The located and researched website, entitled “Neuroscience for Kids,” focuses on various motivational activities that can be used by a teacher in order to enhance student’s learning experience. The activities in this website are based mainly upon a learning theory called constructivism. This theory claims that during the learning process, an individual uses current and past knowledge as a foundation for constructing new concepts and ideas. In other words, the learner fits all newly obtained information into his previous experience model, constructs that knowledge from his own event proficiency. This site offers various constructivist learning approaches that combine rules, internalized concepts, and general principles, which are applicable in the practical context of the real world. In the proposed approach, the teacher plays the role of a moderator, which encourages the students to solve realistic problems, discover various principles, and construct their knowledge. Constructivism, in general, includes such teaching methods as experimentations, research projects, field trips, films. All these approaches are followed by a detailed class discussion which is the most important aspect of constructivist teaching that in its turn intends to provide the students with the ability to freely explore within a granted structure or framework. This site offers various types of experimentations concerning neuroscience, intended for grades three through twelve. One of the most unsophisticated experiments focuses on modeling a retinal image. The students are required to take a magnifying glass the represents a convex eye-lens and look through it at a white wall that is opposite to a window, holding it 3 inches away. As the magnifying glass is a convex lens, just like the eye-lens, the students will observe an inverted image of what is outside of the window. According to Gardner’s (1983) and Banduras’ (1981) work, the child’s mind is intersected by two human ability continuums. One of those continuums represents the learning ability spectrum, ranging from high to low self-efficacy. The second continuum is not as effective in nature and represents the intelligence spectrum, ranging from unitary mind form to a much more broad cognition view. Howard Gardner claims that students in the classroom are possessed multiple intelligences and are not aware of their talents. Many may perceive themselves as dumb and hopeless educational failures. However, most are talented at least in one intelligence aspect. In order to train such concealed intelligence, the teachers are obliged to appeal to constructivist learning motivational activities, which are briefly described above. The works of Gardner and Bandura complement the aforesaid by stating that students possess a wide range of skills and abilities, and it is the job of the teacher to train their self-esteem in order to reveal the full array of their intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence involves possessing own working model that is the foundation for regulating own life, based upon being able to understand oneself, appreciate own fears, motivations and feelings. As a teacher, I am striving towards conformity to such a psychological model and am doing my best in order to build the right attitude towards the students. However, I am still experiencing difficulty understanding how to best take advantage of each unique intelligence in order to reveal it in each student.
References
Bandura, A., & Schunk, D. H. (1981). Cultivating competence, self- efficacy, and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 586-598.
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.