AAAS 2019 Pt. 2: How People Learn

Here’s the second part of a multi-part series on the things I learned from the AAAS 2019 conference. For more background on the conference, see the first post in this series.

Without further ado, here are some fun facts, resources, themes, solutions, and jargon that I learned at AAAS about…

How People Learn

From the AAAS 2019 session How People Learn: A New Look

Fun Facts I Learned:

  • Groups of people who learn one numeric system or time system have regions in their brain that are differently shaped than those who learned different systems. Similarly, there’s a difference in the parts of the brain that expert abacus users’ activate to solve problems compared to those who learned elementary math via other methods.
  • Some cultures place a higher value on learning by observation while others place a higher value on individual tutelage. Some cultures focus on individual capabilities while others focus on the ability to work collaboratively. Some cultures reward learners for precise imitation while others reward them for creative deviation from a model.
  • Common tools to motivate children in the classroom such as competitions, badges, and points do work well to increase participation for some students… but can lead others to disengage and assume that the material is not inherently valuable – the opposite of what we want as educators!
  • When comparing factors that affect a student’s learning at the high school level, the teacher is the most important school-level factor in a student’s academic success and engagement in a class – more than school funding, curriculum, etc.
  • When we learn, we draw on linguistic and cultural resources – mismatches in culture between students and teachers could be a part of the perceived underachievement of traditionally underrepresented groups. Or, to say the same thing in less of a word salad, if your teacher doesn’t look like you, it’s harder for them to understand where you come from and what you need to succeed.

Resources I Found:

  • How People Learn II: A huge National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report, released in 2018, that functions as a comprehensive (350 pages!) review of the science of learning and education from many different perspectives (psychology, sociology, neurobiology, etc.).

Good Quotes:

  • “Many funders and school systems act as if driving a van of computers up to a school will automatically enhance learning”
  • “Calling the underperformance of underrepresented students an ‘achievement gap’ focuses on the symptom – calling it an ‘opportunity gap’ focuses on the solution.”

New Jargon I Learned:

  • Model-based learning: A type of learning where the student first learns about the structure and properties of a model system (ex. that the moon goes around the Earth) and then uses that model to answer questions about the consequences of that framework.
    • The best model-based learning leads to successful answers to never-before-considered questions (ex. when does the full moon rise?).
    • This kind of learning is highly valuable, and thus highly emphasized, in science.
    • We should be aware that students and non-scientists may see model-based learning as 1) unnecessarily complicated 2) an unfair cognitive tax and 3) an obstacle to getting “the right answer” quickly and efficiently (as compared to memorization).

Short-Term Solutions:

  • We need to use assessment to advance learning, not as an end goal, but as part of a process. The feedback given should be chosen to help the learning and also be concretely addressable by the student.
  • We need more discipline-specific tools in science to really help model-based learning (paper/web based tools are nice, but physical models and exposure to actual scientific equipment are far better).

Overarching Themes:

  • Specifics about the way that we have learned different concepts in the past, or the skills that we’ve acquired, have directly measurable effects on the physical shape and functioning of the brain.
  • Different cultures have different methods of conceptualizing learning, and there is no default culture.
  • Science education needs to focus more on model-based learning while being aware of the frustrations that it can cause to students who are unfamiliar with it.
  • Teachers are the most valuable resource that a school has!

Best Moment: Learning that because violinists use one hand (their chording hand) more than the other, the “violin” region of the brain on the dominant side grows to be larger – in proportion to the experience of the violinist! The regions that correspond to the thumb and pinky finger (we have the resolution to see this!) literally grow farther apart in the brain, and there’s a correlation between that distance and the number of years that the violinist has been playing.

Personal Action Items Inspired by These Talks: 

  • Construct a room-sized orrery in Davey Lab at Penn State.
    • Many of the most complicated general astronomy topics (moon phases, eclipses, etc.) can be much more easily understood by looking at a physical model. And model-based learning is a great way to teach non-scientists what “thinking like a scientist” is actually about. Being able to switch perspectives by physically walking from the Sun to the Earth to the Moon, and looking at the way that the Sun’s light interacts with the Earth and Moon, would be a fantastic learning tool. Perhaps I can convince someone to let me do this if I make it an easy-to-install-and-remove demo…

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This session had more of a panel format, and I didn’t catch the names of everyone involved, but here are the names of the three speakers on the program.

Presenters:

  • Rob Goldstone, Indiana University Bloomington, Psychological and Brain Sciences
  • Art Graesser, University of Memphis, Psychology and Intelligent Systems
  • Barbara Means, Digital Promise, Educational Psychology