a cognitive model for educators

8/13/2019 A Cognitive Model for Educators

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A Cognitive Model for Educators:

Attention, Encoding, Storage, Retrieval

So how dopeople learn? What are the mechanics of memory? Can wedistill thousands of articles and books to something that is manageable,

digestible, and applicable to our classrooms?

Yes. In brief, the cognitive process of learning has four basic stages:

Attention: the filter through which we experience the world Encoding: how we process what our attention admits into the mind Storage: what happens once information enters the brain Retrieval: the recall of that information or behavior

Almost everything we do or know, we learn through these stages, for ourlearning is memory, and the bulk of our memory is influenced by thesefour processes: what we pay attention to, how we encode it, whathappens to it in storage, and when and how we retrieve it.

Heres a closer look at each:

Attention:We are bombarded by sensory information, but we attend to only a smallamount of it. We constantly process sights, sounds, smells, and more,but our attention selects only a small fraction of it for conscious thought.

Take a moment wherever you are right now and listen silently. Whatsounds do you hear? The whirring of air conditioning? The murmur of


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voices nearby? Or perhaps traffic--cars or people? Or a light breezethrough trees? Or a ticking clock? Chances are some of these sounds arenearly always present where you are, but our attention attenuates them,it filters them out, and it amplifies, instead, what is important to us. Thepieces of information we amplify--like the sounds we just paid attention

to: the traffic, the voices, etc--they are what reach our brains and whateventually sit in our memory. In this way, attention is a process ofselection; it is the gateway to what we think about and remember. Inshort: what we pay attention to is what we learn.

Encoding:Once information passes through the gateway of attention, we encode itwith other information we already know, either writing new experiencesinto our mind or attaching new experience to old.

Consider again the sounds we heard a moment ago. First, we noticedthem. Then, we identified them--but only because we could attach them

to prior knowledge. Weve heard air conditioning before. We know whattraffic sounds like, or the murmur of people. Because we had this priorknowledge, we could understand and attach the new sounds tosomething we already know--thereby developing new knowledge.Imagine you had never seen or heard of a fan. How would youunderstand the whooshing, whirring sound coming from the ceiling ventor window? Or, if you had never seen a car on a road, how could youexplain the sounds of traffic? Because we can contextualize these soundsthrough our prior knowledge, we can remember and understand them.This is how encoding works: it attaches new information to old

information.Storage:Once weve encoded information, though, it has something of a life cycleof its own inside the brain. This is storage. Assuming we never thinkabout the new information again, the brain undergoes a kind of triage,rehearsing some information on its own, but forgetting most. Theconsolidation and rehearsal of selected important information in thebrain happens primarily, it appears, during sleep, but the forgetting ofeverything else happens almost immediately. We'll look into this furtherlater on.

For now, consider the sounds again. If you never actively think of themagain, they will fade over time in your memory. But, if they left a strongimpression on you--if you had a strong response (of interest! of shock!)--then the memory of the sounds will last longer and with more detail thanif you cared little for them. In this way, the duration of the memory instorage depends on the strength of the encoding--and on some elementsof sleep. Again, more on all this in coming posts.

Retrieval:Last is retrieval. (But, sneakily, it is also first...!) When we pullsomething something to mind, we access memories weve created

before. This retrieval of past memories is both the end and the beginningof the learning cycle, for retrieving something from memory brings it


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back into attention, re-encoding it, and starting the cycle of learningagain.

In this way, each time you recall the sound of the air, of the traffic, or ofthe people near you, you encode the experience again, strengthening it,and reinforcing the memory in your brain. While reading this page, youhave encoded the sounds of where you are at least a handful of times.And the more you repeat the process, making it more a part of your priorknowledge, the more likely you will recognize it and direct attention to itat future exposures, retrieving and then re-encoding the memory. In thisway, retrieval is both the end of the cognitive process of learning, andthe beginning!

And so, these four processes--attention, encoding, storage, and retrieval--undergird the learning that happens in all of our schools and classrooms,and the degree to which we understand them (scientifically or intuitively)influences the degree to which we can create the most effective learning

environments. It influences the experiences we create for our students,and it influences how we understand their cognitive behavior in class.This becomes a real and useful, practical tool.

And it raises all kinds of questions:

How do I compel, direct, or invite my students' attention? What do I do to encodeinformation most richly? How can I promote effective storage? What kind of retrieval opportunities do I provide to most aid

retention and transfer?

And more broadly:

How do these functions work? How can I engage them on a daily our courselong basis?

The next handful of posts will delve into each of these questions. We'llexplore the four processes and the factors that influence them, and we'llexamine the implications and opportunities they have for our work. Andso until then, keep an ear to those sounds surrounding you, and see if

you notice changes in what you attend to and how you encode them!

Attention: the "Holy Grail" of Learning

What is attention, and how does it work? Consider the satellite dish:

The signal from every satellite TV channel beams through the air at everymoment. And satellite dishes receive every frequency beamed from

space, but they amplify only the channel or station we set them to.Millions of hours of airtime beam through space--but the great wealth of
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it is tuned out. We only ever see or hear what the satellite dish is tunedto, what it attends to.

So it is with our brains and attention. We are bombarded by sensoryinformation--lights, sounds, sights, smells, balance, and more--but we

direct our attention only to certain things, only to certain stimuli: the textwe see in front of us, the music we are listening to. Our attention worksin this way like a filter. We focus on what we like, and filter out what wedo not seek. Like a satellite dish, the brain receives a flood of signal, butit amplifies only what we are compelled by, and it suppresses or ignoreseverything else.

In this way, attention is where learning begins. Without our studentsattention, everything else is lost. And so our goals as educators beginwith capturing, directing, or inviting student attention in the most

productive ways.

Yet, of the four cognitive processes that make up learning, attentionproves to be the most complex and wide-ranging, the toughest to pindown. We talk about it in a number of different ways. Here is just asampling:

Scientists, researchers, and non-cognitive skillsThe last few years have seen a movement towards the discussion of non-cognitive skills. But what these really get at are ways into attention:

Motivation is really about the voluntary direction of attention.When we are motivated to do something, we pursue it more often;we give it more attention.

Similarly, Carol Dwecks research on mindsets--whether we believeour intelligence is fixed, or whether we think intelligence ismalleable--her research really explores whether we sustain ourattentionin the face of adversity. If we have a growth mindset, webelieve that our work improves with effort, and so we direct ourattention to it repeatedly.

Roy Baumeisters research on willpower explores the factors thatinfluence whether we sustain attention. Our attention and resolveare limited, but we can exercise and adjust the factors that marshallour limited attention.

And out of Stanford, Clifford Nass research on multitasking (andour inability to do it) further informs how we channel, and lose,attention.

In all these--motivation, mindsets, willpower, and multi-tasking--we findwe are really talking about attention, and that exploring these non -

cognitive skills is really another way to understand how and why peopledirect their attention--or not.


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Writers, Advertisers, too...But we can understand attention in other ways, too. In advertising,business, and elsewhere, writers exploring other issues are reallyexploring attention:

Chip and Dan Heaths book Made to Stick captures much of whatwe know about attention, and how to capture it from the outside. Itexplores the stickiness of objects, and why they keep poppinginto mind.

Microstyle, by advertising man Christopher Johnson, exploreshow to capture attention through language. And specifically byusing small amounts of it very carefully with deliberate intention.

And Samuel Johnson again, reminds us of the power of pleasure:What is read with delight is commonly retained, because pleasure alwayssecures attention; but the books which are consulted by occasionalnecessity, and perused with impatience, seldom leave any traces on themind.(Idler #74, September 15, 1759)

Each of these many sources addresses factors that invite, compel, orotherwise influence attention, and the great variety of sources reflect thegreat variety of ways that attention works.

But when it comes to it, what are the mechanicsof attention? How doesattention work?

Mechanics of AttentionResearch from the last fifteen years suggests that we have two mainkinds of attention: goal-directed attention and stimulus-driven attention.


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The first, goal-directed attention, describes something like focus, thepractice of directing ourselves towards activities or thoughts. Itdescribes attention through motivation, willpower, curiosity, and manyother self-driven forces. It is sustained by our intent, and it is influencedby many, many factors that threaten to interrupt or supersede it.

The second, stimulus-driven attention, describes our awareness of and

response to the sensory stimuli that surround us. It describes ourunconscious monitoring of our sensory landscape and the promotion ofcertain things to our attention, overriding our goal-oriented attention, ifnecessary--like a circuit breaker interrupting current when something bigcomes along! We know, for example, that stimulus-driven attention iscaptured by high-contrast changes in our environment (stillness tomovement, loud to soft, dark to bright, etc.) and by high-intensitystimulation (extreme sounds, sights, etc.).

And so we can fill in some detail in our satellite dish metaphor: imagine

those long-distance microphones we sometimes see at sporting events.Like our attention, we focus them on specific targets to capture soundsfrom a particular direction. We choose to point them at something ofinterest. This is like goal-directed attention. But, if a loud enough noisecomes from another direction, if a strong enough signal comes fromelsewhere, it will override what were focusing on, and pull us towardsthe new sound. This is like stimulus-driven attention. Were driven bythe intensity of the new sound to pay to attention to it.

Both of these kinds of attention operate at the same time, and our abilityto regulate them--to moderate between the two, to stay focused on our

goal-directed attention and to limit the influence of our stimulus-drivenattention--this is what shapes our learning most.
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And this is what the writers, researchers and scientists above are allgetting at. Willpower is about sustaining goal-oriented attention in theface of other stimuli. Motivation, too, is about making goal-orientedattention as strong as possible. The language work by Christopher

Johnson in Microstyle aims to craft words and phrases that effectivelycapture stimulus-driven attention. So to with Made to Stick.

And so how do we use this as teachers?

Attention and Teaching styleIn the classroom, we have a range of teaching styles, and its importantto preserve that. Its important first and foremost because kids haveamazing radars for when were being inauthentic as teachers. And thatswhen they stop paying attention. And so how do we engage, invite, and

compel student attention?

Our approaches are wide-ranging:

Recall those teachers you had, or knew about, whose seriousness,whose gravitas, you couldnt refuse. You simply didnt want to letthem down because they took you so seriously, more seriously thanyou took yourself. They channeled your attention through theirexpectation of rigor.

And recall as well the fun and charismatic teacher whoseclassroom environment was loose and easy, but who directed that

energetic feel towards material that she was passionate about andintrigued by. She captured your attention because class was fun.
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But so did the barbed drill sergeant of a teacher who inspired fearin you. She, too, channeled attention, if through a perceivedthreat. Nonetheless, you may still recall those lines you had tomemorize in that class.

And sometimes it was simply the way the teacher decorated theclassroom. The space you were in - engaged or directed yourattention because of the books on the bookshelves, or thesimplicity or the space, or the table that everyone sat around.

Some of these might have summoned goal-directed attention in you.Others might have created environments where you were stimulus-driven, driven by external pressures.

SummaryAnd the lesson here is that the science, economy, and understanding of

attention collectively suggest that attention is accessed by two routes,and that those routes are influenced by many factors. The more we knowabout these factors, the more we can engage the routes to our studentshearts, the more we can tweak what we do as teachers and curriculumdesigners to better keep our students engaged.

And how we engage our students must differ for each of us, for ourdifferent teaching styles, which derive from our different personalities,appropriately attract us to different classroom approaches.

Some of us are drill sergeants, some charismatic hosts, some seriousushers of knowledge--and some of us are none of these, but othercharacters instead. And some of these personalities work in someclassrooms and not others, for our students, too, need different kinds ofteaching.

We cannot write an algorithm for attention, because teaching is a socialact. What matters is that it behooves us all to understand how attentionworks, so that we might best inform the moves we make in the classroomwith an understanding of how those moves capture, direct, or simplyinviteour students attention--for that is the gateway to their learning.

But opening this gateway is only the first step. Encoding the informationthat passes through attention is what makes education meaningful. Thiswe explore in the next post.

Encoding: How to Make Memories Stick

Encoding is what happens when information meets the brain.
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During exposure to new information, the brain does two things: first, itprocesses sensory and emotional information, and then second, it tries toattach this new information to old information, to prior knowledge. Andthe richer the sensori-emotional experience and the deeper the well ofprior knowledge, the more strongly the new information is encoded into

memory.

And so, strong learning grows out of two things: full, multi-sensoryexperiences and/or richly contextualized information.

Let's look a little closer...

Multi-Sensory ExperienceSeveral years ago, the science department where I teach switched to aPhysics First curriculum. Like most schools, we had previously taughtbiology in the freshman year. But, one teacher told me, at a departmentmeeting one day, the science teachers asked themselves: What is it thatled us to become science teachers? What turned us on to science tobegin with?

And their answer to that question was that they remembered observingphysical phenomena, getting their hands on things and playing withthem. This physical experience with objects, their experience askingquestions and experimenting with visible, tangible stuff, was what firstdeveloped their scientific thinking. It was what hooked them on science.

And so as a result, the science department inverted the 9th and 11thgrade years. They now teach physics first and a more advanced biologyclass to juniors. Now, the freshman year is largely spent handling andexperimenting with directly observable physical materials. Students

develop primary sensory experience with physical and scientificprinciples.

And subsequent to this move, weve seen a jump in students takingadvanced science courses in later years.

This seems the fulfillment of philosophies that have been around forages:
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Dewey and Aristotle both promote experiencing information in the mostdirect, authentic, multi-sensory way. And we can unpack Deweys phraseimpress the mind to understand that the more we see, touch, feel, andexperience what we seek to learn, the better we learn it, the more weimpress it into our memory.

Weve known about this for some time, and this is what immersive,experiential education is all about. Its why we create, easily recall, andenjoy multi-sensory experiences.

And so, the richer the sensory-emotional experience of new informationis, the more deeply it is encoded into the brain.

Prior KnowledgeAnd the added benefit of these kinds of primary experiences is that theyfuel our learning later on.

When we have vivid and strong prior knowledge about a subject, we haveaccess and insight into new related, knowledge. When we have previousexperience with something, we can encode new information moreeffectively and more richly.

The sentence above makes little sense on a first read. Notes and seams?Whats going on here? But, when supplied with a little bit of priorknowledge (for example, that the sentence describes a damaged bagpipe),

we are suddenly able put the sentence into a context. We can associate
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the words with prior knowledge we have. We have a hanger upon whichto drape new information.

And this is the second form of encoding: attaching new information toold information, to prior knowledge.

In a recent conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer John McPhee spokeabout the relationship between our previous experiences--our priorknowledge--and our present interests. He said it like this:

He describes here how attention works like a filter, and he proposes thatwe attend to what we already know, that we attend to what we haveprevious interest in and experience with.

And if the first key takeaway about encoding is that multi-sensoryexperiences are encoded more richly into the brain, then the second keytakeaway about encoding is that we attach new experiences to priorexperiences, to prior knowledge. And the more priorknowledge we have,the more hangers we have to drape our new knowledge on, the morerichly we can encode and associate new information.

McPhee here is onto the close relationship between attention andencoding, that what we attend to feeds what we know, and what we know

feeds what we attend to.

SummaryEducators often talk about teaching to multiple sensory pathways, and itis absolutely accurate to say that providing a variety of sensory andemotional experiences with content enables students to learn better.Indeed, students encode information in more ways when they see, touch,move, and hear information.

But equally as important is how richly that information iscontextualized. When students have prior experience with a subject,
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they have a context within which they can understand the newinformation. The value of this cannot be overstated.

(Interlude) Long Term Memory andWorking Memory

Before we dig further into memory, we need a brief interlude. Let's take astep back and consider the whole system of thinking and memory for amoment. Here's something to begin:

Stored in the corners of our minds is the image of a ball soaring throughthe air. Let it be a baseball, basketball, football, or ball of your choice. It

makes a great arc in the air, and we can picture it rising and falling. UntilI mentioned it, we werent consciously thinking of it, but the image wasthere, planted from previous experiences in our lives, tucked away inwhat we call Long Term Memory.

When, in a conversation, someone starts talking about parabolas, wemight initially hesitate, unsure of what a parabola is, but when she saysthat a parabola is an arc made by an object thrown in the air, wesuddenly recall the image of the soaring ball. We dig it out of Long TermMemory, and we bring it to mind, to a place we call Working Memory, theplace where we hold information we are thinking about at a given time.

This place, working memory, is occupied by a mix of thoughts prompted
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by both our environments (in this case: the conversation about parabolas)and our long term memory (the flying ball).

This exchange between our long term memories and our environments iswhere learning happens. It is where encoding happens, where new

information from an experience interacts with old information from longterm memory, where the term parabola is attached to the image of aball arcing through the air.

And this is a fruitful moment to introduce a diagram:

Our classrooms and the actions we make in them are the learningenvironments of our students (in green). And what our students fix theirattention on determines what from the environment moves into workingmemory. In a stimulating classroom, working memory is engaged in aconstant feedback loop between the student and the environment;students ask questions and manipulate content, focusing attention innew ways and bringing in new information.

When this new information triggers recall of old information, it summonsthe old information from long term memory (on the left), and the newand old information are encoded together. The more the learningexperience engages long term memory, and mixes new information withit, the more richly all the information is encoded together. In this way,we want our students to have constant exchange between their learningenvironment, working memory, and long term memory. They shouldrevisit and recycle information, strengthening it, associating it, andcontextualizing it.
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I include this diagram at this point in the introduction to cognitivescience because it provides a timely contextualization of some of theprocesses weve looked at so far (attention and encoding) with some ofthe processes well be looking at shortly (storage and retrieval). Thisseparates the four stages of cognitive learning into two halves thatroughly divide the learning process into two chunks: how stuff goes intothe brain (attention and encoding), and what stuff comes out (storage and

retrieval).

Up next: what happens to memories once theyre in our minds? Howdoes memory work? What does it look like?!
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Information without anchors--information that is abstract andincomprehensible, or information that has no connection to what wealready know--it passes through us, like the little white boxes withquestion marks above, sinking off the page and out of sight.

Information with anchors--richly encoded one way or another--that iswhat we learn and remember.

But what happens after information is encoded into the brain? What isthe half-life of knowledge? What makes memory last? These questionswell explore in coming posts.

Storage I: How Memory Works

And this brings us to storage... to memory. What is memory and how does it

work?

Here is the current thinking:

Memory is not the placement of something in the mind, like a book on ashelf, but instead it is the establishment of neural connections, ofsomething like footpaths through the brain. Thoughts and experiencesbuild connections between the billions and billions of neurons in thebrain, establishing new networks and patterns of connections. These arewhat we understand to be thoughts and memories.

And heres one way to picture this.
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Imagine a stretch of sand, like a gradually sloping desert. But it rains onthis desert, and when it rains, water from higher ground runs across thedesert sand. This movement of water is the act of thinking. Water movesacross the desert like signals moving through the brain, and memoriesare the tracks left in the sand, the channels and rivulets across the vast

space. Every new idea or experience is a new source of watersomewhere--sometimes a small trickle, sometimes a great cascade--andeach new thought runs across the desert to lower ground, spreading outand criss-crossing previous memories, or funneling into a channel.

This works in interesting ways as a metaphor.

(The associative mind)In the highly associative mind, above, water spreads out and leavesmany, ranging tracks across the sand, and every new thought, springingfrom different locations, criss-crosses the trails left behind by others.Thoughts and memories are connected, and opportunities for remixes,

juxtaposition, and new understanding are many. The desert takes onmany, multi-varied patterns.
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(The habituated mind)In the highly habituated mind, deep channels run through the sand, andnew ideas or experiences funnel into these channels. Water that doesntreach these channels pools up or evaporates, never quite making itacross the desert. In this mind, most thoughts and experiences runquickly and surely to their destination, and new and surprisingassociations are fewer.

This works nicely as a metaphor for how the mind works--intersectingwebs of waterways in the desert are like the neural networks that make

up our thought processes and memories in the cortex. Now, imaginethose vast and intricate pathways on the desert floor wrapping around
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into a three dimensional, brain-shaped space. In this space, the passingof the water across the surface of the desert is like the passing of ourthoughts through the brain. They come and go, springing from a source,from stimulation. The rivulets we see carved into the sand are likememories, neural routes that are established through the mind. They

wash or fade away without use, or they are made stronger by repeatedprompting, and from that repetition we develop neural habits ofthought. If, after a long period of time, some rivulets or pathways havebeen worn away, then a new source of water might run across the emptyspace, filling in--or carving out--what has eroded.

And there two key takeaways from this metaphor:

The first is that association strengthens memory. The number ofconnections built in the brain influences the number of times memories

(or paths over the sand) are revisited, which influences the duration ofthe memory. Intersecting waterways suggest more water will pass over aparticular place. Associated thoughts work similarly. When we associateinformation, we retain it longer, because we recall it--we retrieve it--moreoften. (Its important to note that the organization of the associations isreally important. More on this in two posts, when we get to retrieval.)

For this reason, connecting what we share in the classroom to currentevents, to personal memories, to other contextual information, or even tosimple mnemonics all help strengthen memory. How we encodeinformation influences its durability and flexibility in our minds.

Similarly, intensity of encoding influences memory. The strength ofthe original stimulation influences what is stored and for how long. Astrong gush of water will carve a deep crevasse in the sand, and it willtake a long time to wear away. If new information is attached to intensesound, sight, or feeling (such as the profound pleasure of intellectualdiscovery!), then the memory is encoded more richly, and lasts longer.Recall the great pride in the first A from that really difficult teacher. Itwas a moment of intense pleasure. Similarly, remember the extremelyloud noise that once startled you. It was less pleasurable, but you still

havent forgotten it.

But what happens to that memory once it is forged? How long does itlast? What affects it while its hibernating? These well explore next!
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Storage II: Sleep and Memory

What happens to memories once we make them? Where do they live?Why do they last? More technically: what mechanisms enable us to move

memories from working memory into long term memory? And, whatdoes sleep have to do with all this?

Some biology will help us out here.

Lets look for a moment at two important regions of the brain: the cortex,which is the big labyrinthine web of cauliflower in the picture below, andthe hippocampus, a much smaller region of the brain deeper into thecenter of our heads.

The cortex plays a large role in conscious thought and in the processingof information in working memory.

The hippocampus, however, plays an essential role in the formation oflong-term memory, the translation of information from working memory

to long-term memory. In fact, without the hippocampus, we wouldn't beable to make any new long-term memories at all. (Kind of like the movie"Memento." Also, theres a really interesting true story about a manwhose hippocampus was removed, and he was thereafter unable to createany new long-term memories. If youre interested in this, google HMpsychology.)

And so heres the interesting part about the hippocampus, the cortex,and memory:

Were discovering more and more that sleep plays a significant role in

consolidating memory. An enormous amount of activity happens in
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these regions during sleep, and its been shown to have a significantimpact on what happens to our memories in our brains.

Its a really exciting area of study right now, and what follows is only abrief entry into the science of sleep.

SleepYou may know that we experience sleep in 90-120 minute cycles. Overthe course of a nights sleep, our brains show different patterns ofmovement, and these patterns occur in fairly predictable cycles. Duringsome cycles our brains move very quickly, showing tremendous activity.During others, they move very slowly.

And during these 90-120 minute cycles over the course of a night, thebrain performs different tasks:

Duringhours 1-2, the first hours of sleep, memories are consolidated inthe hippocampus, that interior region of the brain, and they are preparedfor long-term storage.

During hours 2-6,memories are "moved" to the cortex, where they arekept for long-term memory. And this means that, on average, if you aregetting less than six hours of sleep, then you are not securing thatinformation in long-term memory as well as possible.

But hours 6-9are when the magic happens: and this is when it gets really

cool. During these hours, the brain actively rehearses memories,replaying them in the cortex during REM sleep. Some studies have shownthat sleeping those extra 2-3 hours can even improve memoryperformance by up to 25%.

I enjoy telling this to my students: look, without studying any more, youcan do better, simply by sleeping! Your brain actively rehearses whatyouve been working on. (...of course you have to have understood andstudied the material to begin with...)

And, interestingly, its not only memory--but also insight and attention.They all improve with sleep, which really is a topic all its own.

Summary of Storage
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And so, storage (memory) has two parts. We have seen in previous poststhat storage is influenced by the intensity and diversity of encoding, andwe see here that sleep enhances our storage.

And so, memories are made and strengthened by association, intensity,and repetition. And they are consolidated and rehearsed during sleep.This means that as educators, it's helpful to build rich, associative

experiences for our students so that their learning is part of an organized

network that lasts. And, the more opportunities we can provide forstudents to revisit information and then sleep on it, the moreopportunities we give them to turn it over in their heads. Someresearchers refer to this practice as "spacing"; if we return to material onseparate days--if we leave space between our interactions with it--then weallow students to process what they learn, and this helps maximize theirlearning. We'll pick up on this in the next post, on retrieval, the last ofthe four essential cognitive practices.Coming up next: How does retrieval influence memory? And what canwe do to maximize the ease and efficiency of retrieval?

Retrieval: Getting and Forgetting

What saves our sanity, every day, is that we can forget. Its good that weforget things--even though sometimes we forget more than we want to--for if we never forgot anything we ever thought or saw, wed drown inthe information overload.

For teachers, all this forgetting means that even if we sustain ourstudents attention, even if we help our students encode information

richly, and even if we create opportunities for students to consolidatethat information in their minds--they will still naturally forget things.Like patterns in sand on the beach that wash away, so will memories.

And it turns out that the rate at which we forget things has been studied.

Forgetting and RememberingIn the late 1800s, a psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus testedpeoples memories for both meaningless and meaningful informationover time, and he developed curves that showed our rate of forgetting

information. (Ebbinghaus is that guy pictured above...)
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We lose information really fast! This graph shows the rate of retentionfor nonsense information; within an hour, more than half is gone. Within24 hours: two-thirds. Meaningful information sticks around longer, aswe'll see in a moment, but memory still degrades.

It turns out, though, that we can help information live longer in our

brains by bringing it back to mind--by retrieving it. If we do this, thecurve of our forgetting changes, and our expectation for long termmemory can increase.
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Imagine you learn something so that you can repeat it from memory. Aswe saw above, your memory of it will naturally deteriorate over time.

The curve above shows what happens if we learn it fully again, one daylater.

We can see here that after studying it a second time, the curve flattensout at a higher level. This represents how, over time, we retain a greateramount of the information as a result of the second learning. And, if werepeat the process of learning again--if we study the material a thirdtime--then the curve shifts again, and our long term retention includes aneven greater percentage of the content. See here:
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And so, the more times we review and relearn the information, the moreof it we retain over time.

How many repetitions are best?In addition to measuring how much information we lose from memoryafter periods of time, Ebbinghaus also measured how many times he hadto repeat something in order to fully commit it to memory.

To test this, Ebbinghaus practiced memorizing meaningless information(sequences of nonsense syllables), and meaningful information (eightlines of a poem by Byron). He would read and recite the material againand again until he could repeat it all, entirely from memory. At this firstgo around, he counted how many times he had to repeat the informationbefore he could recite it perfectly from memory.

By the next day, he would have forgotten much of what he had studied.So, that next day, he would try again with the same information--and he

would again measure how many times he had to repeat/rehearse/practicethe information before he could do so without prompting.

And then, a day later, again.

And each day took fewer and fewer tries:
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Each line above is a different body of information, and the vertical axisshows how many times Ebbinghaus had to repeat the information inorder to commit it to memory. The largest amount of nonsenseinformation naturally takes the longest. Notice how the poem fromByrontakes the fewest repetitions, even at the outset--and even thougheight lines of poetry is far more content than even the largest amount ofnonsense information. This is because he can encode the informationfrom the Byron poem more richly and easily; it has meaning, and he canattach the words and images in the poetry to stories and imagery in hismind, to prior knowledge that he has. By day five, in fact, he needed no

prompting at all, having fully committed the verse to memory.

Now remember the previous posts abouthow memory works:retrieval isthe stage of learning when we reach into our long-term memory to pullthoughts back into consciousness, back into working memory. Knowingwhat we now know about the brain, we can see that when we recallinformation, we send signals through the networks of neurons weveformed, through the pathways that have been forged throughout thebrain. Remember the desert image; we run water across the sand, and ittravels across paths and rivulets it had previously carved, both re-visiting (remembering!) them and deepeningthem, making them easier to

access the next time. This is retrieval.
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~

And so, work by Ebbinghaus and othersoffer us three specific takeawaysabout retrieval:

First: retrieval strengthens memory. This is the lesson fromEbbinghaus: the more we bring something to mind, the stronger itbecomes in our memory. The simple act of thinking changes our minds.And as an understanding of encodingshows us, this is particularly true

if we retrieve memories in order to connect them to something new.Simply bringing something to mind strengthens its impression,

and associatingthat memory with something new strengthens it evenfurther.

For this reason, it's helpful to do something with memories or pieces of

information when we retrieve them: rearrange or reorganize them, writeabout them, talk about them with somebody, etc. Remember thediagramabout working memory and long term memory. Retrieval pullsinformation out of long-term memory, cycling it into working memoryand re-encoding it with any new, additional information. We areelaboratively building associations, forming new networks of knowledgeand thought.

Second, the organization of encoding influences retrieval. If yourbrain were a bookshelf, and youre trying to find a book, then if thebooks were stacked all willy-nilly, it may take some rummaging around to

find what youre looking for. But, if youve organized the books on yourshelves, then the one book will be much easier to find. For instance, ifyou choose to organize your shelf by the length of the title, with one-word titles on the left, then retrieving your book of choice will be mucheasier.

So it is with cognitive retrieval. If youve associated memories withsimilar memories by making connections between them, then theyll beeasy to find. If memories have been stored in isolation, or were notstored deliberately at all, then they may be hiding off in a dusty, shady

corner somewhere.

The third takeaway, though less discussed here, is: our environmentinfluences our retrieval. Stress and emotion can stifle our ability toeasily recall what we know. Calm and space can promote effectiveretrieval. Weve all experienced this: when under time pressure, thatelusive fact or idea can seem tantalizingly far from reach, but when wereperforming some routine task later on, that elusive fact we were lookingfor pops into mind. In this way and others, the various pressures andexpectations of our environments can influence our retrieval innumerous ways. Much is written about this, and if its a top ic of

particular interest, the book Choke by Sian Beilock, offers a greatoverview.
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OverviewAs teachers, then, we can craft our student experiences in ways thatamplify the benefits of retrieval so that the habits, skills, and informationwe promote in classes can more readily transfer into their lives. In our

planning, we want to offer regular retrieval opportunities for ourstudents to strengthen their memories, we want to ensure that wepromote organized encoding so that students can access their learningmore readily, and we want to be sure that we create a safe and non-threatening environment in our classroom spaces to facilitate both theirencoding and retrieval.

This is the fourth stage of the cognitive model for educators: attention,encoding, storage, and retrieval. In the remaining posts well look at theimplications and opportunities that arise from this framework, starting inthe next post with how this framework directly informs our day-to-dayplanning and teaching.

Cognitive Design: Essential Questions for

Educators

On its own, cognitive science is helpful for understanding how the mindworks; it's only useful, though, if we can apply this understanding tofacilitate better learning.

So how is the cognitive model for learning useful for educators?

Lets review: learning happens in four cognitive stages: Attention,Encoding,Storage (Iand II), and Retrieval. And from the perspective ofstudents, we can think of these stages working like this:

Attentionis the filtering out of the many stimuli of the world andthe focusing on the information at hand.

Encoding is the brain registering this information, processingsensory experience and attaching new information to oldinformation.

Storageis the consolidation of information and its movement fromworking memory to long term memory.
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Retrievalis the act of bringing long-term memory back into mind,back in to working memory and out into our experiences, silently toourselves or publicly to others.

As educators, we can deliberately consider these processes in our work;

these processes can directly inform how we plan individual classes, howwe plan a unit, or even a year. And even if we are not teachers, butpeople engaged more broadly in the education space (ed tech ed tech-designers, administrators, and more), we can ask:

Attention:

Am I aware of what my students, clients, or users attend to? How am I capturing, directing, engaging, or simply inviting their

attention? Have I created a safe environment in which students attention is

on the learning?

Encoding:

How can I richly encode new learning by making it as multi-sensoryas possible?

How can I attach what I am teaching to what they know? (Whatprior knowledge do my students or users have? Does their priorknowledge need correcting?)

How can I connect new knowledge to old knowledge in the mostorganized way in order to enable easy retrieval later on?

Storage:

Have I given the brain ample time to consolidate and integratememories? (Have I spread learning experiences over multiplenights/weeks/more to allow consolidation and integration duringsleep?)

Retrieval:

How can I provide regular retrieval opportunities? (How can Iprovide the most opportunities for students to recycle information,to retrieve what they know from long-term memory, bring it intoworking memory to strengthen it and attach it to new information?)
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These are the essential questions I try to ask myself as Im planning, forthey get to the heart of whats happening in my students minds. But inorder to answer these questions, I have to know my students: who theyare, how they get along with their classmates, what inspires them, andmore. The interaction between what I know about my students and whatI know about how their minds work is the sweet spot for learning. When Isail in between both, thats when good planning happens.

Character and Success... and theCognitive Model

How a large-scale digital analysis of teacher comments led to a newunderstanding of why some people excel, and how we can use thisinformation to shape educational environments and close gaps in studentpreparation.

What are the habits and dispositions associated with success in school?

What behaviors and character traits lead to growth and development?And what do these dispositions, these so-called non-cognitive skills,mean for all the current focus on the science of learning?

In the end, are habits and beliefs in fact more important than themechanics of the mind? Or does one group shape the other?

These questions lay at the heart of a task force I led that set out toaddress gaps in student preparation as they entered our school.Researching these questions, though, is tricky, because behaviors and

character traits are not quantitative. They are qualitative; theyredescriptive. It's difficult to measure a state of mind. We didnt have arubric; we didnt have metrics to assess character systematically, and as
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a result we didnt have any ways to analyze student behaviors based onany pre-existing quantitative measures.

Databases and Word Frequency ListsBut we realized that we did have this kind of descriptive informationembedded in the end-of-term comments that teachers write for studentseach trimester. Every trimester, teachers write 100-150 words about each

of our students, and we discovered that our database of these commentsruns back to 2003. So, we were able to research and index everycomment written by every teacher for every student... for nine years.

For 600+ students taking 5+ classes per term for 3 terms per year, itturns out that teachers at Deerfield write 1.6 to 1.7 million words peryear, for a total of 14 million words over nine years. This is a rich sourceof qualitative, descriptive data. But the vastness of this data created anew challenge for us: how could we access this information meaningfullyand efficiently? Reading would take ages, even with a team. How could

we manage this?

The strategy we landed on was to use word frequency lists, which countthe number of times words appear in a body of text. These kinds of listshave been used to identify habits in writing and to prove authorship ofcertain texts. For our needs, we discovered that we could use wordfrequency lists to identify which words we use in our comments fordifferent demographics of students. By identifying the words we use incomments for our stronger students (as defined by GPA) and which wordswe use in our comments for our weaker students, we could begin tounderstand what behaviors, habits and character traits we recognize and

laud in our top students, and what behaviors, habits and character traitswe encourage and promote in our students who struggle.
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(We also ran this data through rigorous statistical analyses, which dontmake for good blog reading. Contact me if you're interested in this, andwe can speak more.)

Qualities of SuccessThe results were fascinating:

In our weaker students, we found we wrote about three traits:consistency, sufficiency, and focus. As a faculty, we want our studentsto be able be consistent, to sustain good work, day in and day out. Wealso promote sufficiency; through repeated use of words like enoughand more, we found we encourage our weaker students to engage morefully, to produce more than the bare minimum. And, in an age ofdistraction, we found we encourage students to focus, whether in their

work habits or in their academic thinking.

In comments for our top students, we wrote about different, but similar,habits. We described their grit, their tenacity. We described theircreativity. And we described their natural curiosity about their work.Our writing about our top students appears to reflect traits that

contribute to these students success.

These were rich results, and they provided manifold opportunities fornext steps; how might we, for example, create environments thatpromote foundational skills of consistency, sufficiency, and focus while

also allowing opportunities for curiosity, creativity, and grit? And sincecompleting research, we've been exploring this new question anddeveloping programs to engage and encourage these skills.

Striking ParallelsBut what was even more interesting was the relationship that emergedbetween the qualities of stronger and weaker students. It didnt strike usat first, but after reflection, we recognized that the habits demonstratedby the strong students are natural extensions, natural amplifications, ofthe habits encouraged in the bottom:

We encourage consistency in the weaker students, and the topstudents demonstrated grit, which is consistency tested on aharder surface.

We encourage sufficiency in our weaker students--being moreproductive, doing more than just the minimum--and the topstudents demonstrated creativity, with is the overflow ofproductivity, the creation of novelty.

And we encourage focus, more careful attention, in our weakerstudents, while our top students showed curiosity, which is theintrinsically-motivated direction of attention.


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Looking at these traits in this way, we began to see a spectrum of habitsand behaviors in which the foundational skills we aim to develop inweaker students lead directly to the qualities associated with high-performing students. This, in turn, can inform the language we use inour conversations, the habits we promote in classes, and the kinds of

lessons we develop. If we keep the teaching of these dispositions inmind, then we can scaffold the kind of behaviors that lead to success.

Curiosity, Creativity, Grit... and Cognitive ScienceBut how does this fit with cognitive science? I share all this now, becauseit wasnt until much later that I recognized that what makes thesedifferent habits and traits important (at least in the context of school) isthat they reflect different cognitive stages in the learning process:

Focus and curiosity are traits that promote the direction ofattention,without which the entire learning process flounders.

Sufficiency and creativity are traits that promote rich encoding.Through producing work, through writing, through interacting with

content, through creating--through all these productive habits, weencode information richly. And consistency and grit are traits that promote recursive,

repeated experiences diving into and through the whole cognitivecycle. When we hurl ourselves back into our work again and again,were focusing our attention, encoding information, letting itpercolate in storage day in and day out, and retrieving it regularly.Were using working memory and long-term memory. Were mixingnew material with old material, refocusing our attention andstarting the learning cycle again and again.

This was a revelation, and it reconciled for me the growing gulf betweencognitive and non-cognitive skills. Cognitive and non-cognitive skills are
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intimately related, each informing the other, and this recognition hasprovided a new lens for understanding our learning, on both the micro(daily) scale and the macro (behavioral) scale.

And the Unification of our Pedagogies...But this was only the beginning. We had looked at (and continue to lookat) the development of habits of mind as a way into academic success,and the search has yielded fruitful results.

Now, though, we are looking to see how these qualities might undergirdour curriculum. How might we promote foundational behaviors andhabits (consistency, sufficiency, focus) in our foundational classes, whilestill allowing opportunities for characteristics of excellence (curiosity,creativity, and grit) in allour classes?

~

But building curricular models around character is only one pedagogicalapproach to curriculum design. How do other pedagogical approachesengage the cognitive process? If a cognitive model for learning can helpus understand the relationship between the many wide-rangingdispositions that our students hold--if it can even unify them into asingular framework of learning--can the same be done with pedagogicalphilosophies? What could we learn from this?

This, coming up in the next post.

Towards a Unification of Pedagogies
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Which is best: Inquiry-based learning? Technology-driven classes?Socratic discussion? Others? These pedagogical approaches seem tohave their own disciples, each claiming the One Pedagogy To Rule ThemAll. How is a teacher to know? How understand which to use when? Andwhy?

I used to have a "grass is always greener" feeling about this. I wondered:could everything my colleagues are doing be better than what I'm doing?I always admired (and still do) the fervent proselytizing different schools

of thought attract. But clarity came for me when I made the realization inthe previous blog post: that our habits and dispositions directly engagedifferent stages of the cognitive process. When I understood that thecognitive model of attention, encoding, storage, and retrieval explainshow non-cognitive skills influence learning in different ways, then Ibegan to consider how it might similarly cast our different pedagogical

strategies into a singular frame of reference built around our students.

And this brought a new coherence to me for our different approaches:

Just as certain dispositions promote complementary stages of thecognitive process, so, too, do different pedagogical strategiescomplement each other and engage in the full process of learning:

Inquiry-based teaching focuses on using targeted, guiding questionsthat propel and focus attention. And, when coupled with field work orother immersive scenarios or research environments, it can promote richencoding as well. (Its important to note that it isnt that inquiry-basedteaching doesntpromote good storage and retrieval--only that its focus

is more explicitly on the earlier stages in the cognitive model: attentionand encoding.)
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The rhetoric surrounding technologyin the classroom looks different; itrevolves around two different arguments. First, some advocatespromotetechnology as a tool to capture attention. This camp suggeststhat we compel attention through our use of tools that are relevant and

familiar to the world our students know. Kids use technology every dayin their lives; they ought to use it in school. There is some sense to this.Another camp argues that technology promotes rich encoding. Digitalmedia provide fuller visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experiences thanplain text. And, they say that digital sources can be adaptive. Withtechnology, the argument goes, students are stimulated in more ways,and their environments can adaptively meet students where their priorknowledge is.

Spiraling focuses on the back end of the cognitive process. A

pedagogical pattern built around recursively returning to material,spiraling creates repeated exposures to content with increasingcomplexity, drawing information from long-term memory, re-encoding it,and providing opportunities for consolidation in storage beforeretrieving it again as the process starts anew. In this way, spiralingcycles through encoding, storage, and retrieval. (Here again, as withother categories, if the approach is led by a thoughtful and carefulteacher, it will engage allstages of the cognitive process--but the practiceexplicitly focuses on a selection of them.)

Similarly, Socratic questioning and seminar discussioncycles students

through retrieval and encoding, as discussion constantly pullsinformation out of storage, and re-encoding it. But, with a similar focuson questions, like inquiry-based teaching, Socratic dialog also commandsthe attention of participating students. In this way, we see that even apractice 2400 years old can fully engage our cognitive lives, providing acomplete cognitive experience and reminding us that old school is notnecessarily bad school.

~

And so the question for teachers isn't an either/or or best/worstquestion. Instead, the question really is: which pedagogical approach fitsthe content at hand? Which suits our goals and objectives? Which suitsthe students we have before us?

Clarifying the focal area and impact of pedagogical practices helps us seethem as complementary options as opposed to competing philosophies.It helps us connect each technique to a different outcome: Do we seek toencourage reflection and re-evaluation of prior knowledge? Socraticdiscussion or a spiraling approach may work best. Introducing newinformation? Aim for the immersion and rich multi-sensory experience

of experiential learning or a technology-enriched environment.


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Which approaches do you prefer? What stages of cognitiveunderstanding do they engage?

Do you like teaching old school? Not necessarily a bad thing--rememberSocrates!

And this is the focus of the next post: When is old school good school?

Why Old School and New School Aren't in

Conflict

Its easy these days (and a little cheap, I think) to rail against the old

school classroom as a teacher-centric, autocratic learning environment.We hear this often; product marketers, overzealous reformers, andtechnothusiasts seem to express the sentiment that old school teaching isirrelevant in a high-tech world, or that if youre not with whats up-and-coming, youre out to lunch, and you certainly cant be providing a goodeducational experience for kids.

But 2400 years ago, the Socratic method promoted discovery throughasking questions, and weve explored how it does, indeed, provide arich,cognitive experience. We continue to hold this kind of teaching in high

esteem.

And 100 years ago, Dewey codified the ideals of experiential education,arguing that primary experience is essential to constructingunderstanding. This is good teaching; it is a model of rich encoding,ofmulti-sensory experience. In fact, at over a hundred years old, it remainsa foundational element of the immersive experiences that choruses ofreformers advocate for today.

And 50 years ago, Bloom, of course, reset our understanding of

educational objectives in a way that promoted active studentengagement. Movement through Bloom's taxonomy (and its revisions)requires rich, immersive work.
http://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/04/why-old-school-and-new-school-arent-in.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/04/why-old-school-and-new-school-arent-in.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/04/towards-unification-of-pedagogies-part.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/04/towards-unification-of-pedagogies-part.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/04/towards-unification-of-pedagogies-part.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/04/towards-unification-of-pedagogies-part.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/03/encoding-how-to-make-memories-stick.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/03/encoding-how-to-make-memories-stick.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2012/03/taxonomies-of-six-educational.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2012/03/taxonomies-of-six-educational.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2012/03/taxonomies-of-six-educational.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/03/encoding-how-to-make-memories-stick.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/04/towards-unification-of-pedagogies-part.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/04/towards-unification-of-pedagogies-part.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/04/why-old-school-and-new-school-arent-in.htmlhttp://www.senseandsensation.com/2013/04/why-old-school-and-new-school-arent-in.html


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Because of these and many other examples, I think its important not tovillainize the term old school, because history--the philosophy andpractice from the past--history is what we learn from. It is flush withwisdom, and we are foolish if we ignore it or overlook it.

Instead of talking, then, about old school and new school teaching, letsdifferentiate between good teaching, which stimulates thought and

activity, and bad teaching, which stifles it.

And this is a key distinction, because good teaching isnt always flashy. It doesnt require anything fancy, and it doesnt have to be expensive.(Though, sometimes fancy and expensive tools can be helpful.) Mostly,

it requires thoughtfulness. It requires organized, thorough, anddeliberate preparation. It requires empathy, and a degree ofresponsiveness in the moment.

Good teaching comes from a place that understands how and what

students think and feel. This doesnt have to mean a deep understandingof cognitive science--strong intuition and emotional intelligence can goabout as far anything towards reading the thoughts and feelings of aroom--but a systems approach to thinking certainly helps inform ourwork as educators. Since good, cognitive learning is an essential aim ofteaching, understanding the mechanics of thought and memory provide ahearty, sensible foundation for our work. Stimulating, thought-provoking, action-inducing teaching is good teaching, however old it maybe.

Seeing new school and old school in this way--in the context of good

school--is the point of this post. And it is close to a key insight that thiswhole series of posts aims to address: an understanding of what is new
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in relation to what is old. In this case, this means one thing in particular:the relationship between the cognitive science of learning and thehistorical work of teaching.

Certainly, another context for understanding the relationship between

old and new is technology. And this will come next, in the penultimateinstallation: Technology, the Brain, and Teaching.

a cognitive model for educators

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