Discovery Learning - Exploring New Ideas

“So, on beyond Zebra!

Explore!
Like Columbus!
Discover new letters!
Like WUM is for Wumbus,
My high-spouting whale who lives high on a hill
And who never comes down ‘til it’s time to refill.
So, on beyond Z! It’s high time you were shown
That you really don’t know all there is to be known.”
(By Dr Seuss, from “On Beyond Zebra”)

Remember what it was like to be a child discovering new things and going off to explore in your own backyard or local area with your friends? In times gone by, it was quite normal for parents to send children off to play for the day, calling out after them, “Be home before its dark.” Yes, I know many parents today would be shaking their heads in horror at this notion; it seems we have become very protective.

But back to Dr Seuss and discovering and learning for yourself, just like Christopher Columbus. For hundreds of years it was commonly believed by most people and even the wisest people before the fifteenth century that the world was flat. It was only through the courage and perseverance of Columbus and others (who lived to tell the tale) that one of the most rigid of ideas and truths was proved to be incorrect and this myth dispelled forever as a result. It makes you wonder how such major misconceptions can persist for so long, doesn’t it? Just goes to show that we ‘don’t know what we don’t know until we do what we don’t usually do’.

This revelation came to me only recently when I was given some prints of very rare maps of the world from 1500s and 1600s. What is amazing about these maps is that they clearly show the outline of Australia and yet even today we still hear people telling our young students that Australia was ‘discovered’ by Captain Cook in 1770. What of the indigenous people who arrived in Australia some 40,000 years before? What of the other explorers who mapped huge parts of our coastline but never received the same recognition as the English explorers?

What must it have been like to go exploring in these times? It must have been unbelievably difficult - battling the seas, battling a way forward in unchartered territory and battling the superstitions and fear of the men on the journey of discovery into the unknown.

In Gordon Livingston’s book, “The Thing You Think You Cannot Do”, there is a chapter titled, ‘Fear Springs from Ignorance’, where he points out:

“We are afraid of what we do not understand. If life is a process of discovery, we are in a constant search for guidance. Our imperfect maps of how the world works have many blank areas, and like the cartographers of old, we fill these spaces with dragons. We begin to control our fears in our battles against ignorance.”

If the truth be known, all of us have our own set of fears that require tending. In the absence of knowledge and understanding, we worry and fear more. Livingstone, a renowned author and psychiatrist, notes that the less information we have about something (or someone) the more threatened we are likely to feel about it (or them).

The good news though is that our mind and perceptions are not fixed in time but change and adapt according to our experiences and new learning. In his book, “The Art of the Idea” by John Hunt demonstrates how rapidly our mind can assimilate new information from the most cryptic of scripts:

“I cdnuol’t blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, mnaes taht it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the hmuan mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”

It’s hard to imagine that our mind is capable of translating such a mess and make sense of it, isn’t it? To think that we need only know the first and last letter to decipher the text is amazing. What are the implications for our thinking and learning?

According to Hunt, the tired an negative see the contents of their brain as a passive instrument with a dwindling capability while the energetic optimist actively rearranges this ‘storage facility’ – the brain – to increase its capacity. Hunt argues that the easiest way of achieving a positive mindset is to do things you don’t normally do. Breaking the ‘conformity-creep’ says Hunt, keeps you ‘battle ready’ because as much as we want an epiphany or some light bulb moment, the truth is, that often an idea just reveals itself. By keeping our minds ‘fertile’ even the smallest of thoughts have a chance of growing into something extraordinary.

He suggests that the easiest way to see this in action is to go on a holiday because it’s a different experience from the norm. Going on a holiday allows most of us to unwind, to relax and explore new things and experience new sights, food and people. As a result, most people return from a vacation feeling energised and more optimistic about the future. We think and see things differently and we are more open to new ideas and learn more, absorb more and assimilate information differently too.

So have a wonderful holiday and remember to enjoy different experiences and come back relaxed and energised!


Karon Graham

How One Opportunity or Idea can Shape Your Life

“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.”

(Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything)

Last Saturday was the official opening of the Sunshine Coast Council’s Green Art Strategy: TreeLine project. Students from Caloundra City Private School starred in this exhibit with a beautifully, visceral movie of a digital world of trees, which is now showing at the Caloundra Regional Art Gallery. Students from Years 7 to 10 used both artistic talent and technology skills under the guidance and mentoring of Judy Barrass. The students collaborated together with Judy to produce a forty minute visual display celebrating ‘trees’. The digital display of trees is both stunning and creative in its design; where onlookers are drawn into another world of colour and impossibly beautiful trees.

Guests were very impressed by the high quality of the students’ art work and the exhibit highlighted to me, once again, how such events provide both extension and opportunity for creativity in exploring new ideas for our talented students. The benefits of such imaginative work were obvious to one and all who attended the art exhibit.

Researchers into the benefits of visual arts, Ms Winner and Ms Hetland, co-authors of “Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education” (Teachers College Press) found that:

“Students who study the arts seriously are taught to see better, to envision, to persist, to be playful and learn from mistakes, to make critical judgments and justify such judgments.”

During the exhibit I talked to one of the Sunshine Coast Council (SCC) organisers of the TreeLine event, who shared the story of how a SCC program for dance students many years ago, led to one of the students taking up full time ballet dancing and she now dances with a dance company in San Francisco. Her mother was visiting the Butter Factory recently and upon seeing this man called in to let him know how well her daughter was doing. She said that the very impetus for her daughter’s success came from that one opportunity given to her in the dance workshop at the Butter Factory many years ago. Isn’t it true, that one never knows where an opportunity like this will lead in life?

Sir Ken Robinson encourages us all to discover what potential lies within us; to find ourselves in the element and to awaken within ourselves, the endless possibilities of life. He shares many anecdotes of how famous people of our time prove that age and occupation is no barrier to finding our path. In his book, “The Element”, Robinson advocates the need to enhance creativity and innovation by thinking differently about human resources and imagination. As Robinson notes:

“Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement.”

Last Friday, I was fortunate enough to be invited to a lunch with University of Queensland’s, Professor Pankaj Sah, who is one of the leading researchers on brain synaptic plasticity at the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI). This newly founded institute brings together leading researchers in the field of neuroscience.

According to QBI, neuroscience is entering an era of accelerated discovery driven by the application of new molecular, genetic and imaging technologies, which will provide a deeper understanding of the regulation and function of the nervous system. Discoveries will also provide, for the first time, a real opportunity to develop new therapeutics to treat mental and neurological diseases, which account for a staggering 45 per cent of the disease burden in Australia.

Professor Sah’s main research is around the amygdala, which is critically involved in assigning emotional significance or value to events through associative learning. In particular, it is involved in the processing of fear producing stimuli.

Professor Sah told the story of a young person (HM), who was involved in a terrible accident which brought on severe seizures. The doctors at the time decided that the only way to stop the seizures was to operate, to do a lobotomy and remove the hippocampus. The operation was deemed successful, the seizures stopped but what the doctors discovered was that HM had no short term memory. HM could have a conversation with a doctor about what happened years ago before his accident but could not recall a conversation from ten minutes ago.

What neurologists have discovered from this case is that memory is stored in different parts of the brain and that there is no one single place where the brain stores all memories. The removal of the hippocampus highlighted the importance of this organ to the distribution of memories to the different parts of the brain.

One of the key findings from other research on synaptic plasticity centres around the concept that ‘cells that fire together wire together’. Professor Sah explained how a strong emotional impact causes us to recall incredible details; it is stored faster and laid down in memory faster than day to day conversations. Put in simple terms, the more senses and the stronger the emotional impact of the information or event involved in the active learning of concepts or skills, the greater likelihood that memories will stored in different parts of the brain, and recalled and understood much faster than learning in isolation.

Much of Sah’s research centres around the application of this research into improved learning - the best way, the best time and best places to learn. Researchers are hoping to find definitive answers to these questions in the near future.

John Hunt’s book, “The Art of the Idea” touched on the importance of ‘big leaps of faith’ and the work of QBI will certainly put Queensland at the forefront of understanding the brain and the learning process. Hunt points out that ‘incremental change is fine if you’re a glacier’, but what is sometimes needed is a new way of thinking and new ideas require momentum:

“It’s important to understand that ideas have trajectories and they move to the expectancy level you put around them. Therefore, it’s critical to aim high. No matter the context, an idea needs a decent arc. It needs to leap out of the present sameness and clearly carry everyone who’s following it to the other side.”

Maybe there is a lesson here for all of us: everything is interconnected, particularly in the brain. Let’s not limit our thinking, our ideas, our learning and our possible futures by the status quo. Sometimes an emotional leap of faith is required to move forward.

Karon Graham