The Learning Brain

The essence of the modern revolution in education, begun 60-70 years ago with the implications of Piaget’s and Bruner’s research, is to play out an ugly truth (ugly, that is, for naive teachers): students are not blank slates. They bring firm views and beliefs to the table that must be engaged if in-depth understanding is to occur. Why? Many of those conceptions are mistaken: much of modern disciplinary understanding is counter-intuitive to naïve learners. (You can find a great summary of research on misconceptions in science and math, for example, here and here).

Thus taking the time to probe – whether in a class of 200 or around a table with 12 – is the essential instructional move of the successful teacher. It is not time lost but time gained: we won’t have to keep re-teaching and being frustrated by surprisingly poor results on tests of transfer.