Accelerated Learning Literature - Term Paper Example

ACCELERATED LEARNING LITERATURE INTRODUCTION Accelerated Learning is a model of teaching and learning that creates an environment and teaching processes to enable learners to move beyond limiting beliefs and misconceptions and tap into their hidden potential. To understand Accelerated Learning at its core and what distinguishes it from many other teaching philosophies and methodologies, it is important to both go back to the roots of the method and look at its development over the years. Suggestopedia, originally developed by Dr. Georgi Lozanov, a Bulgarian professor and psychotherapist, set the groundwork for what became known as Accelerated Learning in the USA in 1976. His Suggestology Research Institute was established in Sofia, Bulgaria in1966. Lozanov developed a model of teaching in which learning becomes a pleasurable, natural process through the use of music, art, role-playing and games. He placed great emphasis on the quality of the learning environment. He stressed that it was the teacher who created and maintained the learning space, an emotionally safe and rich environment that motivates learners to stretch and to widen their perspectives as they develop their capacity to learn. (www.ALstanford research.com) Accelerated learning is a term recently applied to enhancing learning by understanding the process of acquiring and using information. The programmes that are available are aimed at children and adults in various fields in order to help them assimilate knowledge faster and more effectively. These programmes are based on research done, primarily in the 20th century, on how the brain works. Because education is a now a human right in many countries, particularly the western world parents, employers and educators have isolated problems in existing education systems. In the past many children were educated in basic literacy in order to be contained within in structured environment and in order to learn skills of a rapidly industrializing world fro about 1820. education( literacy, numeracy etc.) before had been limited to the wealthy males of certain cultures. Other children had been expected to learn the skills needed in smaller communities and these skills were learned from an early age i.e. weaving and woodwork. After industrialision, populations of many countries shifted into the cities and school based education became commonplace up to a certain age. This type of education focused on rote learning and discipline so that children would be trained to be able to work in factories. Because for the fist time there were concentrated numbers of children in institutions, awareness began to grow of the influence of the institutions themselves had on children. Important work was done, notably after the First World War on how children learned. The human rights movements after the Second World War meant that education became a right for all children from all economic and cultural groups. Children became elevated from second class to first class citizens and the focus turned from trying to fill them as if they were empty vessels into trying to understand how to teach more effectively as well as designing curriculums that were valid in modern society. The focus however often continued to be on the end result: an increasingly industrialized and global economy meant that economically these children needed to be able to accomplish tasks for the marketplace. Most of the population of first world countries from age 6-12 were in theory writing the same evaluation tests but it was still a case of survival of the fittest: the tasks and skills needed for the marketplace were numeracy and communication skills and these had been designed to be taught and tested in a very specific manner mainly based on IQ. Unfortunately because certain learning institutions are better equipped and staffed (usually according to the wealth of the attendant learners) some Learners would have more advantages-smaller classes more attractive grounds and classrooms and better trained educators-then no matter what learning and teaching styles employed more learners would succeed in grasping the knowledge and being able to apply it. Many techniques used however to process large numbers of learners fail to teach a large portion of the population-some children have different ways of processing information and many find the testing involved in assessing their level tense and cannot perform. educators have seen the drawbacks to mainstream education and in recent years there have been moves to alter certain practices and implement new strategies. The aim is to bridge the gap between those with difficulties and those more proficient in order to ensure most school leavers are adequately prepared for either further education or the job market. Because of rapidly changing marketplace in terms of skills means that many adults are also requires to learn new information often in restricted time in order to qualify for new jobs or retain their old ones. This means that all ages are required to learn and apply information and shills far faster than before. Technology especially computers and other information technology has been a huge boon to skills acquisition, but outmoded techniques of teacher centered lecture style to impart information have had to be revised. Although different techniques have been used intrinsically by teachers for decades even centuries, many new techniques have become formalized over the last twenty years into an area we now \call accelerated learning. BRAIN GYMS: ARGUMENTS FOR THEM Brain gyms were developed in the 70’s and used information on how the human brain responds to certain stimuli to develop their theories. The number of ch8ildren diagnosed with learning difficulties such as dyslexia, ADDH and ADH has risen significantly and schools were required to cater for these children in mainstream classes. Other disabilities such as hearing and sight-impaired children were also expected to be catered for. This put enormous pressure on existing teaching methods and many school that were inadequately funded or staffed felt pressure to provide an adequate education. In the Britain children are protected by a bill of rights that makes previous discipline practices unavailable to teachers and many schools were faced with ill-educated and very badly behaved students who found it impossible to access very disciplined or structured learning: enter brain gym-in the very young various neurological synapses are formed at the early learning stages. These are built during crucial crawling and early movement stages. As the child develops, these synapses are the bridges that allow learners to understand and absorb new information. Brain gyms use certain physical movements to encourage learning and allow connections. There is a strong advocacy for cutting out preservatives from food and drink in learners' diets as this inhibits absorption of water also paramount in brain gym philosophy to learning. What became Brain Gym began in Paul and Gail Dennison’s work in the 1970s,researching more effective ways to help learning disabled children and adults. They call their field Of study, which they founded during this period, “Educational Kinesiology” (Edu-K), a form of applied kinesiology. They define Edu-K as “learning through movement”. Some of the specific movements the program uses were, according to the Brain Gym website, developed from PaulDennison’s “knowledge of the relationship of movement to perception, and the impact of these on fine motor and academic skills.” Others were learned during his training as a marathon runner, his study of vision training, his study of Jin Shin Jitsu (a form of acupressure), and his study of Applied Kinesiology. The Dennisons presented their program under its current name in their booklets Switching On: A Guide to Edu-Kinesthetics (1980) and Brain Gym – Simple Activities for Whole Brain Learning (1986) Brain Gym is now used in more than 80 countries. The program is based on the premise that all learning begins with movement, and that any learning challenges can be overcome by finding the right movements, to subsequently create new pathways in the brain. It claims that the repetition of certain movements “activates the brain for optimal storage and retrieval of information” and “promotes efficient communication among the many nerve cells and functional centers located throughout the brain and sensory motor system.” There are 26 of these exercises, which are designed to “integrate body and mind” in order to improve “concentration, memory, reading, writing, organizing, listening, physical coordination, and more.” Educational Kinesiology teaches that brain function is defined in terms of three dimensions: laterality is the ability to coordinate the left and right sides of the brain, focus is the ability to co-ordinate the front and back of the brain, and centering is the ability to co-ordinate the top and bottom of the brain. According to Brain Gym, people whose brains are not interconnected properly in the three different dimensions suffer from corresponding deficits; for example, the ability to move and think at the same time is dependent on laterality (left to right co-ordination). The Brain Gym exercises are claimed to work by interconnecting the brain in these three dimensions. Anatomical, physiological and neurological research does not support this model. Doing  the “hook-ups” movement,  “to calm   the   mind  and  improve concentration”.( Dennison ,P and G 1986) Brain gym has been integrated into the British School system as part and parcel of the curriculum. There are of course many positive aspects to this: it conveys an awareness that there is a problem with the current system and the solution is to offer enjoyable activity and positive re-enforcement for many students who might have felt demoralized or out of their depth in the system. The strong focus on nutrition and exercise will also be advantageous: western society is increasingly prone to becoming obese and static as our lives center around solitary and passive pursuits such as computer games and television. Brain gyms are also focused on fun and remove the competitive value system from achievement, which could lead to many student’s feelings of inadequacy. In the past where failure to learn (was often met with corporal punishment or negative responses, brain gyms have stepped in to offer a solution. They also take some of the burden off remedial programmes, which were often just dumping grounds for all the students who just did not fit in or respond to mainstream education. Many ideas about the brain in education may be at odds with present scientific understanding, but perhaps not all of them should be dismissed entirely. For example, short sessions of Brain Gym exercise have been shown to improve response times69, and such strategies, if they are effective, may work because exercise can improve alertness. If they do help learning, the basis for this effect should be researched further, to support improved understanding and practice. Teachers are not always satisfied with knowing that an approach appears to be working. They would also like to know why and how. Educators also care about the validity of scientific claims used to promote an idea70 while a greater understanding of underlying processes also contributes to more effective evaluation. One thing is clear. Education has already invested an immense amount of time and money in ‘brain-based’ ideas that were never based on any recognizable scientific understanding of the brain. Many of these ideas remain untested and others are being revealed as ineffective. In the future, an improved dialogue between neuroscience and education will be critical in supporting the development, application and evaluation of educational programmes based on a sound scientific understanding of the brain. (Howard-Jones, P, 2002). ARGUMENTS AGAINST THEM Brain Gym has been criticized as being wholly unscientific in a wide-ranging and authoritative review of research into neuroscience and education published in 2007 by the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme. The report noted that doing any exercise can improve alertness, and exercise systems like Brain Gym, regardless of their pseudoscientific ideas, may help for that reason. In May 2006, Professor Usha Goswami, the director of Cambridge University’s Centre for Neuroscience in Education, wrote an article published in Nature, in which she says that BrainGym and similar programmes are based on “neuromyths” that “need to be eliminated”. She attributes the “success of the brain-based learning industry” to “inspirational marketing” which “ensures that teachers who attend these conferences do get ‘sold’ on the supposed benefits of these programmes” and to “placebo effects” that “may indeed bring benefits to children in the short term.” In summary, she says that teachers are very interested in neuroscience, but science is not yet ready to offer practical advice.[16] In 2008 Sense About Science published a briefing document in which thirteen British scientists responded to statements taken from the “Brain Gym guide (Teacher’s Edition)”. Each of them entirely rejected the statements that were put to them. Brain Gym’s scientific content was described as “pseudo-scientific”. One of the scientists, Professor of neuroscience Colin Blakemore, said that “there have been a few peer reviewed scientific studies into the methods of Brain Gym, but none of them found a significant improvement in general academic skills.” Sense about Science, along with the British Neuroscience Association and the Physiological Society, wrote to every Local Education Authority in Britain to warn them about the program In 2007 Dr. Keith Hyatt of Western Washington University wrote a paper in which he analysed the available research into Brain Gym, as well as its theoretical basis. He concluded that Brain Gym is not supported by research, and that its theoretical basis does not stand up. The paper also encouraged teachers to learn how to read and understand research, to avoid teaching material that has no rational basis.(www.wickepedia:brain gym) There is much to be said about pseudoscientific claims. The main criticism is that it sold as a scientific (therefore ‘truthful’) solution to learning problems. Because the layperson is often awed by language that contains medical terminology, certain of the claims that brain gym makes are not in fact ethical. If it was just touted as a method to improve learning available to parents and children by choice, then there would have been no real outcry by the media and scientists. But because it has been implemented as the a compulsory and integral part of the education system it has opened itself up to attack. It is all very well to use recent research into the workings of the brain to reach certain conclusions, but there are certain factors : social, economic and genetic, which also have a bearing. The home life of students is integral to their ability to further and appreciate knowledge. In a home where there are books and there is a positive view of education, students are better equipped to succeed. If a family has a history of schooling, so too is the child more likely to find school and learning a natural extension of their existence. Parents with an aptitude for accessing information are also more likely to have offspring who are more able to cope at school. No amount of brain gym will make up for these factors. A school or environment that is economically more stable and attractive will also play a role. The sad truth is that not everyone is cut out for Shakespeare and algebra. There are no shortcuts to suddenly being able to comprehend John Donne’s, 'Death be Not Proud', if the only reading materials at home is the latest Heat, and unfortunately there is little substitute foe lack of early developmental stimuli. Schools have been set the task of providing much of what society-the family unit and grater community is supposed to provide e for the child and this will always be a problem. There is no way that brain gym will radically alter anything except create certain misconceptions and lead students to think by tapping their chests it will all become clear. Since the 1990’s, an increasing number of educational programmes have claimed to have a ‘brain basis’. There are few examples of such programmes having been evaluated, and they often appear to have developed without neuroscientific scrutiny. Some of the ideas promoted by these programmes have become part of the educational culture in many schools. In the survey mentioned at the beginning of this commentary, about 30 per cent of teachers attending an INSET day had already heard of the commercial programme known as ‘Brain Gym’63. This programme promotes the idea that neural mechanisms can be influenced by specific physical exercises. The pseudoscientific terms that are used to explain how this works, let alone the concepts they express, are unrecognizable within the domain of neuroscience. For example, there is a claim that, if children provide pressure on their ‘brain buttons’, they can help re-establish the brain organisation required for reading and writing64. ‘Brain buttons’ are described as indentations between the 1st and 2nd ribs directly under the collarbone to the right and left of the breastbone. Other exercises include the Cross-crawl, promoted on the basis of activating left/right, top/bottom and back/front areas of the brain simultaneously, and varieties of ‘Hook-up’ for calming and stress relieving effects. Approaches to learning that come under the broad heading of ‘Accelerated Learning’ are a more eclectic mixture of ideas from popularly-reported neuroscience and psychology, synthesised with practice derived from classroom experience. In books that promote accelerated learning, concepts from psychology and neuroscience are often introduced as a means to promote and explain learning processes. However, these too often do not survive scientific scrutiny. For example, as in Brain Gym, there is a still an emphasis on the desirability of balance between the left and right part of the brain. (Howard-Jones, P(2002). Dr Ben Goldacre of the Guardian’s Bad Science has been one of the most fervent critics of the pseudoscientific claims that Brain gym makes. He sees the practice as an empire of misinformation. Unfortunately it is human nature to desire a quick fix- a ‘smart-pill’ or an step-by-step programme that will make everything okay. LEARNING STYLES : ARGUMENTS FOR THEM In contrast to brain gyms, which focuses more on kinesthetic learning, learning styles focus on the different ways people are thought to access information and build on these in order to make sure that all students are stimulated. This is possibly more entrenched in the current system and because of its broader nature has more advocates as an accelerated learning technique. Many teachers use these styles without being aware that they are doing anything out of the ordinary: they introduce music, mnemonics, color and mind mapping techniques as part of their lessons. Because many lessons have become more computer orientated and research project s use information technology, learners are exposed to material presented in ways different to a list on the blackboard or a sheaf of notes. Educational reformers from Maria Montessori, Rudolph Steiner and Vrygotsky have advocated alternative learning since the beginning of the 2oth century. Many school are modeled on these very practices. Recently however there has been move to not only introduce these methods into mire main stream schooling, but also to use them in daily education programmes and in the workplace as well as in language learning which is a huge industry today. Older children and adults are comfortable with these student centered approaches as they are very aware of their strengths and weaknesses in learning: some people actively dislike mind maps while others know they must hear something in order to remember or comprehend. Many different experimental techniques are used in brain research. But the outcomes of high resolution imaging such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) have probably attracted the greatest popular interest. However, such techniques only provide us with an image of the biological changes occurring in the brain, such as blood flow. They do not allow us to ‘see’ thinking or learning directly. To understand what such an image has to do with learning, we need a psychological model to help us relate it to our mental processes – i.e. a cognitive model. When cognitive models and our knowledge of biological processes inform each other, we can feel more confident about both. Cognitive neuroscience is very much concerned with exploring this relationship between the biology of the brain and the cognition of the mind. In this way, cognitive neuroscience is also drawing new attention to a variety of existing psychological concepts relevant to education, and in a very visual manner. Working memory is one example of how neuroscience is helping to ‘concretise’ psychological concepts. (Atherton, J , 2009) There are many institutions offering accelerated learning programmes. These are aimed at all ages and in many different areas. The common features of these programmes are: 1. Understanding the different approaches to learning 2. Making sure that everyone involved has the same ideas about learning 3. Creating a positive learning environment 4. Using a variety of resources 5. Aiming to empower the learner 6. Making sure that the outcomes are clearly identifiable As our knowledge about and understanding of the learning process grows, Accelerated Learning will adapt and refine the process of teaching/facilitating to continue to help create a world in which we are all successful lifelong learners and learning is more than the exchange of knowledge, it is a process in which each person thrives, is transformed and becomes in some way more whole and able to create and live the lives we want. ((www.ALstanford research.com) One of the most knowledgeable researchers of accelerated learning is Mary Driscoll. She has studied a wide range of institutions and here research has been applied in schools and businesses. She writes that the understanding of how each person learns is integral to the teaching process. The Accelerated Learning Method is based on that research. We each have a preferred learning style — a way of learning that suits us best. If you know and use the techniques that match your preferred way of learning, you learn more naturally. Because it is more natural for you, it becomes easier. And because it is easier, it is quicker.Hence the name – Accelerated Learning. By also incorporating well-researched memory techniques, Accelerated Learning makes learning an enjoyable, successful and satisfying experience. (Driscoll, M. P. (1994)) ARGUMENTS AGAINST THEM Critics argue that styles of learning will differ over different subjects and that all humans use different techniques to assimilate knowledge anyway. If we use only the constructivist techniques advocated by Vygrotsky and Driscoll, we lose out on cognitive methods that are suitable for subjects such as Accounting and Math. Other arguments are that schools are just not equipped to implement these strategies, so practice is half baked and unsatisfactory. In theory accelerated learning styles make sense, but in practice there are shortcomings. CONCLUSION Education is revisited every year in a bid to make t more successful and worthwhile. Private institutions and businesses are more likely to implement accelerated learning styles effectively because they have the necessary framework-especially online companies where websites offer the information which is more akin to mind mapping. Also these institutions are selected by parents and students who are motivated to learn. In schools the students often have no choice and will not benefit from these programmes unless there are enough resources and well-trained teachers to implement them. Brain gyms seem to have the most critics: as claims for their success rest mainly with one or two individuals and can easily be disputed whereas most learning styles are based on a much larger and more solid body of research. There is no real substitute for the old fashioned me65hods though; children and adults who read and are exposed to books are far more likely to do well in a\n academic environment. Schools cannot just supply the whole package, its up to the individual to decide on the type of education that suits them best. BIBLIOGRAPHY Atherton, J (2009) Learning and Teaching; Theories of Learning [On-line] UK: Available: http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/theories.htm Accessed: 7 May 2010 Crawford, K. (1996) Vygotskian approaches to human development in the information era. Educational Studies in Mathematics. (31) 43-62. Dennison ,P and G (1986) Brain Gym – Simple Activities for Whole Brain Learning Driscoll, M. P. (1994). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Needham, MA: Allyn Goldacre, B (2007). Bad Science. Guardian. University College London Hopfenberg, Wendy S. and Levin, Henry M., Accelerated Schools. School of Education, Howard-Jones, P(2002). TLRP Seminar Series Collaborative frameworks Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher mental processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. www. Braingym.com www. Colinrose.com www.ALstanford research.com .(www.wickepedia:brain gym) Read More