I was alerted to this site by Greg. There are a whole set of videos of talking heads that are very informative. I went straight to the ones about the brain and neuroscience as this is an area of curiosity for me. I highly recommend that you have a look. Thanks Greg!
The particular video that the title of this posting links to is around motivating learners. The key messages resonate with me: an environment where children are working on topics that are interesting to them therefore they have an intrinsic motivation to focus and remain engaged; teachers who have relationships with the children and therefore know them and where they are at with their learning to plan for further experiences through appropriate challenges; collaboration with peers and teachers is encouraged; there is a context/culture of valuing thinking and learning; there is an attractive environment that contributes to the learning.
He describes the times when teachers get the balance between challenge and support right as ‘flow’ = when the child is engaged, completely concentrated, ‘in the moment’. This sounds like what happens regularly in the infant-toddler centres and pre-schools of Reggio Emilia!
5 months ago