Southview Teacher and KidMin Training, Nov. 4, 2023 - Maximizing Learning

Maximizing Student Learning

________________ learning consists of ________________ methods and ________________ norms that promote deep ____________________, reasoning, study, peer-to-peer interaction, and instructor inquiry into student thinking all with the goal of producing a ________________ understanding of Biblical truths and leading to the ________________ Biblical behavior.

Educational research has shown that Active Learning methodology leads to significantly better learning. I would like for us to get away from the notion of "Learning Styles" i.e. visual, aural, kinesthetic, etc. Many would say these have been debunked as having no tangible effect on learning outcomes and I do not know of any teacher trainers that are currently using learning styles to design their training. There are some nice ideas in the field, but they simply are not going to make a big difference in your teaching. Instead, there are some common threads amongst all learners. If we can learn to make sense of these common threads, then our teaching will become far more effective.

For the purposes of this work, Active Learning is based upon three pedagogical pillars, deep engagement with meaningful theological questions, collaborative processing of theological concepts, and instructor inquiry into student understanding.

Some Basic Learning Theory

Information Processing is a theoretical construct used to help describe the process by which the human brain receives, stores, and retrieves information. For the purposes of this seminar, we only need a basic understanding of this process. A basic understanding of the human brain and cognition will allow you to frame the way in which you present students with new ideas and help them to better remember and apply these ideas.

Maximizing Memory Given Our Individual Limitations.

When considering memory, it is sometimes helpful to think about the so-called _________-___________ model of memory. In the two-store model of memory, memory is broken into three distinct regions: sensory, short-term, and long-term memory. As teachers, our goal is to get students to effectively move material from _________________ to ____________________ to ______________________.

If we are aiming to get information into long-term memory then we need to understand the bottlenecks. One bottleneck occurs when moving from the sensory system into short-term memory. Items like attention span, distractions, and focus all impact the move from sensory to short-term memory. On a basic level issues moving from sensory to short-term memory are handled using behavioral and classroom management. I don't want to go too deep down the path of behavioral and classroom management because so much of that is dependent on age, location, and teacher personality. What works for one person in one classroom with one teacher may not work for another. This is also the area where things like visual, aural, and tactile may play a small role but this really is not an issue of learning! This is an issue of moving information.

The short-term bottleneck

The first real area where people often have learning issues is in their short-term memory. The short-term memory of the human brain is capable of storing a limited amount of information for a very short period of time. As an exercise, we can test our short-term memory.

• Question: How many data chunks were you able to remember?

• Question: What steps can you take to remember more of the pieces of data?

Chunking is the process of joining pieces of data together in order to reduce the workload on short-term memory. Often times, someone who learns fast will learn fast because they are very good at chunking. In general, most people are not great at chunking and so a teacher should help students chunk and recognize the limitation of short-term memory. Scripture memory is one place where chunking can be used.

When helping a student memorize a verse don't ask the student to focus on more than 7 chunks at a time (chunks not words).

• Question: How might you chunk and teach Psalm 25:4? ("Show me Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths.")

It is worth noting that often songs that people make up to memorize something are actually chunked automatically into less than seven units. However, we must be careful, as for some the addition of music can create bottleneck issues moving from sensory to short-term memory.

Information in short-term memory can then be moved into long-term memory. The process of moving between short and long-term memory is not something that I want to dig into too deeply. I tend to adopt what is called a spreading activation model of long-term memory but in reality, what matters most is that we want to help students effectively retrieve information from long-term memory.

Maximizing the Usefulness of Long-Term Memory

In order to help students effectively retrieve information from long-term memory it is useful to consider what are called concept maps. A full explanation of concept maps is outside the scope of this discussion but some basics are very useful. A concept map is a diagram that depicts the connections between pieces of information. Oversimplifying, spreading activation postulates that when one concept is connected with an associated concept students will more quickly recognize and retrieve.

The following is one example of a concept map.

So, suppose we want students to answer the question, "Where was the temple located?" It may be helpful to prime the question with phrases like "Solomon, David's son built the temple, and the Ark of the Covenant was placed in the Temple. In what city did Solomon build the temple?" The idea is that we give students as many opportunities to make connections between pieces of information.

• Question: Imagine teaching a lesson on Joseph providing food to his brothers, construct a concept map of that topic.

• Question: How might a concept map help you organize your material so that students will be more likely to move information from short-term to long-term memory?

• Question: How will you know what connections your students are prepared to make in their own conceptual maps?