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BIRMINGHAM LEA
Afro-Caribbean and Asian Achievement Groups

WE ARE ALL LEARNERS ... BUT WE LEARN IN DIFFERENT WAYS

Martineau Centre, Harborne February 10th 2005
THIS LISTING INCLUDES SOME SLIDES THAT WERE INTENDED TO BE USED, BUT WERENT. A FEW MAY NOT BE IN EXACTLY THE ORDER THEY WERE SHOWN.

For additional reference, please see the following two articles, both available on the Initiatives website.
> Adolescence; a critical Evolutionary Adaptation > When will we ever learn?

2005 The 21st Century Learning Initiative

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The 21st Century Learning Initiative

E403

Criticizing parents doesn't improve their capacity to respond positively to their children ... I believe that the real source of many parenting difficulties is the separation of work and home, of public and private, which has had the result of isolating mothers in their homes without string networks of adult support. Women face the artificial choice of devoting themselves to their working lives, or to their babies, when the evidence is they want both.
Sue Gerhardt "Why Love Matters: How affection shapes the human brain" 2004

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Research from the Kellogg Foundation, conducted in the State of Michigan, into the predictors of success at the age of 18 "[This] compared the relative influence that family, community and other factors have on student performance. Amazingly it concluded that factors outside the school are four times more important in determining a student's success on standardized tests than are factors within the school," "The most significant predictor was the quantity and quality of dialogue in the child's home before the age of five."
Quoted at The White House Conference on Early Childhood Development and Learning April 1997

B26

S Bowler, H Gintes and M Osborne in 'The Determinants of Earnings: A Behavioral Approach", published in The Journal of Economic Literature, vol..XXXIX pp1137-76, December 2001 * Over 50% of variance in earning capacity of individuals cannot be accounted for by educational attainment, cognitive ability, experience and other recognized and measured variables * In understanding wage differences, socio-economic background, years of schooling and standard IQ tests are not as significant as motivational traits of industriousness, delayed gratification, punctuality, perseverance, leadership and adaptability * Parental education, income and occupation remain significant predictors of the earning capacity of children; however, the association between parental background and earnings is not explained mainly by IQ or years of schooling * Economic returns to schooling (higher labor market earnings for individuals) appears to be mediated mainly through non-cognitive ability rather than cognitive ability Note also Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Literacy" and the marshmallow test.

B5

By the time children reach the age of formal schooling, they have forged elaborate learning skills and their minds are prodigiously complex repositories of knowledge. The feeling that a parent has, on watching a young child grow, that "my child is brilliant, quite possibly even a genius, is entirely valid. Each child is extraordinary. Nature has equipped every child with learning capabilities that far exceed anyone's ability to describe them. Unfortunately, the education system - based as it is on out-dated, incorrect, over simplified, psychological principles, all to often collides catastrophically with children's natural learning skills, teaches them to mistrust and repress those skills, and moves countless numbers of children through 15,000 hours of systematic training in learning not to learn.
Sylvia Farnham Schooling 1990

B24

Tell me, and I forget; show me, and I remember; let me do and I understand.
Chinese Proverb

B16

Half of the 5 year olds starting school lack the speaking and listening skills needed to cope in the classroom .... "A cultural change means that parents no longer believed conversation was essential to their children's development," said Alan Wells, Director of the Basic Skills Agency. Describing family communication as "the daily grunt", Mr. Wells went on to say, "There is an ethos (among parents) which says 'don't worry, schools will do it all for you'"..
The Independent 4th March 2003

E140

Social Capital This was first defined in 1916 by L.J.Hanifan in West Virginia as "those tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit ... The individual is helpless socially, if left to himself ... If he comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social , potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of Jiving conditions in the whole community. The community as a whole will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the fellowship of his neighbors."
Quoted in Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, 2001

E60

Every 10 minutes of commuting time cuts all forms of civic engagement by 10% Why social capital matters Research has begun to show how powerfully social capital, or its absence, affects the wellbeing of individuals, organizations, and nations. Economic studies demonstrate that social capital makes workers more productive, firms more competitive, and nations more prosperous. Psychological research indicates that abundant social capital makes individuals less prone to depression and more inclined to help others. Epidemiological reports show that social capital decreases the rate of suicide, colds, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer, and improves individuals' ability to fight or recover from illnesses once they have struck. Sociology studies suggest that social capital reduces crime, juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, child abuse, welfare dependency, and drug abuse, and increases student test scores and graduation rates.
From Saguara Seminars: Civic Engagement in America, 2001

E392

The work of Jordan Peterson and Alan Fiske (1999) suggests four skill sets for human transactions Communal Sharing Authority Ranking Equality Matching Market Pricing (the hunter/gatherer) (relationship of inequal ity) (scratch my back, and Ill scratch yours) (bartering)

...(some) evidence that those four modes are manifested in maturing children in the order they are presented, in a spontaneous, uncoached manner starting roughly with three year olds for Communal Sharing and proceeding to eight year olds for Market Pricing. Driven Lawrence & Nahria 2002

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What was your most powerful learning experience? How did this shape the way you think about your own learning?

The 21st Century Learning Initiative

A13

Learning and schooling are not synonymous.

The 21st Century Learning Initiative

A14

"Learning ... that reflective activity which enables the learner to draw upon previous experience to understand and evaluate the present, so as to shape future action and formulate new knowledge."

The 21st Century Learning Initiative

A21

Evolutionary Intelligence "Human beings, together with all their likes and dislikes, their senses and sensibilities, did not fall ready-made from the sky; nor were they born with minds and bodies that bare no imprints of the history of then- species. Many of our abilities and susceptibilities are specific adaptations to ancient environmental problems, rather than separate manifestations of a general intelligence for all Seasons."
John D. Barrow The Artful Universe, 1996

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Our bodies and minds are not of recent origin. They are the direct consequence of millions of years of surviving in Africa and adapting to the dramatic changes this continent has seen in the course of the last five million years. Africa has shaped not only our physical bodies, but the societies within which we live. The way we interact today at a social and cultural level is in many ways the result of organisational skills developed by our hominid ancestors in Africa over millions of years.
Cradle of Humankind Brett Hilton-Barber and Lee R. Berger, South Africa, 2002

E368

Infants weaned on T.V. cannot concentrate

Commenting on the research by Dr. Dimitri Christakis of the Childrens Hospital in Seattle on the impact of T.V. on young children, the Guardian stated; Children under two should not watch television because it increases the risk of them developing attention deficit disorders. Quoting the Journal of Paediatrics, Watching too much television increased the childs likelihood of being unable to pay attention in school. For every hour of T.V. watched daily by children at ages 1 to 3 the risk of attention problems at age 7 increases by nearly 10% (current estimates in the US suggest that between 4 and 12% of youngsters suffer from ADHD. At present three-year-olds in the US watch an average of 3.6 hours of TV a day.)
Seattle Times 5th April 2004 The Guardian 6th April 2004

E198

Upside Down and Inside Out A possible description of the assumption we have inherited about systems of learning, namely, that older students should be taken more seriously than younger students and that the only learning that really matters is that which is formal. This presentation will call for these assumptions to be reversed in the light of modern understanding about how humans learn.

A25

Key Issue 1 Pregnancy and the Developing Brain "There is no period of parenthood with a more direct and formative effect on a child's brain, than the nine months of pregnancy leading to the birth of a full term baby. The mother's emotions affect the foetus, and so do her general habits and the parent's physical environment. (Probably) half of birth defects are due to avoidable exposure to medicinal drugs, recreational drugs, alcohol, tobacco smoke, and toxic agents at work and at home." Marian Diamond The Magic Trees of the Mind, 1998

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Key Issue I "We have unequivocal evidence that breastfed children are physically stronger than nonbreast-fed children, that they have greater verbal, quantitative, and memory abilities as pre-schoolers and significantly higher I.Q. scores during their school years. This is due not simply to healthy substances in the milk, as many assume, but also to the early motherchild relationship that breast-feeding implies."
Karl Zinsmesiter, The American Enterprise, May/June 1998

A27

Key Issue 1 Mechanisation? Big Brother? "Almost three hundred American employers, including Aetna, Eastman Kodak, Cigna and Home Depot, now offer "Lactation Support Rooms" where female employees can now take regular breaks to attach electric pumps to their breasts in order to collect milk in bottles for their infants in day care. Some companies, aside from the 'pumping rooms', have "lactation consultants" to help mothers solve breast-feeding problems."
Original quotation in There's No Place Like Work by Brian Robertson, and re-quoted in Nasty, Brutish and Short, an article by Richard Lowry in National Review, May 2001

E365

Why Love Matters: How Affection shapes a babys brain

Our earliest experiences are not simply laid down as memories or influences, they are translated into precise physiological patters of response in the brain that then set the neurological rules for how we deal with our feelings and those of other people for the rest of our lives. Its not nature or nurture, but both. How we are treated as babies and toddlers determines the way in which what were born with turns into what we are.
Sue Gerhardt 2004

E397

"Work is not just about getting paid. Indeed, much work in our culture is not paid at all, for exmple, raising children, cooking meals ... helping a neighbour who has undergone a trauma ... The very word 'job' fits the Newtonian parts mentality. In a mechanical view of the universe, a job is all one can hope for. 'Job' denotes a discreet task, and one that is not very joyful. Dr Johnson defined 'job' as: 'petty, piddling work; a piece of chance work" "In contrast, work is about a 'role' we play in the unfolding drama of the universe. (The word 'rolle' in old French comes from the roll of parchment an actor reads from)."
Matthew Fox "The Reinvention of Work" 1995

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Key Issue 1 Adolescence Adolescence is currently seen as a "problem" in Western Society; that excess of hormones leaves the rapidly maturing child unaware of its new physical strength, and confused as to how to direct it. While modern parents and teachers find adolescence disruptive, earlier cultures directed this energy in ways that developed those skills on which the community was dependent for its ongoing survival. In doing so it also ensured that young people learned, and practiced, what was seen as appropriate social behavior.

E389

The New Adolescent We need a new developmental perspective on adolescence. AS puberty (a physical state) occurs ever earlier, its no longer in synchronisation with brain development (emotional and intellectual states). Between childhood and adolescence there is a stage of development that Sigmund Freud called the latency period, when boys and girls turned their backs on each other and formed special attachments with same-sex peers. It was a time when they gathered physical and psychological strength to explore the world, becoming confident learners and confident socially ... marshalling their forces to be able to go into puberty.

E389b

What we are seeing is a short-circuiting of the latency period, when youngsters used to develop a sense of who they were, and how they fitted into the world. Today some younger people merely dip their toes into the latency period before a combination of peer pressure, and unrelenting marketing machine and their own physiology lures them into the kaleidoscope of adolescence ... combined with timepoor parents, lack of ritual and tradition, spiritual anorexia, mixed media messages, higher material expectations, academic requirements, this makes the adolescents of 2004 arguably the most vulnerable generation Australia has ever seen.
The Age, 30.4.04

A39

Two of the findings in Becoming Adult: How Teenagers Prepare for the World of Work (Csikszentmihalyi, and Schenider 2000) are highly pertinent to Cognitive Apprenticeship:

- Students who get the most out of school and have the highest future expectations - are those who find school more "playlike" than "worklike". - Clear vocational goals and good work experiences do not guarantee a smooth transition to adult work. What do are engaging activities - with intense involvement regardless of content. These are essential for building the optimism and resilience crucial to satisfying work lives.

E370

Rich Learning Environments; (i) The Home "In all societies since the beginning of time, adolescents have learned to become adults by observing, imitating and interacting with grown ups round them. The self is shaped and honed by feedback from men and women who already know who they are and can help the young person find out who he or she is going to be. It is startling that ... in a sample of 2,700 reports ... the average adolescent ... spend(s) approximately five minutes a day interacting exclusively with their fathers."
Csikszentmihalyi, 1984

E411

Crazy by Design
We have suspected that there is something going on in the brain of the adolescent, apparently involuntarily, that is forcing apart the child/parent relationship. What neurologists are discovering challenges the conventional belief held until only a year or so ago, that brain formation is largely completed by the age of twelve. Adolescence is a period of profound structural change, in fact the changes taking place in the brain during adolescence are so profound, they may rival early childhood as a critical period of development, wrote Barbara Strauch in 2003. The teenage brain, far from being readmade, undergoes a period of surprisingly complex and crucial development. The adolescent brain, she suggests, is crazy by design.

E412

Adolescence; a critical Evolutionary Adaptation.

In accepting that the impact of the neurological changes in the teenage brain makes them crazy by design it can be seen that adolescence is actually a critical evolutionary adaptation that is essential to our species survival. It is an internal mechanism that prevents children from becoming mere clones of their parents. Adolescence is probably a deep-seated biological adaptation that makes it essential for the young to go off, either to war, to hunt, to explore, to colonize, or to make love - in other words, to prove themselves, so as to start a life of their own. As such it is adolescence which forces individuals in every generation to think beyond their own self-imposed limitations, and to exceed their parents aspirations.

E413

Adolescence and Apprenticeship forms of learning

Thomas Hine writing in 1999 on the rise and fall of the American teenager noted, the principle reason high schools now enrol nearly all teenagers is that we cant imagine what else to do with them. That is a shocking conclusion by a man who spent years studying the issue. Modern society, by being so concerned for the well being of adults tries desperately to ignore the adolescents need to explore and do things for themselves, by giving them ever more to do in school. It is as if modern society is trying to outlaw adolescence by over schooling children. That is not education. There is a frightening manmade hole in the desirable experience for adolescence - there are simply not enough opportunities for them to learn from doing things for themselves in a modern society.

E205

Upside Down and Inside Out A possible description of the assumption we have inherited about systems of learning, namely, that older students should be taken more seriously than younger students and that the only learning that really matters is that which is formal. This presentation will call for these assumptions to be reversed in the light of modern understanding about how humans learn.

A42

INTELLECTUAL WEANING ("Do it yourself") SUBSIDIARITY: It is wrong for a superior body to retain the right to make decisions than an inferior body is already able to make for itself.

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"We have not inherited this world from our parents. We have been loaned it by our children." "We are prophets of a future not our own." "There aren't any great people out there any more - there's only us."

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"This is what we are about. We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities. "We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realising that. This enables us to do something, and enables us to do it very well It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end result, but that is the difference between the master builder, and the worker. "We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not Messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own".

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The Attraction of Hard Work

"Why should meeting high challenges with high skills be something we enjoy doing for its own sake, even without extrinsic rewards? The reason does not seem to be that we are brainwashed as children or socialised into enjoying difficult things. It is more likely that we were born with a preference for acting at our fullest potential. Perhaps enjoying mastery and confidence is evolutionarily adaptive, just as it is adaptive to find pleasure in food and sex. In the development of the human nervous system a connection must have been established between hard work and a sense of pleasure even when the work was not strictly necessary. It is this connection that makes creativity and progress possible."
Becoming Adult; How Teenagers Prepare for the World of Work Csikszentmihalyi and Schneider, 2000

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You can take man out of the Stone Age but you can't take the Stone Age out of man
Harvard Business Review

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin

Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by graduation. Light will be thrown on the origins of man and his history.
Charles Darwin

Evolution in Mind.
Henry Plotkin 1997

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2005 The 21st Century Learning Initiative