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Uncommon Sense Teaching
Book

Uncommon Sense Teaching

Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn

Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky and Terrence J. Sejnowski
TarcherPerigee, 2021
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8

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  • Innovative
  • Applicable
  • Concrete Examples

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In this practical teaching guide, academics Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky, and Terrence Sejnowski share their extensive knowledge of education and the neuroscience of learning. They help teachers become more effective by increasing their understanding of their students’ brains and showing them how to meet individual students’ needs. In describing the process of how information moves between working memory and long-term memory — along with techniques, hacks, and motivators to improve this process — the authors provide valuable insights based on solid research. Each chapter offers active learning ideas to reinforce its concepts.

Summary

When students’ neurons “fire together, they wire together.”

Learning calls for establishing, fortifying, and expanding neural pathways in the neocortex’s long-term memory — the process of “learn it, link it.” The strategy of using regular practice to reinforce the connections among these links is called “Hebbian learning,” after psychologist Donald Hebb, who discovered it and wrote about it in his book The Organization of Behaviour (1949).

Memory is multifaceted, and two main types — working memory and long-term memory — are crucial for learning. Working memory holds information briefly; often, it disappears within seconds. Long-term memory retains data, potentially for life. On average, a person’s working memory can store up to four separate clusters of information before those ideas evaporate or meld in confusing ways.

Many students assume that the data they store in their working memory will naturally transition into their long-term memory. This mistaken assumption can result in lower test scores. Learners themselves must deliberately move important information from working memory to long-term memory with the...

About the Authors

Barbara Oakley, PhD, teaches bioengineering and neuroscience at Oakland University in Michigan. Beth Rogowsky, Ed.D., teaches education at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Terrence J. Sejnowski, PhD, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, teaches computational neurobiology.

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