Learning Is A Full-Body Activity
A fantastic essay by one of my favorite cognitive scientists, Sian Beilock of the University of Chicago. Beilock notes that although research on learning suggests a tight coupling of body and mind, this relation is often ignored:
“Take mainstream education in the Western world. Despite the fact that the information we encounter is taken in by different senses—the eyes, ears, or even touch, psychologists and educators often characterize the storage of this information as abstract symbols on our mind’s hard drive. The logic, then, is that it doesn’t really matter how the information gets in. Lesson plans are designed as if the body is unnecessary, with students permanently affixed to their desks.
This stationary view of education is really mind boggling if you reflect for a moment on the way in which we tend to learn in the first place. Take language as an example. Learning language involves a lot of activity. A mom might hold up a cell phone, hand it to the toddler and point and say ‘phone’ or model waving ‘hello’ by literally waving. Most of the words that kids learn are tied directly to the objects the word refers to and, more often than not, the kids get to hold and manipulate the objects they are learning about. But, in most standard classroom reading lessons, teachers aren’t connecting what kids are reading to the world. Even when using picture books, teachers are often focusing so closely on what the words sound like that they seldom point to the pictures that depict the objects and events the words refer to. Reading is taught in a stripped down fashion, devoid of the body.
Why is this a problem? One reason is that this doesn’t seem to be how our brains work. When we read, we tend to activate the same sensory and motor brain areas involved in doing what we are reading about. When people make small body movements in the fMRI scanner, say moving their feet, fingers, or tongue, they activate regions in the sensory and motor cortex involved in moving these body parts. Most interesting, when people read words associated with the leg, mouth, and arm (‘kick,’ ‘pick’ and ‘lick’), they activate these same sensory motor brain areas. Both moving your foot and understanding the world ‘kick’ are governed by similar areas of the motor cortex. It’s hard to separate the reading mind from the doing one.
Teaching words divorced from the objects and actions they refer to just doesn’t reflect how the brain is organized. Our body and mind are tightly connected. The body is an important part of the learning process.” Read more here, and tell me what you think!
Thanks for this article!
(I have a slogan for your work: “AMP up your learning!” It’s a great play between your initials and your work. If you run it under “Then Brilliant Blog” you could change it to “AMPing up your learning power.” With either of these slogans, you could get sponsorship from an electric utility company. So there’s my two cents for your marketing and branding.)
I’ve been using a “full senses” approach to teaching science for 20 years. And it’s absolutely the most effective method. I know that because teachers who use a single sense method, typically audio, tell me so. We’ve been able to assess the effectiveness ratio of full sensory involvement versus single sense involvement at a ratio of about 400:1. Using a five senses approach, we are able to effectively teach (based on assessment testing) over 100 essential science concepts that are typically taught over a period of 2 years, in ONE HOUR.
On reviewing our syllabus, teachers estimate that it is impossible to cover this material effectively in less than two years. But after experiencing one hour of six-senses* coverage of the material, teachers agree that not only was the material fully covered, but in many cases it was the first time they actually understood the material themselves. This presentation format also creates strong emotional excitement, a critical aspect of engagement and memorization.
To see for yourself what I’m talking about, check out the 2 minute video on the homepage of ScienceInTheMovies.com. Based on using the methods you describe, we have garnered both the “best science presentation of the year” award from Time Warner Cable, and the “Key science teacher in the U.S.” award from Casio. And as far as I can tell, the only thing we are doing differently from other teachers is engaging more of the senses.
*We typically don’t include Taste, due to the scope of our material, but we always include the Sense of Wonder and Sense of Imagination.