Educational Neuroscience

Marilee Sprenger:

What? Marilee Sprenger is currently working on raising student achievement using brain-based teaching strategies and memory research. She wants to teach in a way that helps students remember and retain more of what is taught. She suggests things like accessing their prior knowledge, having them explain things in their own words, providing a framework so the students know what is important to remember, and using multiple strategies to help them recall information.

So What? Her research is important to education because there is a big problem in education today where kids can go through a whole class or unit on something, get A's on all the tests, and not even be able to remember half of it 6 months later. If we can find ways to help students remember things better it would help education progress so much and it would help the students in their everyday lives to perform better. We could learn so much more if we could learn to retrieve information that we've learned in the past instead of forgetting it and having to learn the same things over and over again.

Now What? Marilee Sprenger has some different books that are filled with strategies to help students learn better. As a teacher, it would be helpful to know these memory techniques so I could teach my students in a way that they would retain the information long after the test was taken. I could learn how to teach in a way where they could connect new information to information they've learned in the past. This would help them to apply the things we are learning in class to their lives in different ways instead of just trying to get a good grade on the test or in the class. I think if students could remember things they've learned previously they would be able to progress quicker and learn more than just the basic information. They would be more willing and able to work towards mastery goals instead of just performance goals.