 Hi, my name is Tracy Takahama Espinosa and this is a video on module 2 of Mind, Brain, and Now Where we're going to be looking at learners productive courses of action. So in this particular video We're going to be considering academic competence as well as growth mindsets We'll be looking at this from a mind-brain health and education perspective by considering how learning is for life a lifelong process and we'll do this through the vision of Formal learning as well as informal learning context then we're going to complement that with the understanding of growth mindsets So to begin what's really important is to basically understand How does the brain learn anything in the whole world and number one number one you have to pay attention You're perceiving your world around you and you do this through your senses You sense your world through all of your different Modalities you see things smell things hear things taste things and that signal then travels up through your brain stem base of the brain And the very first stop it makes is within different memory hubs So concretely there's a first stop at the amygdala to see if there's any emotional memory anything that they should be worried about Anything that would preserve the body basically and then less than a split second later goes from a lobe and back to the hippocampus for a confirmation of that Information so we'll see that from the very get-go the main idea is the two key pillars of all learning our attention and memory Which is mediated by sensory perception what you perceive about your world or what you can remember that you perceived about your world Once you have that sensory input in order for that to become Learning or a kind of a memory in the brain to create synapses connections between different parts of the brain Most learning does not occur immediately instantaneously just after a single exposure You really do need to have several rehearsals of that information in order to create that synapse Synapses are created electrically and chemically basically usually it's an electrical signal that triggers Release or inhibition of certain chemicals that will create the possibility of it or the potential for that synapse to occur That link between the different parts of the brain And if it's rehearsed over time then you get what's called a strengthening of the myelin sheath And that's basically the white matter in your brain which are glial cells which will coat that Synaptic connection which increases the speed. This is why if you've rehearsed something over and over again for example Driving a car initially you were very slow and it took a long time was heavy cognitive load a lot of energy to do something But once it's been rehearsed over time you have a lot of these glial cells this white matter which speeds up the connections So that you're able to retrieve those memories much quicker But the most important element to consider is that in order to really prove that somebody has learned something Is that they're able to recall it they can use it apply it and basically transfer it to new contexts So globally how does the brain learn you pay attention you have sensory experiences you check with memory systems to see if Something already exists there in order to create a new memory you have to have a certain amount of rehearsal in order to speed up the Retrieval of that information and then be able to apply that new knowledge skill or attitude in a new context So once we have this basic concept understood how the brain learns we have this very big question That's in front of us. There is such a thing as ages the age of a person the chronological age Are you 1 to 50 60 years old the stages? These are cognitive stages of development that occur from a psychological perspective and then there's prior Experiences so here's a big question for you. What plays a bigger role or what is more indicative of potential to learn? your age your stage or your prior experiences it might surprise you to learn that prior Experiences are definitely the most important indicator of your potential to learn something new what you already know Influences what you can know and the least important of all of these things is actually your chronological age This is why some people some small kids for example who've been exposed have had a lot of prior experience With reading materials are really prepared and ready to go and able to learn to read Maybe at three or four years old Whereas other people might be seven eight or nine and just because of the lack of prior Experiences are not able to do the same task So we know the prior experiences definitely outweigh your chronological age when it comes down to being an indicator for what you're able to learn This then begs the question, you know, how should learning be designed in our schools? Why why do we divide kids by their agents for example rather than their prior experiences big question here? And the importance of prior experiences really comes into play when we talk about the concept of Constructivism or what's really happening in your brain neuro Constructivism that is that we have neural networks in our brain for basic and core concepts and we build off of that So what we know our prior knowledge gives us a scaffolding upon which we can build and learn even more complex things in the future And this brings us to two basic premises Number one is that you know learning occurs throughout the lifespan you can and do learn until you die But it's fundamentally incorrect to think about learning as development being in parallel with age It's actually more in parallel with prior experiences So the greatest determinant of learning outcomes in the future is what you already know What you can scaffold upon to build this new or more complex knowledge Another important concept to take into consideration is that we tend to divide learning into formal and informal Constructs your brain doesn't do this your brain just thinks it's learning But we do have situations in which we go to school for example in a formal context Versus when we learn things informally for example when we go to a summer camp and we learn some new Socr moves or when you go into the kitchen and you learn a new recipe with your your parents they're cooking Or if you visit a museum those are informal learning contexts and your brain's treating that all the same as If you were studying it within a classroom structure The difference has to do with the whys of things in general You know, why do we learn anything or why do we hope that people learn things in society? It's basically we hope that they have an acquisition of different knowledge skills attitudes values beliefs That help people function within society What's interesting though in a formal context we're always thinking about the teacher-student relationship Whereas informally it's really what society can help the individual understand about his or her own place within the context of the community And finally what we do in formalized settings is that we tend to use a curriculum structure Or we divide things by math class and English class and science for example and most recently schools have taken on the role of guiding social-emotional skills as well But the what that happens in informal context is pretty much focused on an individual's personal interests And their personal formation or it's to extend what they might have already learned it within the formal context of schools Within the formal structure of schools the how also differs within schools We have pedagogy instruction and formal teaching structures and within informal structures It's basically experiential based. How do you learn about the world through the experiences that you might have? When does this occur? We formally decide that learning occurs within schools pretty much kindergarten until you finish high school or you go to A college so perhaps three four five six years of age all the way until you're 18 maybe 24 25 years old But within the context of informal structures, it's really for the moment You are conceived until you die of informal learning occurs throughout the lifespan And where learning occurs now has also become very very much flexible Schools used to be in formal school houses. So we had face-to-face instruction and that was it We now have blended instruction as well as online formats in which people can learn But in informal settings, this is extended even beyond that and can include things like Virtual writing groups or online museums or book clubs that you might have with your neighbors So all of this is just to say that your brain Isn't making any distinction between formal versus informal learning except perhaps in the motivation it has to do things As many of you might guess, you know informal learning contexts tend to be a bit more self-motivated and a little bit more energetic than the things that happen within the formal school structures And this leads us to the academic competencies that are achieved within school settings All this is to say that academic competencies are important very important for school success society success But it's only one type of learning and we define academic competencies as being the sum Of the knowledge skills and attitudes that are needed in order to meet with that academic success And we define knowledge itself as being those dates facts formulas concepts Names categories anything that's basically googleable is a knowledge base competency We also have skills however because it's not enough to know that information You have to be able to use and apply that information So being able to do something with the knowledge that you've learned is also very important within school contexts And finally we have attitudinal information The values the personal importance we attribute to the information that's learned Very key and important idea studies coming out now show That there's a big debate now on whether or not it's very important to have this aptitude versus your attitude There's a couple of very important recent studies that show that your decision for example your choice To make the most of things to buckle down to have to self-regulate to focus yourself This ability to self-regulate accounts for almost twice as much As innate intelligence in terms of student learning outcomes So it's very important to take into consideration this attitudinal aspect of academic competencies Now we want to turn to a connected idea. It's considering growth mindsets Many of you might have heard this idea, but I just want to put this into the context of mind, brain health and education The concept of a growth mindset is related to one of six principles that we have about human learning and A principle is something that is true across all cultures age groups And independent of prior experience, which is very interesting, right? One of those principles is the brain is plastic. Basically, it's highly plastic It's neuroplastic throughout the lifespan and you can and do learn throughout the lifespan So it's thanks to this plasticity that we can actually justify the concept of growth mindsets And it's thanks to this principle that we understand that again your experiences in life because your brain is plastic Creates the scaffolding upon which you can learn new things That all kids can and do learn They might not learn at the same pace, but they can and do learn and that learning is fluid and not fixed And it's this last point the fluidity of learning that justifies the concept of a growth mindset Somebody who has a growth mindset basically looks as failure as an opportunity to grow I can learn anything I want to challenges help me grow. I like to try new things This is very very different. This is a mentality that says, you know what? I am not limited to my biology I did not inherit genes that determine who I am. I can be more than my biology This growth mindset is contrasted with somebody with a fixed mindset who thinks that You know failure is the limit of my abilities or I was just born this way. My dad's bad at math. I'm bad at math Or the overall concept that my potential is predetermined by what I inherited The main idea from Dweck's work is that students who believe that their intelligence could be developed those who had a growth mindset Outperformed those who believe that intelligence was fixed So just believing just accepting just buying into this idea of growth mindset Which we now can substantiate with neuroscience in the factual establishment of plasticity is pretty exciting So these are some of the ideas we want to talk about in module two looking forward to seeing you in class