Seeing Inside the Theories of Behavior and Learning (Book 3 of Minds in Bloom)

By Glenn Fieber

Seeing Inside the Theories of Behavior and Learning looks at some of the major theories that have shaped our understanding of both how we behave and how we learn. The book has been informed by my 42 years as both a classroom teacher and a teacher of teachers, and by my wide interest in how the mind works and how we affect the way it processes information—for better or for worse. I also lean heavily on the findings of neuroscientists whose work enables us to look inside the brain while our brain is doing what it does: thinking. I selected two Behavior Theorists for study, Skinner and Maslow, because they provide two bookends around the broad topic of behavior: Skinner suggesting we are controlled by rewards and punishments; Maslow claiming we are driven by our needs, including that most powerful one: self-actualization. Even today, the ideas of these two giants shape much of what happens in schools. Since my ultimate goal is a better understanding of what affects teaching and learning, these two behaviorists are sufficient. In choosing Educational Theorists, however, I needed a broader brush: I look inside the work of ten different educational theorists (notably Bruner, Gardner, Bloom, Montessori, Feuerstein, as well as two very different approaches to learning: KIPP and Zen). There are as many theories about how education works as there are teachers teaching, yet it is exciting that there is not just one way teach, but many. These many rather different approaches to teaching and learning are all effective in one way or another. Some classrooms teach students discipline and how to do well on tests; others teach them to understand the curriculum and to relate it to their lives; still others teach self-reliance and independence of thought. Each theory produces a very different graduate. Ultimately, society must decide the kind of graduates it wants: those with a deep understanding or those who paint by numbers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenn Fieber
• Release date: Feb 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311841896

Glenn Fieber

Teaching has taken me around the world—literally and philosophically. After I retired from Kamloops, B.C. in 1999, I taught 7 more years in China. China was different; her differences intrigued me. I tried to learn the language and culture: I studied tai qi and calligraphy; I wrote a history of China’s first emperor, the infamous Qin (Emperor of Stone).When I was a kid, most of my friends were bigger and stronger; I learned to share. In education—and in life—we need to share more. I have taught teachers in Canada, China and Korea and given countless workshops about teaching because I believe that teaching is important: teachers create the future; they can change lives.I began my career as a romantic idealist in Grand Forks, B.C. in the 60s. It was the time of a great social upheaval, when we all believed in dreams...then were forced to watch them unfold.Today, I am still at it, whatever it is. My idealism has been tempered by reality, but I am perhaps even more optimistic: whenever I walk into a classroom, I still get goosebumps.I welcome an exchange of ideas: You can contact me at [e-mail]

Book preview

Seeing

Inside the Theories of Behavior and Learning

BOOK 3

of

Minds in Bloom

Copyright Glenn Fieber

Kamloops, B.C. Canada

December, 2010

Revised 2012,2013, 2014

Smashwords Edition841896

ISBN: 9781311

Minds in Bloom

(a book about thinking, teaching, learning, the universe, and anything else that matters)

Minds in Bloom was first published as an e-book by Smashwords in 2010. Since the book deals with brain/mind, teaching and learning…and the universe, there has been a continuous flow of new information for me to consider. I have attempted to include much of it in the several revisions I have made since 2010. This latest revision in 2014 has brought me closer to home. But not home.

Minds in Bloom combines 4 separate books:

Book 1: Seeing Inside the Brain

Book 2: Seeing Inside the Mind

Book 3: Seeing Inside the Theories of Behavior and Learning

Book 4: Seeing Inside the Universe

Also by Glenn Fieber:

Emperor of Stone: Qin and the Terracotta Armies, China Intercontinental Press, 2008

Aristotle eating ice cream and other poems that float

Minds in Bloom is not just another book about the brain. It is more about what reaches beyond the narrow boundaries of the skull and into infinity: the mind.

OK, there is some brain in here: I describe how it operates as a system for storing and sorting whatever the senses deliver to it; but what is even more interesting is how the mind often steers us down weedy paths without our realizing that we are being taken for a ride until we look down and see the mud on our shoes.

The main purpose of this book, however, is to take a new look at teaching and learning. More than ever, society needs people who think. Learning is the key to that Holy Grail: Progress. And also to happiness and well-being. If we can make teaching better, then schools will become better places for learning. To that end, I describe the traditional theories that we use to try to explain both human behavior and how we learn. But I do it all from a new perspective: the exciting discoveries being made by neuroscientists, whose machines can look inside our heads while we are thinking.

Then I conclude with an ambitious reach: how the universe is all connected—or interconnected—to each of us.

And I enrich all that with some personal experiences and observations about learning harvested from my 45 years in the field—65 if you add in my time spent as a student. Sixty-five years teaching and learning? Either I am insane, or I have something to say. Or both.

Glenn Fieber, M. Ed.

December 2010; March, 2013, January 2014

Preface to the 2014 Edition

I have been working on Minds in Bloom forever: In today’s digital world, the flow of knowledge is more like a tsunami that both inundates me and requires me to reconsider everything I once thought I knew.

In this revision I’ve added new information on how free radicals from gluten and glucose can damage our cells, including our neurons, and thereby impair both our brains and our bodies, causing dementia and a myriad of other conditions, none of them good. Yet we cling to old ideas about nutrition in a death grip. Also, exciting new approaches to teaching and learning. And there is new evidence that regular fasting sharpens brain function. Who wouldn’t hunger for more information on that?

My favorite idea: tantalizing reflections on the interconnectedness of organic and inorganic matter, of man and machine. It’s coming: mind-controlled exoskeletons are here; Her is here.

Writing this is both frustrating and exciting. New ideas pop up their heads like Whack-a-Moles, and I want to include everything relevant to learning and brain function. But at the same time I want to be finished—closure. In university I read the poems of A. E. Housman and was amused by his titles: his second book was Last Poems, but after that came More Poems. I understand now that nothing is ever finished.

Glenn Fieber, M.Ed.

Kamloops, B.C.

[e-mail]

St. Genevieve’s School, 1947 (photo courtesy of Liz Rowe)

That’s me in the 2nd row, just behind a Priest whose name I forget—though I fondly remember the white-haired Mrs. Pearce: she gave me a detention for being flippant but asked interesting questions. I am grinning like a monkey—perhaps because we had been let out early for the picture.

All these faces looking out into our futures, with no idea of what life had in store for us.

Contents: Minds in Bloom

[Only the links for Book 3 are active.]

Thanks

Windswept

BOOK ONE: Inside the Brain

INSIDE THE BRAIN

WAYS OF THINKING

OTHER WAYS OF THINKING

BRAIN ARCHITECTURE

Sensory Regions of the Cortex

Plasticity

Homunculus

Conscious and Unconscious Mind

Glia Cells

Astrocytes

Right and Left Hemispheres

The Frontal Lobes

MEMORY

Changing our Minds

Making Memories Last

Mega-Memories

THE FORMATIVE YEARS

ADOLESCENT BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

AUTOMATIC PILOT

MINDFULNESS

ON LANGUAGE AND THINKING

BRAIN DAMAGE

BOOK TWO: Inside the Mind: Controlling Behavior

one: shock therapy

two: Lobotomy

three: Hypnosis

four: Teaching and Learning

Three Sisters

Other Teachers

Tour Guides

Inside My Classroom

Philosophy

Curriculum

Structures for Learning

Measurement

Open-Ended Alternatives

Reflections

Conclusions

BOOK THREE: Inside the Theories of Behavior and Learning

Behavior Theories

one: B F Skinner

two: Abraham Maslow

Learning Theories

three: Jerome Bruner

four: Howard Gardner

five: Benjamin Bloom

six: Maria Montessori

seven: Waldorf Education

eight: Reuven Feuerstein

nine: Knowledge is Power (KIPP)

ten: Zen

eleven: Seven Arrows

twelve: Sugata Mitra

thirteen: Barbara Arrowsmith-Young

BOOK FOUR: Inside the Universe

one: The Mind is a Universe

two: Becoming Us

three : Changing our Minds

four: Foods for Thought

one: The Body as an Energy System

two: Prahlid Jhani

three: Does the shape of a building matter?

four: What about Prayer?

five: Music and Healing

six: Qi

seven: The Shaolin Monks

eight: Reiki

nine: Feldenkrais

ten: Gaia

eleven: Full Circle

REFERENCES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thanks

Nothing ever comes from nothing—unless maybe it’s the universe. Though this book is small, it is the product of a very large debt:

To Kurt Vonnegut Jr. whose Sirens of Titan first introduced me to the idea of cosmic interconnectedness; to Cliff Noakes, whose gift of a bound copy of my letters from China planted a seed; to Donna Martin, who swaps ideas and books with me at the generous rate of two for one; to my friends who’ve never seemed to tire of discussing ideas; to Doug Butler, who helped re-open the doors to the Inner School, and whose pictures unlocked memories. And to Principal Gordon Armes, who took risks to encourage learning.

And to my five children, Paul, Shelley, Cameron, Kirstie, and Joel, and to my grandchildren Elliot, Karolina and Casey, who, though they carry the burden of my DNA, have wonderful minds of their own. (What time is it? Zero. How bad do you have to poop? Fifteen dollars.)

And to my wife, Daryl, who continues to find me rabbits and keep me from getting lost.

Tennyson (Ulysses) reminds us of what we already know: that we are a part of all that we have met; of each other; of the universe. This, too.

Glenn Fieber

Windswept

Einstein tried to explain the workings of the universe with his Theory of Relativity, a formula that connects time and space. As if the universe were a place that could be measured and described mathematically. (Einstein readily accepts this limitation: Not everything that can be counted matters. Not everything that matters can be counted.) When his calculations did not work for quantum mechanics, along came Stephen Hawking and others with the Theory of Everything to tidy things up by sweeping them under the carpet and into a few black holes.

But Einstein and Hawking miss the key point: the important events that shape the universe and our lives lie in places beyond description—mathematical or otherwise—because we cannot know the connectedness of all things; we can only get a sense of them after the fact. Sometimes long after the fact. In The Tao: Lao-Tse tells us there are roads we can know, and roads beyond our knowing, though we must travel both. And while we think of definition as an aspect of knowing, Lao-tse tells us that there is a place for naming to stop. Definitions are borders we put around things and they divide us and prevent us from thinking.

Guanxi in China are calculated connections that will get you somewhere—a job, a promotion, a wife—tickets to life. Or protection. (When the intoxicated son of a police chief in Baoding drove into two university students and killed one of them, his defense to the security guards was simple: My father is Li Gang. And it worked—or would have were it not for the fact that the social media are now beyond the reach of even Beijing.)

This book is about connections, the uncalculated ones. It is a subject that has come to occupy me because the interconnectedness of everything controls the universe…and our little lives. I read Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea, and I am writing this book, because of a gust of wind.

We once rented a storage locker to accommodate all the stuff that wouldn’t fit in our one-bedroom. I had been carrying a writing desk out of the storage building. My wife had previously opened the heavy outer door of the building and secured it with its drop-down doorstop. But she hadn’t pushed the door up against the wall and secured the stop firmly, and as I came through the door with the writing desk in my hands, a gust of wind released the door and slammed it into