"The Learning Brain"

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore & Uta Frith, "The Learning Brain ---Lessons for Education", 2005, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford
「Interdisciplinary dialogue needs a mediator to prevent one or other discipline dominating. When it comes to dialogue between brain science and education, cognitive psychology is tailor-made for this role.」（p.9）→Interdisciplinary dialogue needs a mediator.「The aim of this book is to demonstrate by examples how research on the brain and learning could influence the way we think about teaching. All the time while discussing brain research on learning at different ages, we attempt to point out implications, often speculative, for education where there are any. We are not trained as teachers, and we do not do educational research, so it would be presumptuous of us to make concrete suggestions about teaching. But we would imagine that readers with qualifications in and experience of teaching might be able to come up with their own ideas based on the research we discuss.」（p.15）「structured intervention, where sounds are linked with letters and text reading is practiced, is highly effective. Many remedial programs emphasize piecemeal letter-to-sound mapping」（p.92）→The experience we got through coaching dyslexics is very usefull for coaching second-language learners. In the learning process, students are to link sounds with letters and to practice reading texts. In other words, they are to map sounds, letters, and meanings.「One of the subgroups, but not the other, received an intensive training program designed to improve reading skills. This training consisted of explicitly teaching the sounds of words and word parts for three hours per day for eight weeks. The training dramatically improved the dyslexics' reading skills.」（p.93）→This knowledge suggests teachers should explicitly teach the sounds of words and word parts. Introducing new words should not be neglected.「It seems that the trained group compensated for the weak performance of their left parietal lobe by using their right parietal lobe, an area that is known to integrate sights and sounds. Matching and learning word sounds and spelling involves auditory-visual integration. This integration is automatically given for normal readers through the specialized areas of the reading system in the left hemisphere, in particular the word form area that, as we have already seen, is less active in dyslexics. Eden's study suggests that dyslexics can boost integration of the sight and sound of words by recruiting another region of the brain.」（p.93）→「Matching and learning word sounds and spelling involves auditory-visual integration. This integration is」 not 「automatically given for」 second-language-learner readers. The integration, instead, should be explicitly given to them.「Unfortunately, as far as we know, compensatory learning does not occur simply by being around and copying another person. Compensation can be achieved by learning explicit rules about the social world by reading and studying examples. Different situations and contexts have to be rehearsed separately.」（p.102）→This knowledge gained through coaching autistic children is usefull as well.「The idea is that compensation may be possible, even if a cure is not possible as yet.」（p.110）「Education does not cure the conditions, but it can certainly improve them.」（p.110）「The idea that young people who have reached sexual maturity should still go to school and be educated is relatively new. And yet the research on brain development during adolescence shows that secondary and tertiary education are vital. The brain is still developing during this period: it is adaptable, and needs to be molded and shaped. Perhaps the aims of education for older adolscents might well change to include strengthening of internal control, for example, self-paced learning, critical evaluation of transmitted knowledge, and meta-study skills.」（p.121）→The importance of aqcuiring "meta-study skills" is highlighted these days.「"What fires toghther, wires together!"」（p.133）→Not only neurons which fire together wire together, but also people who fire together wire together.「if two connected neurons are stimulated at the same time, the amount of chemical signal passing from one neuron to the other can double.」（p.133）「But clearly, for optimal adaptation, not all learning should be permanent.」（p.134）→In other words, permanent learning sometimes hinders optimal adaptation.「Teaching often involves making implicit or procedural knowledge explicit. Teachers have to explain how to read, how to paint, and how to play the violin, for example. Knowing how or when to make rules explicit is likely to be an important determinant of effective teaching. When can explicit teaching replace implicit learning? Is a degree of prior implicit learning always helpful? It is possible that a reciprocal dialectic between implicit learning and explicit teaching most efficiently supports learning.」（p.141）「The brain notices things that you do not.」（p.142）「Lessons from how cognitive therapy is carried out and how it works might be useful for rehabilitation of people who did not have access to good education as children, who are not naturally good learners, or who simply want to improve their learning abilities.」（p.166）「Not just education, but culture in a broader sense changes brains.」（p.187）