Research
Resources
"Best Practices in Education"
Keys
to Powerful Teaching & Learning
Unlocking the Potential
in All Our Students and in Our Schools
Keys
to Powerful Learning:
the POWERPOINT
“Best Practices in Education” its philosophies
and practices are based upon the work of Howard Gardner and 32 years of research
from the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s “Project Zero.” This ongoing study has looked into how the brain
works and how students, all students, learn best. The results of these studies have been supported,
published and promoted by the Utah State Board of Education.
What
is Powerful Learning?
Powerful Learning
is quite simply learning that works. The
student actually “gets it.”
Powerful Learning
is learning that is engaging.
Powerful Learning
reaches the greatest depth, speed, and ability to apply.
How
do we create Powerful Learning?
In order to create the rich environment needed
to stimulate powerful learning for all students, current research shows that
all 19 senses need to be stimulated. YES,
19 Senses (not 5): sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, balance, vestibular,
pain, eidetic imagery, temperature, magnetic, ultraviolet, infrared, ionic,
vomeronasal, proximal,
electrica, geogravimetric,
barometric.
Curriculum and instructional strategies need to be based upon being there
input (stimulating as many senses as possible) extended by immersion
and enriched with hands on of the real thing.
In contrast, learning based on secondary input
(print with some video) is inherently brain-antagonistic because it
severely restricts input. The fewer
senses involved, the more difficult the task of learning becomes for all learners.
Current brain research has shown that learning is a product of the creation
of dendrites connecting to neurons in the brain. This complex web of connections is possible
in any brain, but is dependant upon powerful, real world experiences. What
is taken in by the senses (all 19 senses) makes for profound differences
in the structure of the brain. (In other words, the more senses involved,
the more efficiently and successfully the brain is able to work, and
the more dendrites are able to connect in an increasingly complex web.)
Students of today (the Nintendo and video
generation) come to our classes with very little experience of the real
world and thus with minimal conceptual understanding of what makes the world
actually work. (In other words,
their neuro net is limited.) In the past we
could assume that students came to school with a wide range of experiences
of the real world and the concepts and language that come with such experience. But that is not true today.
Today’s students are starved for exposure to
reality. They are coming with a shortage
of experiences with the real world and the concepts and language that accompany
them. They are therefore ill-equipped
to adequately learn from our secondhand sources.
For example, we have known for some time that 80 percent of reading
comprehension depends upon prior knowledge.
In effect, one can only take from a book what one brings to the book.
Books can expand our knowledge but cannot create it from scratch.
Traditional
View of Intelligence
For the past 100 years, intelligence, (based
on the research of Binet and others,) has been
thought of as a general characteristic. That
is, an IQ of 140 is indicative of an all-around smart person.
Intelligence has been taught as a general capacity which every
human possesses to a greater or lesser extent which, for the most part, is
set at birth by genetics.
NOT
TRUE!!!
Multiple
Intelligences
Current research has identified eight (8) intelligences,
(only two of which are focused on in traditional schooling.) One of the truly revolutionary discoveries is
that we all possess portions of each of the intelligences. We each favor certain intelligences as our particular
strengths, but we all possess portions of each. Another revolutionary discovery, at least to
education, is that in order to truly educate a student, any student, all 8 intelligences must be developed.
Verbal/Linguistic
The ability to use
language to convince others of a course of action
Like to write
Spin tall tales or
tell jokes and stories
Have a good memory
for names, places, dates, or trivia
Enjoy reading books
in their spare time
Spell words accurately
and easily
Appreciate nonsense
rhymes and tongue twisters
Like doing crossword
puzzles or playing word games
Emily Dickinson,
William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe
Logical/Mathematical
Compute arithmetic
problems quickly in their head
Enjoy using computers
Ask questions like;
“Where does the universe begin?” “What
happens after we die?” “When did time
begin?”
Play chess, checkers,
or other strategy games, and win
Reason things out
logically and clearly
Devise experiments
to test out things they don’t understand
Stephen Hawking,
Isaac Newton, Marie Curie
Spatial/Mechanical
Spend free time engaged
in art activities
Report clear visual
images when thinking about something
Easily read maps,
charts, and diagrams
Draw accurate representations
of people or things
Like it when you
show movies, slides, or photographs
Enjoy doing jigsaw
puzzles or mazes
Daydream a lot
Bodily/Kinesthetic
Do well in competitive
sports
Move, twitch, tap,
or fidget while sitting in a chair
Engage in physical
activities such as swimming, biking, hiking, or skateboarding
Need to touch people
when they talk to them
Enjoy scary amusement
rides
Demonstrate skill
in a craft like woodworking, sewing, or carving
Cleverly mimic other
people’s gestures, & behaviors
Michael Jordan, Jim
Carey, Wilma Rudolph
Musical
Play a musical instrument
Remember melodies
to songs
Tell you when a musical
note is off key
Say they need to
have music on in order to study
Collect records or
tapes
Sing songs to themselves
Keep time rhythmically
to music
Mozart, Ella Fitzgerald,
George Gershwin
Interpersonal
Have lots of friends
Socialize a great
deal at school or around the neighborhood
Seem to be “street-smart”
Get involved in after-school
group activities
Serve as the “family
mediator” when disputes arise
Enjoy playing groups
games with other students
Have lots of empathy
for the feelings of others
Nelson Mandela, Mahatma
Gandhi, Ronald Reagan
Intrapersonal
Display a sense of
independence or a strong will
React with strong
opinions when controversial topics are being discussed
Seem to live in their
own private, inner world
Like to be alone
to pursue some interest, or hobby
Seem to have a deep
sense of self-confidence
March to the beat
of a different drummer in their style of dress, their behavior, or their general attitude
Motivate themselves
to do well on independent projects
Mother Teresa, Victor
Frankl, C. S. Lewis
Naturalist
Communion with nature
Caring for, taming,,
and interacting with living creatures
Sensitivity to nature’s
“flora”
Recognize and classify
members of a species
Growing things
Appreciating the
impact of nature on the self (and the self of nature)
Rachel Carson, Henry
David Thoreau, John Muir
Each of us is born with all of these intelligences,
but individuals tend to develop those valued most by their culture (home,
school, church, community.) They also
tend to favor those that most closely fit their own personal mental wiring
(learning style.) To truly prepare a student to be successful in life
(and isn’t that the big goal of education anyway?)
ALL students need to develop ALL their intelligences. If we are to
achieve Powerful Learning, we must keep foremost in our minds that powerful
learning (greatest depth, speed, and ability to apply) occurs when learners
are able to operate consistent with their mental wirings. Thus, we must recommit ourselves to the idea
that schools must remold themselves to fit students rather than expecting
students to change how they learn to fit with how schools teach.
Impossible Dream?
Not Really! But
it does require a new look, a new direction and a paradigm shift on the part
of students, teachers, parents, administrators and lawmakers. So where do we start? It starts with fully understanding and embracing
the foregoing research. We also need
to take a serious look at our instructional planning and goals, and aligning
our instruction with higher order thinking skills and valid assessment tools.
Process
of Instructional Planning (WestED RTEC)
Traditional Practice
Select a topic from
the curriculum
Design instructional
activities
Design and give an
assessment
Give grade or feedback
Move onto new topic
Standards-based
Practice
Select standards
from among those students need to know
Design an assessment
through which students will have an
opportunity to demonstrate those things
Decide what learning
opportunities students will need to learn those things (available resources)
Plan instruction
to assure that each student has adequate opportunity to learn
Use data from assessment
to give feedback, re-teach or move to next level
Aligning
Assessment Tools & Achievement Targets (Wiggins &
McTighe Understanding by Design)
 |
 |
 |
 |