Page 28 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

16
An Emerging Model – Four+1 Learning Systems
In this emerging scientific model for how the human brain learns it is proposed that our brain has four integrated learning systems:26
1. From the moment we are born we have to learn to interpret the sensory data our bodies are receiving from our 16+ sensory systems. The process of how a baby makes sense of this multifaceted data about our world, using cells in our brain called neurons is complex and not well understood.
2. To learn to speak and listen we make use of the brain’s sequencing ability to sequence and copy the mouth and tongue movements of our primary caregivers as well as the sounds that are interpreted by our brain. This capacity is achieved mostly using neurons but also some specialised glial cells in the brain.
3. Building ideas, concepts and concept frameworks, makes use of the tripartite relationship of two cell types (neurons and specialised brain cells called astrocytes) in our brain across our neural synapses.
Resource 6: The 4+1 Learning Systems
4. Creativity allows us to associate combinations of knowledge elements, ideas, concepts and concept frameworks to build new knowledge, ideas, concepts and concept frameworks. This process is orchestrated via our brainwave activity, that is in turn managed by structures in the brain known as the amygdala and the hippocampus.
+1. Learning via rote is the +(1) learning system. In this model, humans very recently adapted the sequencing process to allow us to carry out rote learning (defined as learning by repetition, in our mind). This recent adaptation is not very efficient as it occurred primarily due to the dramatic increase in rote learning in the population as most people learned to read and write over the last 250+ years.27 Rote learning is the exception to many of the rules that govern our other learning systems.
We will unpack these 4 +(1) learning systems with more detail over the next four chapters to see how are learning systems allow us to develop our inner voice, and enable us to consciously think, learn and remember.
26. A 400pp literature review “Whatever! Were we Thinking?” covering the scientific background to these four+1 learning systems can be downloaded from http://www.marktreadwell.com/products.
27. Roser, M. (2015). Literacy. Retrieved from http://ourworldindata.org/data/education-knowledge/literacy/