For homework, you must respond to the podcast in 350-550 words. If you have access to a printer, please type your response.
Here is a listening journal that I wrote. Feel free to model yours after mine. Note that the beginning provides context information. Then I summarize the important information. Lastly, I provide my reactions. I am sorry that I do not have a high school model for you. Thanks for being my guinea pigs. You all are excellent writers and I look forward to reading your responses!
Krista Tippet features cognitive neuroscientist Adele Diamond in her November 2009 interview for the National Public Radio Show On Being. Diamond shares research in support of educational theories that advocate educating the “whole child.” In the segment, “Learning Doing Being,” both Diamond’s spiritual and educational backgrounds preface the conversation. Labeling her home as Jewish Mormon, Diamond’s academic influences are equally diverse. Studying the fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology led Diamond to pioneer the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience. After a abandoning a thesis where she sought to see if those ideas were cultural and not social, Diamond explains her dissertation that focuses on the changes that occur in babies across cultures due to a maturational component that might explain why those changes occur. She explains that the prefontal cortex is behind the behavioral changes she documented in graduate school. Tippet notes the shifts taking place in education and asks Diamond to explain how such metacognitive processes help students. The skills, ultimately, are more important than content that is learned for exams; Diamond believes that learning how to problem solve or how to look up information is more important than declarative knowledge.
Recognizing that music, story telling, sports, and creative play are integral parts of the human condition helps students with academic pursuits. Participating in activities where the executive functions of our brains—inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility—helps people become better planners and problem solvers. Citing Lev Vygotsky, Diamond notes that a child’s social and cognitive development are integrated processes; a child’s ability to play creatively with others provides a better indication of their future academic success than an IQ score. Included in the interview is a clip from a classroom where students play an improvisational storytelling game that requires the brain’s executive functions to be used by all players. Diamond notes that learning to focus attention is important and aids in helping students learn to reflect and persevere, but expecting students to learn such skills by passively sitting in a desk is unrealistic. Learning by doing is important to Diamond because, “The more of you that gets involved—the body, the emotions, everything—the more you get out of it in many ways because it changes the brain, nurtures the brain.” Creating an atmosphere that is joyful allows students to relax, which is important in order for executive functions to be productive. Stress inhibits executive function and Diamond believes that learning can and should be fun even though the material is important.
Bingo. Listening to Adele Diamond almost effortlessly articulate ideas that are difficult for me to describe was refreshing. I try to teach in a way that requires students to think critically and actively, and my students oftentimes resist. In an attempt to increase their metacognitive awareness, I played the first ten minutes of the interview before a rather demanding lesson plan that incorporated dramatic play. The students thought that Diamond’s philosophy was interesting and they were able to understand why I had them acting out Macbeth rather than passively reading it. I hope that more research is done on the benefits of dramatic play so that American officials will have more empirical data that cannot be ignored or denied.
