Experience and Consciousness: Implications for Instruction

Sheckley, B. G., & Bell, S. (2006). Experience, consciousness, and learning: Implications for instruction. In S. Johnson & K. Taylor (Eds.), The neuroscience of adult learning, pp. 43-52.

The authors ask the question about how to align student performance with expectation. My thinking is it involves communication.

Experience Is at the Core of Consciousness

• Learning occurs through repetition or an extreme change-of-body-state.

Consciousness Is at the Core of Thinking and Reasoning

Instructional Strategies and Consciousness

• Strategy One: Begin with the Baseline of Prior Experience
• Strategy Two: Extend Learners' Consciousness
  • Information must be connected to some change-of-body-state. Otherwise it is not learned. Learning cannot happen in isolation, meaning without a connection.
  • Implications for instruction: "...(deliberate practice, metacognition, self-regulation, and others (p. 49))..."
• Strategy Three: Enrich Consciousness
  • Consciousness is enriched when the learning experiences are relevant to their lives because the information can be connected more easily.
  • Example would be writing a paper for publication: "Instructors interested in enhancing their students' tacit knowledge can do so by involving the learners directly in complex situations with the understanding (or even faith) that the basal ganglia system within a learner's brain will 'learn' implicitly the complex patterns involved in the situation (p. 50)."

Conclusion