A is for active learning. That is to say, learning that involves the students doing something, rather than sitting and listening to a teacher or instructor talk/lecture. Of course, it’s a little difficult to define what that something should be – what counts as active. If listening to a talk isn’t considered active, then is reading? What about filling in a worksheet? In short, there is near universal agreement that active learning is a good thing, but defining it is another matter. A pragmatic approach is to ask, ‘what does the learner need to do?’ If it is the teacher/instructor that is doing all of the work, then the activity is probably not an example of active learning.
B is for brain, and there are no shortage of people who will tell you that educators need to understand the brain better, or that their preferred education ideas are ‘brain based’. Of course, the brain does underlie all of a student’s…
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