# Teaching is Changing Behaviors #

The goal of teaching is to change behaviors.

Brain based research indicates 5 systems.

- Premise: The brain has "natural" learning systems: Cognitive, Emotive, Social, Physical, and Reflective.
- Emotional Learning System
   - Personal meaning - relevance - accelerate learning
   - Empowers and energizes or depresses and stifles all other learning systems
   - Manages a learner's motivation, demeanor and creativity
   - Caveat: Operates internal stres response activities and generates powerful vehicles for enhancing memory - or likewise powerful inhibitors and blockers.
- Cognitive Learning System
   - Interprets, stores, and retrieves information via patterns and pictures
   - Establishes integrated circuits of knowledge and skill
   - Caveat: Can be overrun by the stress response system and other perceived priorities
- Social Learning System
   - Governs interactions and communications with others.
   - Teamwork and team accomplishment are integral to integrated systems.
   - Working together in pairs or small groups to problem solve integrates ssytems.
   - Caveat: Acquiring skills to work effectively with all other types of people is crucial to reducing inefficiencies and increasing long-term productivity.
- Physical Learning System
   - Gathers information through all senses
   - Distributes information throughout the brain and the body.
   - Converts input into action - physical encoding and engagement promotes connection and ownership.
   - Caveat: Takes longer to establish, however is sustained - like riding a bike.
- Reflective Learning System
   - Weighs past, present, and future projections.
   - Interprets verbal and nonverbal cues - monitoring mechanisms
   - Meta-cognates: "Under this circumstance, in this environment, what do I need to do to increase my understanding?" - performance.
   - Caveat: Cognitive, Emotive and Physical Systems always operate within a context. An environment that exists either physically or perceptually in the mind.
- From: Barbara Given: "Teaching to the Brain's Natural Learning Systems" ASCD 2002

Our view is that behavior spans all five systems.

- Changes in how one feels are changes in emotional behavior.
- Changes in how one relates to others are changes in social behavior.
- Changes in how one thinks are changes in cognitive behavior.
- Changes in how one moves are changes in physical behavior.
- Changes in patterns of thought and introspection are changes in reflective behavior.

The brain encodes these systems in complex electrochemical patterns

- If your teaching changes none of the patterns, you are accomplishing nothing.
- If your teaching changes patterns across all 5 systems, you are changing the student's persona.

The most effective teaching is teaching that addresses all 5 brain based systems.

- Behavior change that spans more than one system is the deepest change
   - Most lasting
   - Most affecting
- The systems are also ways in which learners process new information.
   - Teaching that engages all five is the most powerful type of teaching
   - Design lessons that engage as many of the systems as possible.
   - The more, the better
- Some training is possible even addressing only one system
   - The physical, which includes touch and human contact, is especially challenging for online teachers.
- Teaching does not have to address all five to be effective.
   - Behaviorists have demonstrated that physical behaviors can be changed by operant conditioning.
   - The lowest levels of cognitive behavior (remembering) can be addressed by repetition, drill and practice. (It's how we learned multiplication tables in the days before hand held calculators.)

Reflective behavior

- Reflective behavior requires taking time to integrate what we have learned into ourselves.
- Reflecting on what we are learning gives us a chance to restructure those deep patterns in our brains.
- Dreams
   - Some theories say that dreams during REM sleep let us process and organize emotional and other subconscious experiences
   - Reflective behavior would seem to be the conscious equivalent?

These brain-based learning systems can be related to many learning theories

- Universal Design for Learning: Brain based research indicates 3 networks.
   - Summary and links here: http://www.cast.org/research/udl/index.html
   - Chapter 2 is about brain-based research and the 3 learning networks.
      - Teaching Every Student, Chapter 2: http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/
   - Analyzes brain function into 3 sets of networks
      - Recognition networks
      - Strategic networks
      - Affective networks
   - Each set of networks
      - Functions top down
      - Functions bottom up
   - Or in an alternative description
      - Each network is both hierarchical and distributed
   - This maps to the model used in a recent government report
      - Concept and fact learning
      - Procedure and executive function learning
      - Affective, emotional learning
- Caine and Caine
   - The brain is a parallel processor. It canc perform several activities at once.
   - The brain perceives wholes and parts simultaneously.
   - Information is stored in multiple areas of the brain, and can be retrieed through multiple memory and neural pathways.
   - Learning engages the whole body. All learning is mind-body: movememnt, foods, attentions cycles, and chemicals modulate learning.
   - Human search for meaning is innate.
   - The search for meaning comes through patterning.
   - Emotions are critical to patterning, and drive our attention, meaning and memory.
   - Meaning is more important than just information.
   - Learning involves focused attention and peripheral perception.
   - We have two types of memory: spatial and rote.
   - We understand best wehn facts are embedded in natural spatial memory.
   - The brain is social. It develops better in concert with other brains.
   - Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by stress.
   - Every brain is uniquely organized.
   - Learning is developmental.
- Staged Self-Directed Learning
   - Dr. Gerald Grow introduced the SSDL model in an article entitled, “Teaching Learners to be Self-Directed.” The article is available in an online version at:
   - Grow, Gerald O. (1991/1996). "Teaching Learners to be Self-Directed." Adult Education Quarterly, 41 (3), 125-149. Expanded version available online at: < http://www.longleaf.net/ggrow >.
   - Dr. Grow posits 4 stages of teaching and learning.
   - Below, I characterize the 4 stages in terms that we have been using here at Florida Online. These characterizations are mine alone, not Dr. Grow’s.
      - Stage 1 Teaching is roughly equivalent to the Sage on the Stage.
      - Stage 2 Teaching is the Motivational Speaker. This teacher is good at engaging the Emotive Learning Centers in students.
      - Stage 3 Teaching is Collaborative, the teacher is part of the Team. This teacher is a Facilitator who emphasizes community, especially higher aspects (above safety and security on Maslow’s hierarchy).
      - Stage 4 Teaching is roughly equivalent to the Guide on the Side.
   - Dr. Grow’s model is not prescriptive. Stage 4 Teaching is not any better than Stage 1 Teaching. What is important is that learners come to the classes in similar Stages with regard to Self-Directed Learning.
      - Stage 1 students need and want Stage 1 teaching.
      - Stage 2 students need and want Stage 2 teaching.
      - Stage 3 students need and want Stage 3 teaching.
      - Stage 4 students need and want Stage 4 teaching.
   - Problems arise when there is a mismatch between what the student needs and want and what the teacher is delivering. The cited article provides a matrix of matches and mismatches. Severe mismatches create the most severe problems.
   - Dr. Grow does suggest that teachers can engage students at the students’ current SSDL stage and teach and encourage them to “advance” to the next stage of self-directed learning.
   - Further, the stage in which we find students  is situational. The stage at which the student comes into the class is influenced by that student’s maturity level and past experience with education. It is also influenced by the topic of the training.
      - For example, I may be an experienced student who usually appreciates Stage 4 teachers. However, if I’m at a Home Depot seminar on how to do a project, I will not appreciate being told that while my kitchen is flooding is a great time to experiment and discover the nature of fluid dynamics. At a Home Depot seminar, I want a Sage on the Stage to give me the steps to get a job done safely and efficiently, no messing about.
   - I have extended the model with a Stage 0, the Authority or true Sage on the Stage. Dr. Grow's Stage 1 seems more in line with Teaching as Coaching.
      - Here: http://checkvist.com/checklists/28660-modified-staged-self-directed-learning
- Learning facts
   - See Modes of Learning: http://tip.psychology.org/norman.html
   - Long term memory is based on patterns
   - Short term memory is of limited capacity
   - Learning starts when we store new facts in short term memory
   - Really learning new facts means we move the new facts from short tem memory into existing mental patterns
   - Difficult learning involves the need to change the deep patterns in the light of new facts.
      - Might relate to paradigm shifts
- Cognitive domain
   - Here: http://www.businessballs.com/bloomstaxonomyoflearningdomains.htm
   - Exemplified in Bloom's taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain Here: http://www.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm
      - Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation
   - or the revised Bloom's taxonomy Here: http://www.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm
      - Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, Creating
- Other domains
   - Here: http://www.nwlink.com/~Donclark/hrd/bloom.html
   - Affective domain
      - Emotional behaviors
   - Psychomotor domain
      - Physical behaviors
- VA(R)K(T) Learning Styles
   - Here: http://www.businessballs.com/howardgardnermultipleintelligences.htm#vak visual auditory kinesthetic learning styles inventory theory model
   - Visual, Auditory, (Reading), Kinesthetic, (Touch)
   - Learning Styles are concerned with the most effective inputs into our brains.
   - Different individuals absorb the world through different combinations of senses and reactions.
   - Also emphasizes that inability to use one or another channel requires use of a different style.
- Kolb's Learning Styles and Training Cycle
   - Here: http://www.businessballs.com/kolblearningstyles.htm
   - Good training follows a spiral pattern
      - Concrete Experience > Reflective Observation
      - Reflective Observation > Abstract Conceptualization
      - Abstract Conceptualization > Active Experimentation
      - Active Experimentation > Concrete Experience
- Glasser
   - William Glasser emphasizes that the best teachers engage multiple sensory pathways.
   - When student use multiple pathways in combination, they remember more.
   - We learn
      - 10% of what we read
      - 20% of what we hear
      - 30% of what we see
      - 50% of what we both see and hear
      - 70% of what is discusses with others
      - 80% of what we experience
      - 95% of what we teach
- Multiple intelligences
   - Here: http://tip.psychology.org/gardner.html
   - Here: http://www.businessballs.com/howardgardnermultipleintelligences.htm
   - Can be seen as different ways in which we manifest (interact with and express) what we learn.
      - How are we smart, not how smart are we
   - The intelligences also categorize subjects we are naturally able to learn most readily
   - One list
1. Linguistic Intelligence -  language, speech, reading, and writing.

2. Logical-Mathematical Intelligence - this intelligence is found in the confrontation with the world of objects. Through the manipulation of the objects one works into the realm of pure abstraction which is science and logic.

3. Spatial Intelligence - the capacity to perceive the visual world accurately-to transform, modify, and recreate aspects of one's visual world.

4. Bodily-Kinesthetic - the ability to think in movement-one who is skilled with one's body.

5. Musical Intelligence - the ability to think in sound-to hear without auditory stimuli-to be able to manipulate and combine elements of music without necessarily expressing them on a musical instrument.

6. Interpersonal Intelligence - the capacity to notice and make distinctions among other individuals-how you relate to others.

7. Intrapersonal Intelligence - the knowledge of self-the ability to draw upon your own feelings to guide your own behavior.

8. Naturalist Intelligence - the appreciation of the natural world of the natural world.

9. Existentialist Intelligence - the appreciation of context of where humankind stands in the "big picture" of existence.  This intelligence is seen in the discipline of philosophy.

Source here: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.dmps.k12.ia.us/schools/2Goodrell/Multiple_Intelligences_diagram3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.dmps.k12.ia.us/schools/2Goodrell/MI.htm&h=418&w=594&sz=54&tbnid=k0qzMaC2M-qyJM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmultiple%2Bintelligences&usg=__Te-YM_UWeY7l5XZ3gr6GWqTPhQY=&ei=A7xZS7LyN5S0tgfusrmmAg&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=4&ct=image&ved=0CBgQ9QEwAw

Andragogy

- Here: http://tip.psychology.org/knowles.html
- Skews teaching toward adult learners
- Accepts that they come to the training with established mental patterns
- Focuses on their self-motivation and that they know why they want to learn what is being taught
- Uses short term rewards to encourage long term changes.
- Crucial Assumptions

Conscious Competence Model

- Here: http://www.businessballs.com/consciouscompetencelearningmodel.htm
1. Unconscious Incompetence

2. Conscious Incompetence

3. Conscious Competence

4. Unconscious Competence

5. Reflective Competence

Fifth stage:

Learning Theory Overload

- Here: http://tip.psychology.org/theories.html