Teacher's Online Lesson Plan Builder. Stop Telling Your Students To "Pay attention!" Posted by Eric Jensen in Brain-Based Teaching on 09 27th, 2012 | no responses Let’s explore the role of attention in your work.
This topic is always in the top 10 for requests, so it’s a good time for a review on the subject. Whether you’re a teacher, staff developer or administrator, today’s audience expects quality. You need their attention for explicit learning. For starters, stop telling your audience to “Pay attention!” What I have learned is below. The Research You do not need the brain’s attention for a large amount of input. When kids pay attention, cognitive activity usually goes up (Sarter M, Gehring WJ, & Kozak R. (2005).
Instead of saying to students, “Pay attention!” You’d make more sense if you said, “Stop paying attention to biologically important, but highly distracting things!” The second type of attention, the type you were hoping for in your classroom, is different. So what can be done in a classroom? First, stop expecting kids to pay attention. Use prediction. Whatever School 2.0 Notes : The Paradigm Shift - MarkTreadwell.com. Whatever School 2.0 The First Paradigm Shift Prior to the mid 1400’s learning was centred on oral discourse.
For most people learning involved being orally literate. The centricity of the oral language paradigm was gradually replaced by more efficient and effective book paradigm. Books were more efficient and effective due to lower prices for books and greater access via better distribution. The 'chasm' you had to cross in order to be successful in this new learning paradigm was to learn to read and write. Learning to read and write was complex and eventually resulted in the evolution of ‘school’, finally giving way to compulsory schooling. "Why Schools Can't Improve: The Upper Limit Hypothesis" Robert Branson Florida State University However, Branson insists that we have reached the upper limit of this 20th century education paradigm.
The Second Paradigm Shift What we predicted in 1999 was that a new paradigm shift in learning would occur and become available in 2005. Visible Learning. John Hattie Research : The Paradigm Shift - MarkTreadwell.com. The result of the Pradigm Shift : The Paradigm Shift - MarkTreadwell.com. After 40 years of ‘standards’ the US federal government's National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) team notes the following changes in test scores in reading and mathematics THE NATION’S REPORT CARD: NAEP 2008 Trends in Academic Progress (available from The lack of change in standards results (less than 0.5% over 40 years) reflects the fact that learners have been learning for these tests via rote (episodic learning) and educators have got that process for reading and mathematics about 98% efficient.
There is no room for any significant improvement if we maintain our present teaching approach. When the University of British Columbia Physics Department decided to take one of their best lecturers and see how his traditional lecture approach to teaching compared to those of a very inexperienced lecturer who used an interactive, inquiry approach; the test results at the end of the trial were stunning.
The full article is available from The Results: Stunning! Supporting Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), quality and improvement, assessment, community and lifelong learning - Education Scotland.