Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Uta Frith's work on learning and remembering is tremendously useful for independent school educators, mostly because it provides us with a lexicon for discussions of how our students are learning. Consider the following list.
- episodic memory
- semantic memory
- procedural memory
- working memory
- prospective memory
- implicit learning
- conditioned response
- conditional learning
- explicit learning
How might we incorporate such terminology when writing progress reports or quarterly reports, for example? Should we? Would it involve too much explanation to parents (what each term means, etc.)? Would it be better to keep such a lexicon in-house for awhile?
We may not be neuroscientists, but using the aforementioned terms is probably more useful than conjecturing what interconnections (etc.) the following areas are exhibiting in Suzie or Johnny:
- cerebellum
- basal ganglia
- premotor
- anterior cingulate
- prefrontal cortex
- hippocampus
- frontopolar cortex
- frontal cortex
- entorhinal cortex
- temporal lobes
Even if you're a biology teacher, using such terms would overwhelm parents, to be sure (unless they're neuroscientists!). What is more, even the neuroscientists are trying to figure out just how these areas interrelate, or sometimes don't, and how learning is affected.
What we do know is that the brain is wonderfully complex, and that the ability to learn certain things is predicated on how well-wired these areas of the brain are, how much teachers use activities that encourage use of these areas, and so on. Learning and neuroscience needs to be a partnership of exploration.
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