to attach electric pumps

to their breasts in order to collect milk in

bottles for their infants in day care. Some

companies, aside from the 'pumping rooms',

have "lactation consultants" to help mothers

solve breast-feeding problems."

Original quotation in There's No Place Like Work

by Brian Robertson, and re-quoted in Nasty, Brutish

and Short, an article by Richard Lowry inNational

Review, May 2001


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Why Love Matters: How Affection

shapes a babys brain

Our earliest experiences are not simply laid

down as memories or influences, they are trans-

lated into precise physiological patters of re-sponse in the brain that then set the neurologi-

cal rules for how we deal with our feelings and

those of other people for the rest of our lives.

Its not nature or nurture, but both. How we are

treated as babies and toddlers determines the

way in which what were born with turns intowhat we are.

Sue Gerhardt 2004

E365


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E397

"Work is not just about getting paid. Indeed,

much work in our culture is not paid at all,

for exmple, raising children, cooking meals

... helping a neighbour who has undergone a

trauma ... The very word 'job' fits the Newto-

nian parts mentality. In a mechanical view of

the universe, a job is all one can hope for.'Job' denotes a discreet task, and one that is

not very joyful. Dr Johnson defined 'job' as:

'petty, piddling work; a piece of chance

work"

"In contrast, work is about a 'role' we play in

the unfolding drama of the universe. (The

word 'rolle' in old French comes from the roll

of parchment an actor reads from)."

Matthew Fox"The Reinvention of Work" 1995


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A41


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A37

Key Issue 1

Adolescence

Adolescence is currently seen as a "problem"

in Western Society; that excess of hormones

leaves the rapidly maturing child unaware of

its new physical strength, and confused as tohow to direct it. While modern parents and

teachers find adolescence disruptive, earlier

cultures directed this energy in ways that de-

veloped those skills on which the community

was dependent for its ongoing survival. In

doing so it also ensured that young peoplelearned, and practiced, what was seen as ap-

propriate social behavior.


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The New Adolescent

We need a new developmental perspective

on adolescence. AS puberty (a physical state)

occurs ever earlier, its no longer in synchroni-

sation with brain development (emotional and

intellectual states). Between childhood and

adolescence there is a stage of development

that Sigmund Freud called the latency

period, when boys and girls turned their backs

on each other and formed special attachments

with same-sex peers. It was a time when they

gathered physical and psychological strength to

explore the world, becoming confident learners

and confident socially ... marshalling their

forces to be able to go into puberty.

E389


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What we are seeing is a short-circuiting of the

latency period, when youngsters used to de-

velop a sense of who they were, and how they

fitted into the world. Today some younger

people merely dip their toes into the latency

period before a combination of peer pressure,

and unrelenting marketing machine and their

own physiology lures them into the kaleido-

scope of adolescence ... combined with time-

poor parents, lack of ritual and tradition, spiri-

tual anorexia, mixed media messages, higher

material expectations, academic requirements,

this makes the adolescents of 2004 arguably the

most vulnerable generation Australia has ever

seen.

The Age, 30.4.04

E389b


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A39

Two of the findings inBecoming Adult: How Teenagers

Prepare for the World of Work (Csikszentmihalyi, and

Schenider 2000) are highly pertinent to Cognitive Ap-

prenticeship:

- Students who get the most out of school -

and have the highest future expectations - are

those who find school more "playlike" than

"worklike".

- Clear vocational goals and good work expe-

riences do not guarantee a smooth transition

to adult work. What do are engaging activities

- with intense involvement regardless of con-

tent. These are essential for building the opti-

mism and resilience crucial to satisfying work

lives.


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Rich Learning Environments;

(i) The Home

"In all societies since the beginning of

time, adolescents have learned to become

adults by observing, imitating and inter-

acting with grown ups round them. The

self is shaped and honed by feedback

from men and women who already know

who they are and can help the young

person find out who he or she is going to

be. It is startling that ... in a sample of

2,700 reports ... the average adolescent ...spend(s) approximately five minutes a

day interacting exclusively with their fa-

thers."

Csikszentmihalyi, 1984

E370


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Crazy by Design

We have suspected that there is something

going on in the brain of the adolescent, ap-

parently involuntarily, that is forcing apart

the child/parent relationship. What neurolo-

gists are discovering challenges the conven-

tional belief held until only a year or so ago,

that brain formation is largely completed by

the age of twelve. Adolescence is a period of

profound structural change, in fact the

changes taking place in the brain during ado-

lescence are so profound, they may rivalearly childhood as a critical period of devel-

opment, wrote Barbara Strauch in 2003.

The teenage brain, far from being read-

made, undergoes a period of surprisingly

complex and crucial development. The ado-

lescent brain, she suggests, is crazy bydesign.

E411


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Adolescence; a critical EvolutionaryAdaptation.

In accepting that the impact of the neurologi-

cal changes in the teenage brain makes them

crazy by design it can be seen that adoles-

cence is actually a critical evolutionary adap-

tation that is essential to our species sur-

vival. It is an internal mechanism that pre-

vents children from becoming mere clones of

their parents. Adolescence is probably a

deep-seated biological adaptation that makes

it essential for the young to go off, either towar, to hunt, to explore, to colonize, or to

make love - in other words, to prove them-

selves, so as to start a life of their own. As

such it is adolescence which forces individu-

als in every generation to think beyond their

own self-imposed limitations, and to exceedtheir parents aspirations.

E412


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Adolescence and Apprenticeshipforms of learning

Thomas Hine writing in 1999 on the rise and

fall of the American teenager noted, the

principle reason high schools now enrol

nearly all teenagers is that we cant imagine

what else to do with them. That is a shock-

ing conclusion by a man who spent years

studying the issue. Modern society, by being

so concerned for the well being of adults tries

desperately to ignore the adolescents need to

explore and do things for themselves, bygiving them ever more to do in school. It is as

if modern society is trying to outlaw adoles-

cence by over schooling children. That is not

education. There is a frightening manmade

hole in the desirable experience for adoles-

cence - there are simply not enough opportu-nities for them to learn from doing things for

themselves in a modern society.

E413


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E205

Upside Down and Inside Out

A possible description of the assumption we

have inherited about systems of learning,

namely, that older students should be taken

more seriously than younger students and

that the only learning that really matters is

that which is formal. This presentation will

call for these assumptions to be reversed in

the light of modern understanding about how

humans learn.


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A42

INTELLECTUAL WEANING

("Do it yourself")

SUBSIDIARITY:

It is wrong for a superior body to retain the

right to make decisions than an inferior body

is already able to make for itself.


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S38

"We have not inherited this world from our

parents. We have been loaned it by our chil-

dren."

"We are prophets of a future not our own."

"There aren't any great people out there any

more - there's only us."


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S30

"This is what we are about. We plant seeds

that one day will grow. We water seeds al-

ready planted, knowing that they hold future

promise. We lay foundations that will need

further development. We provide yeast that

produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

"We cannot do everything, and there is asense of liberation in realising that. This en-

ables us to do something, and enables us to

do it very well It may be incomplete, but it is

a beginning, a step along the way, an oppor-

tunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the

rest. We may never see the end result, but thatis the

difference between the master builder, and

the worker.

"We are workers, not master builders, minis-

ters, not Messiahs. We are prophets of afuture not our own".


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The Attraction of Hard Work

"Why should meeting high challenges with

high skills be something we enjoy doing for its

own sake, even without extrinsic rewards? The

reason does not seem to be that we are brain-

washed as children or socialised into enjoying

difficult things. It is more likely that we were

born with a preference for acting at our fullest

potential. Perhaps enjoying mastery and confi-

dence is evolutionarily adaptive, just as it is

adaptive to find pleasure in food and sex. In the

development of the human nervous system a

connection must have been established be-

tween hard work and a sense of pleasure even

when the work was not strictly necessary. It is

this connection that makes creativity and prog-

ress possible."

Becoming Adult; How Teenagers Prepare for the

World of WorkCsikszentmihalyi and Schneider, 2000

E371


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E207

You can take man out of the Stone Age but

you can't take the Stone Age out of man

Harvard Business Review

It is not the strongest of the species that sur-

vives, or the most intelligent. It is the one

most adaptable to change.

Charles Darwin

Psychology will be based on a new founda-

tion, that of the necessary acquirement of

each mental power and capacity by gradua-

tion. Light will be thrown on the origins of

man and his history.

Charles Darwin

Evolution in Mind.

Henry Plotkin 1997


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We Are All Learners but We Learn in Different Ways