Biology, the brain, and learning

Guest

Dr. Joshua Eyler, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Rice University

His Bio on Rice University’s Center for Teaching Excellence

His Blog

Follow Josh Eyler on Twitter

Initial interest in the field of teaching and learning as a scientific enterprise

What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain

Brain-based learning

• Amazing discoveries, but some limitations
• Gulf was created between the scientists and educators
• Cherry-picking results
• Too limiting, looks primarily at neuroscience and cognitive psychology

The New Science of Teaching and Learning: Using the Best of Mind, Brain, and Education Science in the Classroom, Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa

Framework for a biological basis of learning

• Bolster what we are learning from neuroscience to also include evolutionary biology and human development
• Context about anything that we are learning.

The journey of an educator

• Doesn’t see students as subjects of experiments
• Understanding teaching and learning as a science, really created a bridge
• Prior knowledge – biological construct
• Mental models

Learning from failure

• The expert blind spot
• Making assumptions about prior learning

Advice for next steps

Mind, brain, and education at Harvard’s graduate school of education

The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning by James E. Zull

What I find exciting is that we’re starting to ask different kinds of questions now. -Josh Eyler

Guest post Josh wrote on MassMedievil.com

Finally, nothing but a breath, a comma, separates us from our students–for we do not teach medieval literature, medieval art, medieval history, or medieval archaeology; we teach students about these subjects, about new ways to see their world through the lens of the past. Our field will continue to live and breathe only insofar as we dedicate ourselves to teaching it. And here I look to the wisdom of my dissertation director, Fred Biggs, who once told me that *everything* is a teaching activity—writing, presenting, publishing, but especially our work in the classroom, where we will teach hundreds and even thousands of students over the course of a career. The work we do with our students will push back the boundaries of our knowledge about the Middle Ages ever further, but to accomplish this we need to tear down the tenuous hierarchies of our classrooms—professor/student, expert/novice—and move forward together as fellow learners, engaging in projects together, teaching each other, finding meaning together in this moment—our own pause, our breath, our comma.

Movie clip: “student/teacher… learners… not much really separates us.” – Josh Eyler

Empathy is the foundation for all good teaching. – Josh Eyler

Video clip of professors reading aloud negative student evaluations

There’s a vulnerability in the teaching/learning interaction. Students put themselves in a very vulnerable place, willingly, when they say, ‘I don’t know that; please help me learn that.’ It’s almost sacred that they’re doing that. We have to take that and value it very highly. – Josh Eyler

Recommendations

Bonni’s:

Overcast – a powerful yet simple iphone podcast player

Josh’s:

IMDb: Wit (2001)

A renowned professor is forced to reassess her life when she is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer.

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