Todays Edu.au seminar with Professor Martin Westwell Martin (Director Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century ). Below I’ve taken some of the main points of interest -

Teachers are asked to be experts in everything. Whereas in other sectors, people can specialise.

  • People now say intelligence 20% nature, 80% nurture — used to be other way around
  • There is very little doubt that violence in an environment causes violent attitudes and behaviour – your brain re-wires.
  • An interesting trend — young people are better than ever at distinguishing between authentic and synthetic environments/environments
  • So socialistion the primary use of Internet – not finding info
  • Our brains are constantly wiring and re-wiring
  • But the emotional context has a large effect on the learning and thinking
  • The people in an environment are most important
  •   Teacher student relationship very important.
  •   RElationship between kids themselves and parents are very important
  • Blue light important – the blue light that we see in the morning sends a message that says stop producing melatonin
  • Neuromyths — the ideas that kids learn in certain ways and are labelled as such permanently does not support that
  • Teens overestimate risks, but coordination of thinking and ability to inhibit impulses is not developed yet
  • collaborative environments need to be more sophisticated — blogs, wikis, moodles – we lose something if not synchronous
  • Prescriptive instructions kill the chance to exercise executive function
  • When you intervene and let kids know intellgience is malleable – their learning goes up
  • Obviously categorisation is going to happen to some extent — but we have to be careful about the messages we send to learners about what type they are
  • We do one thing and then switch quickly to another – we cannot paralell process.

  • Tools of the Mind – preschool program – a US-based currciulum tha tpimproves Executive Function

Executive functions

Executive functions