Brief 1 available

Posted on June 15, 2015

We are pleased to announce that Brief 1 is now available online: Brief 01: Culture & Learning: Building Capacity & Cultivating Innovation

Written By Megan Bang

There have been significant shifts in some fundamental understandings of the ways that human beings learn. Increasingly, the emphasis is on learning with understanding rather than memorization. While knowing facts is important, useable knowledge is better.

All people come to activities with a range of prior knowledge, experiences, beliefs, skills, values, and interests. These, in turn, affect ones' abilities to remember, reason, problem-solve, and acquire new knowledge. Whether intentionally or not people connect and make sense of new experiences and knowledge in relation to previous experiences and knowledge.

Thus, learning happens most efficiently when teachers actively engage students' prior knowledge and view it as an asset for learning rather than a problem to overcome. This has been referred to as engaging students funds of knowledge. This can and often does include instruction in a student's first language.