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Articles Conference Reviews |
Session F9This is Your Brain on Writing When we come to know something, we Have performed an act that is as biological As when we digest something. Henry Plotkin “The Biological Basis of Learning” (qtd. in Robert Leamnson, “Thinking About Thinking and Learning” 11).
This session began in an interactive way because each participant was given a colored index card and asked to record “one thing you find most troubling or challenging when you’re teaching.” They explained that we’d return to these issues at the end of the session and apply some of the insights gleaned from the presenters about the possible applications of brain-based research. The woman in front of me wrote: “Students TXT-messaging in class.” Mailee Ramesh, Roanoke College, Salem, VA, “How Learning Changes the Brain: A Biological Perspective” Q: (Mailee Ramesh) “Why do we have such large brains compared to other living creatures?” A: They compensate for all of our other inadequacies, such as inability to run like a cheetah, the disadvantage of size proportionate to an elephant, our auditory abilities compared to bats, etc. Ramesh offered a brief introduction to brain biology in general and neuroplasty, defined as the study of the changing nature of the brain. It turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks. Current brain research can render these neural changes in brain maps, black and white x-rays that biologists are able to read. Ramesh held up the x-ray from her own MRI, which, from a distance, I could see showed several angles of her brain. My notes are sketchy, but I have a bulleted list of three principles I extracted from her talk:
Denise Adkins, Roanoke College, Salem, VA, “Deep Learning: A Psychologist’s Perspective” Denise Adkins was the psychologist on the panel. She discussed the affective dimensions of learning and how it helps to articulate tacit knowing. Like Ramesh, she emphasized that it is possible to change neural architecture. Her talk included a lot of Q & A, with questions thrown out and audience members responding with a show of hands. For example, she asked, “How many of you like to write?” (Quite a few hands shot up). “How many of you hate to have to sit in a chair and write? (A whole lot of hands shot up). She said our students are nervous, scared, anxious and negative emotions detract from our students’ ability to learn. When students are over-ridden with anxiety, they often exhibit other common defense mechanisms such as anger, sullenness, or a lazy, bored demeanor. She said, “If they put themselves out there and they fail” they know they will feel terrible, so they play it cool, and exhibit a lot of the mannerisms that irritate and frustrate teachers. She also noted that bad experiences are the ones we tend to remember. They etch deeper grooves in our brains. She said when we mark the same mistakes over and over again in a student’s paper, we’re actually reinforcing negative neural networks; in short, we’re ensuring that students will continue to make these same mistakes. Below is a handout provided in the session. “How do we help students to have more positive experiences with learning?”
Gordon Marsh, Roanoke College, Salem, VA, “This is Your Brain on WAC: Zull, Bean, Music, and Writing” Gordon Marsh spoke as a Music Theory professor who earned his MFA as a Composer and offered a WAC conversion narrative about how he used to teach as he was taught. After reading John Bean’s book about writing-to-learn activities, he now provides his students with some instruction on different facets he finds essential for success in his discipline--error detection, part writing, and prose writing. He briefly notes several studies that have changed the way he approaches his work as a music theory teacher. He strongly recommended Thinking About Teaching and Learning: Developing Habits of Learning With First-Year College and University Students, by Robert Leamnson, Professor of Biology and Director of Multidisciplinary Studies at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He also mentioned an interesting study conducted at the New England Conservatory in which professors asked their students to choose four different articles that highlighted “the mysteries of mastery”--in which students read articles about becoming good at something (not necessarily music). They were reading about the challenge of mastery in general. He argued that students “were learning to write by reading.” Paul Hanstedt, Roanoke College, Salem, VA, “This is Your Brain on Writing: The Implications of James Zull’s The Art of Changing Your Brain for the Writing Classroom” Paul Hanstedt began with a funny, self-deprecating, off-the-cuff joke that made the room laugh. He then said that “neuroscience confirms a lot of what we already know…” which is the overall comforting sense I got in this session. The theme of the talk might be “networks that fire together, wire together” (and Hanstedt added, you gotta love science that rhymes”). He offered “4 Reasons Why Our Students Cling to The Five Paragraph Theme” in light of brain research. Some of those reasons were:
He concluded by offering suggestions that implement principles learned from current brain research:
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