To study science and be successful gives a person status and respect in our society. They appear to have scaled a learning mountain. Those that ace Science GCSEs are seen as brain boxes. To some, it seems that they have some super learning capabitilites that are simply beyond the reach of the rest and that you either have ‘it’ or you don’t.
This is total rubbish. To be able to learn anything requires knowledge of the correct systems of learning suitable to gain the most thorough understanding possible. People typically fail Science exams because their learning method is flawed. They do not follow the correct systems and process to be successful. Their learning journey is not the correct one and doomed to failure even before they started to put the effort in. Because they are on the wrong path, success never comes. Motivation dies. The emotional brain comes to the irrational conclusion that the lack of success is due to stupidity. And before you know it, the level of effort falls off as there is clearly no point in continuing if you lack the brain capacity to understand.
This is a tragedy as the truth is that anyone can be successful learning in any area they choose if they apply the correct learning system. This system must be built upon an understanding of how the brain processes and understands information. The use of the short term and long term memory must be utilised. An understanding of the power emotion has over the brain and learning must be utilised. The optimum in terms of study time, type of mental work, cognitive load and task all need to be taken account of. A system of feedback and correction must be available to the learner. Every student should be learning within a system that has been designed to take account of all the things that research has told us results in effective long term memory.
Working in such a system like this will give improvements that compound over time. This in turn will lead to regular learning successes as the student travels along the road to complete understanding. These successes will feed the emotional brain and lead to increased motivation and effort. And on it goes for the student until the chance of failure becomes less and less possible.
A big part of the learning process is having an expert design the learning system for the person who is striving to understand. It is also essential that the system that the learning is in can evolve and change to meet the problems the learner comes across. Feedback is essential to the learner to provide course corrections and also to the system to ensure it meets the needs of the learner on their journey.
Working within such an optimised system is a pleasure and the ability to do it is now more important than ever as it becomes clearer that those who are able to learn best shall thrive in today’s world.
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