History: Contextualizing
The Reading/Academic Success
Division has been preparing to move toward learning communities for allied
health/nursing students for the past four years. In order to ground ourselves
in understanding learning communities and the complexities of thinking skills
necessary to understand and apply text information that allied health/nursing
students would encounter, we first piloted through “Grow Your Own” with Jewish
Hospital paired reading and an academic success course for pending nursing students
and used the “Fundamentals of Nursing” text. All the students are still in the
nursing program. We have since piloted for two semesters paired reading and academic
success in linked learning communities with allied health/nursing students
using the Anatomy and Physiology text, and we have also paired reading and an academic
success using the psychology text being
used at JCTC in the psychology courses. The most important lesson learned is
that for allied health/nursing students, reading cannot be taught as isolated
skills, but rather must be taught as (meta)cognitive
skills with a focus on making thinking visible and on organizing information to
be learned so that it can be reasoned with and applied to novel situations or
to solve problems.
Contextualizing
Two courses that pending nursing
students will take before entering the nursing are psychology, and anatomy and
physiology. How to determine the contextualized approach to reading instruction?
Keep in mind that the developmental reading instructor has an obligation to
provide the reading skills the student will need to succeed in their entry-level
content courses. If the student does not survive their first entry level
courses in their Academic Program Plan, then they do not proceed to their
desired academic program (allied health or nursing, for example). For most
developmental students anatomy and physiology is semesters away because most
have several courses of math they have to take before they can take anatomy and
physiology. The content of anatomy and physiology is visually content laden
with an enormous amount of information to make meaningful in a very short
amount of time. At some point pending allied health/nursing students need to
have instruction for dealing with this kind of material, yet anatomy and
physiology is semesters away for most of these students and immediate success
in entry-level courses is also necessary. Psychology becomes a good possibility
for a contextualized course because the pending developmental reading student
can take it immediately after exiting developmental reading or concurrently
with their reading course. Psychology has intense visual content in its brain
sections with anatomy and physiology similarities, as well as content more
reflective of most entry level course text material.
According
to Dan Hull's (1993) definition of contextual learning, learning occurs only
when learners connect information to their own frame of reference:
"According
to contextual learning theory, learning occurs only when students (learners)
process new information or knowledge in such a way that it makes sense to them
in their frame of reference (their own inner world of memory, experience, and
response). This approach to learning and teaching assumes that the mind
naturally seeks meaning in context--that is, in the environment where the
person is located--and that it does so through searching for relationships that
make sense and appear useful." (p. 41)
If we
build on Hull’s definition and frame leaning around elaboration theory and Rita
Smilkstein’s brain-based “natural learning theory”*
we begin to see that contextual learning activities can be developed which take
advantage of the learner’s prior knowledge. New information becomes meaningful
only as it is interconnected with ("elaborated" with or
"instantiated" into) meaningful patterns that the reader already
knows. However, the reader can not stop at construction meaning, because much
that the allied health/nursing student will encounter later requires the application
of the information to new situations or will be used to solve problems. This requires
the developmental reading instructor to not only help the pending student
construct meaning, but to also learn it so that it can then be recalled, reasoned with, extended by
inference, and used to filter new perceptions - apply and solve problems.
Contextualization will therefore focus on the following thinking
outcomes:
And the following Cognitive and Elaborations skills (tying new
information to old information)”
·
Activating
prior knowledge
·
Predicting
·
Identifying
what is important
·
Organizing
information
·
Elaborating
information (tying new information to prior knowledge)
Higher Level-Thinking
·
Expressing
new information
·
Applying
information in novel situations (transfer)
·
Solving
problems with information learned
With the psychology course (both reading and psychology will be make up
the part of the SuccessNow Learning Community)
* Five Rules of How the Brain Learns
1. Dendrites,
synapse, and neural networks grow only from what is already there.
2. Dendrites, synapse, and neural networks
grow for what is actively, personally, and specifically experienced and
practiced.
3. Dendrites,
synapse, and neural networks grow from stimulating experiences.
4. Use it or lose it.
5. Emotions affect learning.
* Six Principles of Learning and Their Implications for
Teaching
from We’re Born to Learn,
Rita Smilkstein
In this convergence of the
research, we observe the following principles and implications for how human
beings learn:
1. Principle: Learning is physiological. New structures grow in the
learner’s brain during learning, and learning is the growing of new brain
structures (dendrites and synapses). In other words, learning and growing new
brain structures are the same thing.
Implication: Teaching is like gardening: the purpose is helping students
grow their own new brain structures.
2. Principle: Brain structures grow specifically for what is practiced.
Brain structures that grow for on object of learning are only for that one
object.
Implication: Students need practice with the target object of learning so
they can grow brain structures for (learn) it.
3. Principle: New brain structures grow with practice and processing
over time. Usually new brain structures take time to grow.
Implications: Students need sufficient time for practicing (time on task)
and processing to grow their brain structures. The time spent on this authentic
work (on growing knowledge structures for the target object of learning) is
some of the most well-spent class time.
4. Principle: For each new object of learning, it is necessary, as a
first step, to help each student make a personal connection with it. This makes
it possible for every student to “catch on” and have a foundation from which to
grow higher structures (more knowledge and skill) and start constructing the
new networks.
Implication: It is critical to give every student the opportunity and
time to make a personal connection with a new and unfamiliar concept, skill, or
body of information.
(
·
Activating prior
knowledge
·
Predicting
·
Identifying what is
important
·
Organizing information
·
Elaborating information
(tying new information to prior knowledge)
·
5. Principle: Students need to have a foundation of personal, basic familiarity
with a new object of learning before they can do critical or creative thinking
about the object of learning. Learners cannot do higher-level thinking abut an
object of learning unless and until they first have a foundation of familiarity
about it..
Implication: Curricula should give opportunities to student to construct
a foundation of new knowledge (new neural structures) through the first stages
of eth brain’s natural learning process before assigning activities at the
higher, critical or creative thinking stages.
Critical and Higher-Order Thinking Skills
using new information learned using (meta)cognitive
skills above
·
Expressing new
information
·
Applying information in
novel situations (transfer)
·
Solving problems with
information learned
·
6. Principle: DNA can affect how quickly brain structures grow for
different objects of learning, accounting for aptitudes.