Computer

Rule 2: The human brain evolved too

In this chapter, John Medina explains how the brain has evolved over time. Much of this is not particularly relevant to learning, so I’m going to concentrate on one key element in this evolution – the development of symbolic reasoning:

“Symbolic reasoning is a uniquely human talent. It may have arisen from our need to understand one another’s intentions and motivations, allowing us to co-ordinate within a group.”

“The ability to peer inside somebody’s mental life and make predictions takes a tremendous amount of intelligence and, not surprisingly, brain activity.”

“We try to see our entire world in terms of motivations, ascribing motivations to our pets and even to inanimate objects.”

“Our ability to learn has deep roots in relationships. Our learning performance may be deeply affected by the emotional environment in which the learning takes place.”

“If someone does not feel safe with a teacher or boss, he or she may not be able to perform as well. If a student feels misunderstood because the teacher cannot connect with the way the student learns, the student may become isolated.”

The bottom line:

“Relationships matter when attempting to teach human beings.”

I suppose there’s nothing new in this idea. If we think back to all those individuals (teachers, parents, coaches, peers, managers, etc.) that have contributed greatly to our learning, there’s a good chance that we related well to these people and them to us. They may have challenged us to go further than we would have done on our own accord, but we respected them all the more for that. Those people who contrived to bully us, humiliate us, patronise us or otherwise make us feel bad, probably succeeded in putting us off the subject in question as well as them.

Given the choice, then we will almost certainly gravitate towards those people to whom we can relate well. Trouble is, we don’t always have the choice. In the workplace, we can get stuck with the wrong manager and this usually ends the same way – most people don’t leave their jobs, whatever they say at the exit interview, they divorce their managers! When it comes to the classroom, we typically get who we get and have to lump it. This puts a considerable onus on those who select and train teachers to make sure they do a good job.

To some extent the same applies if we learn collaboratively online. Without good facilitation/moderation, there is a risk of relationships breaking down, perhaps because one person tends to dominate or behave aggresively.

So, an alternative might be to avoid teachers altogether and concentrate on self-study – after all, we know learners like to learn at their own pace and in managable chunks. Leaving aside the fact that self-study may not be the ideal pedagogical choice, we’re unlikely to completely get round the relationship issue. In The Media Equation (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Reeves and Nass demonstrated that people treat computers, TV and new media like real people and places – if what they see or hear seems impolite or unfriendly, they turn off. Funnily enough, they blame this on the hardware, not the author, so designers can relax in the knowledge that they’re unlikely to receive hate mail.

My posting on Brain rules #1

The Brain Rules book

The Brain Rules website