ARTICLES
The Meta Lesson Plan : Helping Students construct Cognitive Memories of their Classroom Learning
By Stephen Tynan
The article below by Dr Stephen Tynan is of importance to readers of ‘ Science Education News ’, not only because it defines the results of a different approach to teaching specialist material to students which is demonstrated to be significantly more successful than the regular approach . There are many teachers , usually ( but by no means only ) in high schools , who at some point consider the challenge of working to gain a PhD , whether in Education or in one specific topic . Their motivation may be to better understand aspects of their subject , improved opportunities for promotion , or even a switch from teaching in school to a different career . This article shows the typical format of a PhD thesis in each of its parts . It may therefore be of great interest to readers , either to encourage them to make the attempt or convince them that ‘ the devil you know is better than the devil you don ’ t ’. – Ed .
ABSTRACT
The question asked in this work was , “ Will students learn differently if I change my classroom teaching according to my knowledge of neuroscience ?” Cross sectional and longitudinal comparison of matched student cohorts showed a positive difference in r at the 95 % CI for my cohort . They acquired a prior learning effect size of f 2 =. 85 and a reading effect size of f 2 =. 1 . Their matched cohort gained a prior learning effect size of f 2 =. 3 and a literacy effect size of f 2 =. 03 . This three-fold increase in the student learning response is credited to the cultivation of talk as a part of classroom learning . This talk promoted the neurocoupling of memory systems and tapped into the default mode of social cognition to facilitate voluntary attention to classroom learning . It is concluded that the meta lesson plan accounts for at least 11 % more classroom diversity than the conventional lesson plan .
KEYWORDS
Classroom Learning ; Lesson Plan ; Educational Neuroscience ; Memory Formation ; Talk ; Cognitive Development .
INTRODUCTION
As a teacher , one of the most demanding requirements of professional practice is the imperative to address the diversity of student learning needs to ensure that all students progressively develop in their education . From the university teaching qualification to the classroom to whole school professional development to the bureaucratic office , the diversity of student learning needs is conventionally seen to reflect the diversity of the social environments from which students originate .
To address this diversity , professional practice utilises a plethora of learning resources . For example , scaffolds and worked examples , textbooks and note taking , videos and work sheets , direct instruction via ‘ chalk and talk ’, hands-on and ICT activities etc . Theoretically , their use is anchored to Vygotsky ’ s zone of proximal development ( ZPD ) ( Vygotsky , 1986 ) and thus used in a prosocial setting . The ZPD describes that composition of long term memory that represents prior learning associated with the topic at hand . Thus , resources are selected to fall within the range of the class ’ s prior learning so that the minds of students are challenged by their engagement with the resource but not disheartened by the resource being too hard a challenge .
In the classroom , the prosocial environment is cultivated via group work . This allows individual strengths and weaknesses to be balanced off against those of other students in the group . Consequently , a collective of prior knowledge and cognitive skills become available to group members to share and facilitate the learning of themselves and their peers . Thus , the influence of social background on the ability of students to progress in their learning is socially mitigated over the school year and all progress in their education .
Such professional practice reflects the constructivist philosophy to knowledge creation ( Kirschner , Sweller , & Clark , 2006 ). Generically , constructivist teaching dictates that it is the student ’ s responsibility to discover within the resource provided the knowledge that the teacher wants the students to learn . Accompanying this philosophy is the expectation that cognitive skills ( reading , writing , numeracy and literacy ) will develop in parallel with the subject being learned as they engage with the selected resource . Accordingly , students develop literacy ( the ability to read and write ) of the content being learned to produce clear and concise thoughts about their learning .
In practice , the constructivist philosophy removes the teacher from having a direct role in the process of student knowledge creation in favour of a minimalist role in which the teacher is the monitor of student engagement with the provided resource . In this role , professional practice focuses on student behaviour as
25 SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 67 NO 1