Literacy Corner: Our Learning Brains: Principles for Tutoring
Our Learning Brains: Principles for Tutoring
By Carrie M. Cannella
Adriene Converse, Unsplash
At Mountain Plains’ annual conference last month, I facilitated a session on brain science and learning for tutoring. Here, I am sharing some of the key ideas we discussed about the learning brain and how we can use what we know to approach tutoring effectively. To arrive at this, we will look at foundations of “Adult Learning Theory,” learning preferences, and learning difficulties.
In order to have the best reading experience, get up and move around first. After reading a bit, get up again, do a walkabout, and think about how this all relates to what you know. Do that a couple of times, and try some doodling as well. When you’re finished reading, write a little reflection about how you’ll use these principles with your student(s). Together, we can create happy brains!
(Human) Learning Theory
In our field, we often start thinking about learning with Malcolm Knowles’ Adult Learning Theory in mind. However, as we learn more about the brain, it becomes more and more important to understand that it can really be looked at as Human Learning Theory. In The 10-Minute Trainer, Sharon Bowman suggests that Malcolm Knowles did a disservice to children when he established elements of adult learning as fundamentally different from the way children learn. Why? Because by doing so, he pushed the idea that children are blank slates who learn best passively, and the focus for K-12 became on teaching (hence “pedagogy”) versus learning.
Of course, adults are different from children: We bring massive amounts of golden life experience and knowledge to the table, while children gradually build that experience and knowledge. However, children also learn better with the following elements of andragogy, and we should instead look at the theory as a spectrum. Over time, as they get older, children gain more experience and knowledge, want more agency, and become more internally motivated. The rest of the elements below apply to all of us, even as we may approach them differently:
Must feel safe in order to learn
Need to know why we are learning something
Are naturally curious animals (we want to learn)
Learn best in an informal learning environment
See ourselves as self-directed & want agency in our learning
Learn best with hands-on practice
Bring our own histories and experiences to the learning & have ideas to contribute
Learn best when we can relate learning to what we already know
Have a problem-centered approach to learning
Learn socially
Learning Preferences & Differences
This doesn’t mean that you and I don’t have different preferences for learning. Sure, we do. But, learning “styles” are actually these preferences and not the only way we learn. We all need visuals, for example, period. We all need different kinds of enrichment, practice, and review, period. We all need positive emotions and to make meaning, period. Do you like listening to a speaker talk about a concept, though? OK. But you’ll learn better if the speaker includes images in their presentation. Do I absolutely enjoy reading about concepts? Yes. But I’ll learn better if I can create mental models in my mind to represent them.
This also doesn’t mean that there aren’t many, many of us who do learn differently. It, then, is most helpful that these principles apply even more to those students. For instance, students who have dyslexia process language differently. These students unequivocally need multisensory instruction and examples, in particular, the use of colors and manipulatives that they can touch, as well as systematic, clear, explicit teaching (all of which, as it happens, are good for everyone). Students with dyslexia may also need strategies like more time to process, cues like written instructions and checklists, and the use of assistive technology. We should never assume that others process information in the same way that we do.
Did you know that employers are learning the strengths of those with dyslexia and seeking these very strengths for the workplace? These strengths include “big-picture” thinking and problem solving skills and the ability to easily understand how things work. People with dyslexia are also often creative and can reason spatially and connect ideas in ways that those with neurotypical brains do not. This reminds us to approach our students based on their strengths, as those strengths will help them learn what they are seeking to learn.
In The Ten Minute Trainer, Sharon Bowman provides some key learning strategies that work for all of us:
Give students time to write or talk about what they want to learn
Talk about the why
Allow time for discussion on what they already know
Encourage plenty of questions
Have students take notes on new learning (visual notes are best)
Help students find more information to build on their knowledge
Have students tell you what they’re learning & how it is happening
Practice & use the new learning in different ways
Give students time to make a plan to use the learning
Have students evaluate their learning
The Science of Learning: Ten Principles
The science of learning builds on these concepts. While there are many thinkers and organizations in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and education contributing, it is also important to recognize that we still have much to learn about how the complex human brain really works. While many of these scholars have organized principles of learning in various ways, in my research, I arrived at these ten principles:
Enrichment: We need a variety of enrichment activities related to the content we are learning. Tips include activating different areas of the brain by using multimodal stimuli and the five senses, adding variety in the form of activities and texts, and including words and images at the same time. Imagery is key: use visuals: diagrams, charts, stories, pictures, colored paper/ stickies, flashcards, graphic organizers, etc.
Relevance: We need to make everything relatable for the student right away. We can put the new information in context, connect it to the student’s prior knowledge and experience, and use real-life problems and issues.
Priming & Reflecting: We have to be able to both prepare for learning and have space to digest it. So: priming the brain for learning might include preparing the student for learning through warm-ups that see what they know and what they want to know. Reflecting gives the student the opportunity to reflect and talk about their learning afterward.
Involving the Student: It is so important to make sure the student knows they own their learning. Let them lead the direction, always start with their goals, provide choice, find others who your student can collaborate with, and work with your student yourself (as opposed to watching them work or doing all the work).
Positive Emotions: Neuroscience shows how very important positive feelings are for learning. If we have to switch to survival mode, we shut down. If we have strong negative emotions connected to something, we shut down. Psychological safety is a must before any learning can occur. Make it fun, show your enthusiasm, add a variety of social connections, and prioritize time for building trust with discussion, getting to know your learner, and showing that you care.
Spaced Reviews: We are learning that the more informal quizzing, the better for retention. Help your student pull key new ideas and organize them into a mental model, incorporate low stakes quizzing like rapid-fire questions to practice recall, and review often in different ways but leave time between reviews so the student can process the information.
Diverse Application: Just as we need a variety of enrichment in concept development, we also need to practice the new skill or content in many different ways. “I do, we do, you do, you teach” works well here. Create worksheets with your student, have your student use the skill in another way, try out different formats where the student can show what they learned, and solve real-life problems. You might practice problem solving with role plays and dialogues first tackling the real thing.
Change It Up: We need things to change in order to get our attention, so include novelty and movement, change up voices, switch activities often, change the text into another format, or put another topic or skill side by side with the one you’re working on (called interleaving). Aim to change something (anything) every 10-20 minutes. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, either!
Active Learning: I think by now we all know that it’s important to create ‘neurological cross-talk,’ where the student is using different parts of their brain by moving, collaborating, playing games, talking, writing, and creating. This doesn’t mean that all activities that you do with your student are hands-on; it just matters that some of them are.
Chunking: Take the content and skills and divide them into smaller pieces and then give the student time to process that before moving on. The longer one works with a student, the easier it is to know how much the student can digest at one time. There is no one-size-fits-all here. (Ask your student what feels comfortable and to tell you when it is too much.) Equally important here is to allow break time and help your student incorporate the information into what they already know.
Do you have to incorporate all of these principles into every session? Absolutely not, other than the principle of psychological safety first. The idea is that we utilize them when and how they work for our students. Establishing some routines, like starting with priming and ending with reflecting, is key. You might also land on some instructional routines that you go back to over and over again. That is perfectly reasonable, as long as you still bring in something new and different now and then. We need changes to pay attention to, yes, but we also need routines and structures that hold these principles. One such organizing structure is Bowman’s four Cs of connections, concepts, concrete practice, and conclusions.
What might this look like in a tutoring context? For example, before a tutor starts reading a short chapter of a story (chunking) with a student, they might introduce a theme from the text and have the student write about the experience they have with that topic (priming/ relevance). This is the connection part of the session. For concept teaching, if one of the student’s goals is to work on making inferences, the tutor might talk directly about that means and show the student some examples from the previous chapter.
Then, as they read the new chapter together, the tutor might stop periodically to ask questions about what is happening and what the student thinks will happen next and why (active). In the concrete practice part of the session, the student might create a drawing representing the chapter (change) and write their own questions for the tutor to answer (review). The student might come up with a song that they could relate to the topic (involving/ enrichment) and write a comparison paragraph about the two (diverse application). Every ten to fifteen minutes, the tutor and student might do a walkabout to talk about the reading (change). Throughout the session, the tutor stays enthusiastic and follows the student’s lead (positivity/ involving). At the conclusion of the session, the student and tutor might talk about how they felt about the reading and what they learned from it (reflection).
Perhaps you already do many of these kinds of things. Great! Whatever structure you use to organize a session, if you remember the way you yourself learn and keep in mind the fact that the human brain gets bored easily, you should be good to go.
Select Further Reading
The Art of Changing the Brain by James E. Zull
Brain-Based Learning by the IDEA Group
“Brain-based Learning Principles for Maximum Retention in the Virtual Classroom” by Cynthia Clay
“How the Adult Brain Learns: The Importance of Creating Enriched Environments When Teaching” by Allison Freiderichs
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, & James S. McDonnell
The Ten-Minute Trainer by Sharon Bowman
"Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites" by Marcia L. Tate
Websites to Explore
Sharon Bowman, Training from the Back of the Room
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