If getting learners to learn is the job of teachers and trainers, why do so many learners NOT learn?
Teachers often fail to understand dopamine and the real foundation of learning.
It is not a student’s brute effort.
It is not blind repetition.
It is not a final test.
It is not pressure.
It is dopamine-fueled curiosity.
This was perhaps my favorite take-away from Sarma and Yoquinto’s very readable and informative Grasp: The science transforming how we learn.
So, what is curiosity?
Curiosity = readiness state of learning: Without it, no learning happens.
Curiosity = the “drive state” and happens when learners become aware of their information gap and when they want to explore a new environment.
A curiosity-learning mindset shifts learning away from the outside as something forced or compelled, to something on the inside – a desire to know, which when achieved results in a sense of reward.
Curiosity creates expectation that neurologically translates into certain managerial neurons delivering dopamine to the hippocampus to “make memories stickier” on the way to becoming long term memories. So, if there is a hunger for information, a desire to fill the information gap, the hippocampus will actively turn the discovered knowledge into memories.
Curiosity becomes satisfied when theory marries practice – when both the mind and hands work together to build solutions to meaningful problems.
Of course, excellent teachers have always known this – either implicitly or explicitly. But science is finally catching up to the practices of good teachers and explaining the biology behind effective learning. Hopefully, more education programs can start to formally train teachers to recognize the gateway to good learning and memory: curiosity.
Teachers need to be much more than experts in their subject – they need to understand how people learn. In other words, teachers need to teach less, and focus more on learning by:
- engaging students
- setting up a knowledge gap and
- creating an expectation to know.
Teaching is, therefore, the scientific art of raising curiosity: engineering learning to stimulate dopamine and creating memory. Teachers and L&D Trainer’s everywhere should be striving to do this and dedicating the time and effort to awaken curiosity.
“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” ~ Albert Einstein
#learninganddevelopment#curiosity#sanjaysarma#education#teachers
