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| Initiate Learning |
Initiate Learning
There are three basic paths to initiate the learning process: tell me, show me, and let me discover.
Tell me – is the dominant learning path of a lecture. Teachers and parents tend to favour this path in order to convey lots of information in a relatively short period of time. In a stable society, the features of civilization are passed from generation to generation via the tell me path. We want our children to assimilate our laws and customs, not discover their own. We want our children to learn efficiently from talented teachers, not struggle to discover every concept on their own.
Show me – is the dominant learning path of demonstrations, coaching, and much informal learning. In the past twenty years researchers have discovered that our brains possess special ‘mirror neurons’ that are dedicated to show me learning.
Specific mirror neurons fire when we observe someone else performing a task, when we perform that task ourselves, or even when we just think about performing that task. It is thought that mirror neurons are the keys to learning language and understanding the actions of others.
The existence of mirror neurons may also explain why some tasks are relatively easy to learn, while others tend to be much more difficult. When a learning task has physical manifestations, our mirror neurons can help us to copy and reproduce those manifestations. We can learn to speak a language and use new vocabulary by listening to a fluent speaker. It is more difficult to learn to write a story by watching an author at work because the key steps occur inside the author’s brain. Mirror neurons are designed to help us learn how to skip rope, but are not designed to help us learn history.
Let me discover – is the dominant path for learning from personal investigations and trial-and-error experiences. This learning path is relatively slow but thorough. When you work hard to discover something for yourself, you have also completed most of the work required to consolidate and remember that learning.
Discovery learning is relatively rare. Even most discovery lessons at school are really show me lessons in disguise, since the required background information has been provided and the equipment has been arranged so that students tend to discover the object of the lesson by falling into it. True discovery learning occurs only when we invent new information for ourselves by combining old information in a novel and useful way. As any struggling inventor will tell you, most of the time the discovery learning approach does not lead to a practical result. Still, every now and then, discovery learning can lead to something very interesting.
There are three basic paths to initiate the learning process: tell me, show me, and let me discover.
Tell me – is the dominant learning path of a lecture. Teachers and parents tend to favour this path in order to convey lots of information in a relatively short period of time. In a stable society, the features of civilization are passed from generation to generation via the tell me path. We want our children to assimilate our laws and customs, not discover their own. We want our children to learn efficiently from talented teachers, not struggle to discover every concept on their own.
Show me – is the dominant learning path of demonstrations, coaching, and much informal learning. In the past twenty years researchers have discovered that our brains possess special ‘mirror neurons’ that are dedicated to show me learning.
Specific mirror neurons fire when we observe someone else performing a task, when we perform that task ourselves, or even when we just think about performing that task. It is thought that mirror neurons are the keys to learning language and understanding the actions of others.
The existence of mirror neurons may also explain why some tasks are relatively easy to learn, while others tend to be much more difficult. When a learning task has physical manifestations, our mirror neurons can help us to copy and reproduce those manifestations. We can learn to speak a language and use new vocabulary by listening to a fluent speaker. It is more difficult to learn to write a story by watching an author at work because the key steps occur inside the author’s brain. Mirror neurons are designed to help us learn how to skip rope, but are not designed to help us learn history.
Let me discover – is the dominant path for learning from personal investigations and trial-and-error experiences. This learning path is relatively slow but thorough. When you work hard to discover something for yourself, you have also completed most of the work required to consolidate and remember that learning.
Discovery learning is relatively rare. Even most discovery lessons at school are really show me lessons in disguise, since the required background information has been provided and the equipment has been arranged so that students tend to discover the object of the lesson by falling into it. True discovery learning occurs only when we invent new information for ourselves by combining old information in a novel and useful way. As any struggling inventor will tell you, most of the time the discovery learning approach does not lead to a practical result. Still, every now and then, discovery learning can lead to something very interesting.
