Page 27 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

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How the Brain Learns:24 An emerging scientific model
What follows is an emerging scientific model for how our brain learns.25
If we compare two common learning tasks that most people engage in, we begin to appreciate how the brain uses different learning systems to achieve different learning outcomes. Learning to read and write is a very different task from learning to drive a car. However, from a cognitive perspective, they are both equally demanding, albeit in very different ways.
Interestingly, after only a few hours in the driver’s seat, the learner driver is managing the driving process with relative ease, despite the nervousness of the parent or instructor. After the same amount of time, our emergent reader–writer is still struggling to remember the shape of just a few letters of the alphabet. Driving takes about 50hours to comprehend and apply, while reading and writing take 2,000–4,000 hours, resulting in a significantly variable distribution curve of success.
What could explain the vast difference in the speed and success of these two learning processes? And no, it has little to do with the respective ages of the learners or their desire to learn - initially both are very keen to achieve success. One of these learning processes appears to be significantly more efficient, while the other is quite inefficient.
As well as this conundrum, we also need a better understanding of creativity and how this is powered by our imagination. Can we all be creative across all contexts, or are we equally creative but in different contexts? Is creativity about our attitude, or is it an inherited capability, or both/neither? Why does creativity apparently decrease as we age, and how does creativity relate to us using our imagination? What this resource attempts to do is create a scientific model for learning. The model can then be applied to the Learning Process to improve its efficiency and effectiveness and thus improve the quality of the learning experience.
Our ability to implement the Learning Process efficiently and effectively underpins our capacity to survive. Our ability to survive depends on our unique human capability to be able to make increasingly accurate predictions, and therefore predict what our future needs and opportunities may be. By being able to make predictions successfully we can anticipate and prepare for those predicted, possible futures. This capacity is unique to humans, as only we have all four integrated learning systems that enable us to predict and plan.
24 The chapter three summary video can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqeWni42pxs if you are reading the book otherwise click on the video icon at the top of the page
25 A scientific model is a proposal that has some evidence and justifications that underpins some semblance of possibility as a theory. It requires additional research but it does explain a range of observations that previously were inexplicable. This proposal is a scientific model of how the brain may learn which is quite exciting because up to now there has not been a scientific proposal that explains how we learn.
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