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You
are here: Lighting up Learning:
A Philosophical Approach to Education Reform
by Neil Bush and Peter Neville
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- W. B. YeatsYeats' quote speaks to the heart of our mission here at Ignite!. If we truly want to make a difference in student achievement, we need to engage students in the joy of learning. Ignite! is driven by a desire to improve student learning and to enable middle school students to learn in the ways they learn best. The core beliefs that drive our business and our passion for education reform are:
1) all students have a gift for learning, they just learn differently;
2) humans learn best by doing things: by applying concepts and making connections between those experiences; and
3) technology can play a vital role in engaging students in the ways they learn best.In designing courseware that reflect these beliefs, we sought to incorporate the strongest ideas from an extensive body of educational research, weaving together a method of instructional design that addresses a broad range of learning styles, captures students' interests, and provides the types of lessons and activities that foster student mastery of knowledge and skills.
All students have a gift for learning
Teachers have long understood that different students learn differently, and that different teaching approaches are often necessary to meet the needs of all the students in a class. Every teacher has dealt with this reality on an individual case basis - for example, the student who just doesn't "get" a concept when it's described in a lecture, but quickly understands when a diagram or picture is drawn. Even outside of school, people sometimes describe themselves as "visual learners," while others need to hear an idea expressed in words, or they need to physically engage in an activity to understand a concept.
In the early 1980s, Howard Gardner offered the educational community new insight into this phenomenon by raising the question of whether people might possess more than one type of intelligence. For decades, people had believed that humans possessed a single kind of intelligence that lay behind all of their thinking and learning, and that it could be accurately measured through testing and expressed as a single number: a person's IQ, or Intelligence Quotient. Alfred Binet helped pioneer this school of thought in the early 1900s by developing the first IQ test and, perhaps due to its simplicity, the idea quickly caught on.
In his research, Gardner noticed that the IQ tests used to measure this intelligence consist entirely of questions that require linguistic and logic skills to answer. He sensed a mismatch between such a narrow set of cognitive skills and the incredible diversity of skills that people use to function and succeed in the world: surgeons with their incredible manual dexterity, sailors in history who navigated by the stars with uncanny spatial orientation skills, dancers and choreographers, athletes, musicians, painters and sculptors, and many others whose success cannot be attributed solely to their linguistic and logic skills. Gardner proposed that the definition of intelligence, or the way people understand and interact with the world around them, should be much broader than logic and language - that there are in fact many different intelligences at work in each person's mind.
Drawing from research that was not available in Binet's time, such as cognitive science and neuroscience, Gardner developed his MI Theory, in which he identified a collection of seven intelligences that every person possesses:
· linguistic
· logical/mathematical
· visual/spatial
· musical
· bodily/kinesthetic
· interpersonal
· intrapersonalGardner noted that while all intelligences are present in each person, "individuals possess varying amounts of these intelligences and combine and use them in personal and idiosyncratic ways. Just as we all look different and exhibit different personalities, we all possess different kinds of minds."
Gardner and others quickly realized the implications of MI theory for education. In particular, it was clear that, like the IQ tests, schools were focusing too much on linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences and too little on the others, with severe consequences for many students. "By minimizing the importance of other intelligences…, we consign many students who fail to exhibit the 'proper' blend [of intelligences] to the belief that they are stupid, and we do not take advantage of ways in which multiple intelligences can be exploited to further the goals of school and the broader culture."
Indeed, MI theory both reveals education's shortcomings and offers a clear direction for improvement. Gardner suggests that "…an education built on multiple intelligences can … make the standard curriculum accessible to a wider range of students." He points out that for students who are struggling with a particular concept, presenting that concept through a range of intelligences offers students a "secondary route" to understanding, "perhaps through the medium of an intelligence that is relatively strong for that individual." For example, if a student is unable to comprehend a mathematical relationship when presented with mathematical symbols and terms, presenting the same concept through an analogy to interpersonal relationships or through the manipulation of objects could, by playing to that student's strengths, help remove what would otherwise be a frustrating barrier to success in school.
Humans learn best by doing
There is an often-cited observation of what works in education: "Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Let me do and I understand." There is in fact a great deal of evidence to support the idea that doing something is a superior way to learn it. From John Dewey, who over a century ago advocated for allowing children to "construct, create, and actively inquire" in their education, to countless other educational researchers and cognitive scientists over the decades, there is a general agreement that learning by doing leads to deeper understanding of material and a greater ability to apply what has been learned to solve real problems and achieve real goals. ,
There are many examples in daily life of the value of learning by doing. Certainly, the early learning activities of children support this view. Through their efforts to communicate with others and navigate their worlds, children quickly develop impressive skills in language and mobility. Later in life, in learning situations where the consequences could be life or death, such as learning to drive a car safely or learning to pilot an airplane, learning by doing plays a central role in instruction. Teenagers learn to drive not simply by reading about the rules of the road, but also by actually getting behind the wheel and practicing. No one would ever board an airplane knowing that the pilot had aced the written part of the exam but had never actually taken the controls of a plane.
In school, placing learning in the context of a real-world goal helps to motivate students by demonstrating to the student the value of knowledge. Students often wonder how what they are learning could possibly be of use to them. In learning by doing, students see for themselves how knowledge can be applied to accomplish a task or achieve a goal. It answers the question, "Why should I learn this?" with the answer, "Because it will allow me to do that." Learning by doing makes the purpose of learning clear to the learner, and reinforces the learner's motivation to succeed.
Learning by doing challenges students to examine new information and construct, or piece together, their own understanding of a concept. Espoused by Dewey and many others since, and supported by recent evidence from the neurosciences, the constructivist approach to education maintains that "the human brain is driven to make sense of those things that matter to it by continuously relating new ideas to old assumptions." According to constructivism, knowledge is not simply conveyed to, and received by, the student. Instead, the learner takes an active, participatory role in the learning process. When students are challenged to make sense of a situation, to interpret information and take action, they actively engage in the process of learning. Learning, as opposed to memorization, results from having students think for themselves and come up with creative conclusions and solutions.
Technology can play a vital role
Successful teachers use whatever resources they can to engage their students in learning; story telling, newspapers, web resources, movies, role-playing, collaborations, and textbooks. As a nation, we need to arm mainstream teachers with modern day tools that will help them to be successful. The 21st century student has an out-of-school life that is stimulating in so many ways. With all of the technology that has been installed in schools and with all that we know about learning, there's no excuse for boring our kids.
By the time they enter school, all students have already demonstrated an incredible capacity to learn. The question, then, is not whether children can learn, but under what conditions they learn best. Ignite! was founded with the goal of creating the right conditions for successful learning. By drawing on evidence from decades of educational research, we have developed an instructional design method that respects the individual strengths and interests of students, challenges them to develop a deep understanding of the material and the skills to apply their knowledge, and helps them to rekindle their passion for learning.
About the authors:
Neil Bush is the founder, chairman and CEO of Ignite!, Inc., developer of educational software. Mr. Bush's desire to develop products that help educators teach standards-based material in ways that children learn best evolved out of his own experiences both as a dyslexic student and as a concerned parent of three children.
Peter Neville is Ignite!'s Director of Instructional Design. Peter has designed a wide range of educational software products for the K-12 market and holds a Master's Degree in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University.
Discover more about Ignite! at www.ignitelearning.com.
© December 2002 New Horizons for Learning
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