21st Century Learning and Teaching

Researchers from the University of Otago, New Zealand, wanted to find out if engaging in normal creative acts make people feel better. An analysis of the information found a pattern of more enthusiasm and higher ‘flourishing’ following days when the undergraduates were more creative.

Study author Dr Tamlin Conner said: ‘There is growing recognition in psychology research that creativity is associated with emotional functioning.

‘However, most of this work focuses on how emotions benefit or hamper creativity, not whether creativity benefits or hampers emotional wellbeing.’

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The teenage brain has been characterized as a risk-taking machine, looking for quick rewards and thrills instead of acting responsibly. But these behaviors could actually make teens better than adults at certain kinds of learning.

“In neuroscience, we tend to think that if healthy brains act in a certain way, there should be a reason for it,” says Juliet Davidow, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University in the Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab and the lead author of the study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Neuron.

But scientists and the public often focus on the negatives of teen behavior, so she and her colleagues set out to test the hypothesis that teenagers’ drive for rewards, and the risk-taking that comes from it, exist for a reason.

When it comes to what drives reward-seeking in teens, fingers have always been pointed at the striatum, a lobster-claw-shape structure in the brain. When something surprising and good happens — say, you find $20 on the street — your body produces the pleasure-related hormone dopamine, and the striatum responds.

“Research shows that the teenage striatum is very active,” says Davidow. This suggests that teens are hard-wired to seek immediate rewards. But, she adds, it’s also shown that their prefrontal cortex, which helps with impulse control, isn’t fully developed. Combined, these two things have given teens their risky rep.

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In some instances, research illuminates a topic and changes our existing beliefs. For example, here’s a post that challenges the myth of preferred learning styles. Other times, you might hear about a study and say, “Well, of course that’s true!” This might be one of those moments.
Last year, Dr. Karlsson Wirebring and fellow researchers published a study that supports what many educators and parents have already suspected: students learn better when they figure things out on their own, as compared to being told what to do.  

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https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/practice-put-students-in-the-drivers-seat-how-to/

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/learning-path-for-professional-21st-century-learning-by-ict-practice/

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/design-the-learning-of-your-learners-students-ideas/

Mehrsprachigkeit fördert die geistige Flexibilität. Umso mehr, wenn von Kind an der offene Umgang mit Sprachen gelernt wird, so Pascale Engel de Abreu von der Uni Luxemburg.

“[Adolescence is] a stage of life when we can really thrive, but we need to take advantage of the opportunity,” said Temple University neuroscientist Laurence Steinberg at a Learning and the Brain conference in Boston. Steinberg has spent his career studying how the adolescent brain develops and believes there is a fundamental disconnect between the popular characterizations of adolescents and what’s really going on in their brains.

Because the brain is still developing during adolescence, it has incredible plasticity. It’s akin to the first five years of life, when a child’s brain is growing and developing new pathways all the time in response to experiences. Adult brains are somewhat plastic as well — otherwise they wouldn’t be able to learn new things — but “brain plasticity in adulthood involves minor changes to existing circuits, not the wholesale development of new ones or elimination of others,” Steinberg said.

The adolescent brain is exquisitely sensitive to experience,” Steinberg said. “It is like the recording device is turned up to a different level of sensitivity.” That’s why humans tend to remember even the most mundane events from adolescence much better than even important events that took place later in life. It also means adolescence could be an extremely important window for learning that sticks. Steinberg notes this window is also lengthening as scientists observe the onset of puberty happening earlier and young people taking on adult roles later in life. Between these two factors, one biological and one social, adolescence researchers now generally say the period lasts 15 years between the ages of 10 and 25.

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Use #Andragogy UP from 11 years:

 https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/andragogy-adult-teaching-how-to-teach-ict/

— Breaking up and spacing out study time over days or weeks can substantially boost how much of the material students retain, and for longer, compared to lumping everything into a single, nose-to-the-grindstone session.

— Varying the studying environment — by hitting the books in, say, a cafe or garden rather than only hunkering down in the library, or even by listening to different background music — can help reinforce and sharpen the memory of what you learn.

— A 15-minute break to go for a walk or trawl on social media isn’t necessarily wasteful procrastination. Distractions and interruptions can allow for mental “incubation” and flashes of insight — but only if you’ve been working at a problem for a while and get stuck, according to a 2009 research meta-analysis.

— Quizzing oneself on new material, such as by reciting it aloud from memory or trying to tell a friend about it, is a far more powerful way to master information than just re-reading it, according to work by researchers including Henry Roediger III and Jeffrey Karpicke. (Roediger has co-authored his own book, “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.”)

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https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2016/03/14/time-the-most-important-factor-neglected-in-education/

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Brain

75 Millionen Europäer leiden unter chronischen Schmerzen. Die damit verbundenen körperlichen und psychischen Beeinträchtigungen erschweren das Leben erheblich.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?tag=University+Luxembourg