How to accelerate results in reading and math? Secrets you won’t hear elsewhere

Group Submission Type: Pre-conference Workshop

Proposal

To fulfill the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), governments must implement strategies and activities that efficiently offer information to students. In low-income environments, learning outcomes have been modest. Limited teaching time, lack of textbooks, and poorly educated teachers many cause chronic illiteracy and early dropout. In such constrained circumstances, scientific research offers ways to optimize what brains can learn.

Reading and math are important topics for optimization. Science shows that people worldwide process information in roughly similar ways. Crucial for both subjects are the ‘low-level’ unconscious operations involving perceptual learning and implicit memory. The research leads to efficient methods of learning, particularly under constrained circumstances. Unfortunately, this academic domain is the purview of psychologists and is little known among educators.

The workshop aims to train participants in the essential workings of memory and perception, with applications to reading and math, particularly for poor populations. A preconference course on cognitive science for international education has been offered every year since 2011. This year it will focus specifically on reading and math solutions. For reading, the focus will be:
• Perceptual learning of letter shapes and the importance of visual variables early on;
• how the brain sequences reading and why this skill could be taught in stages;
• Chunking, practice, feedback and the predictive validity of learning curves;
• The visual word form area activation and eventual change from serial to parallel processing of text;
• The variables related to comprehension and need for comprehension speed.
For math, additional topics will be:
• The triple code, numbers line, and the two math systems of the brain
• The importance and training on estimations and optimization of the Weber fraction
• The role and development of rapid mental calculations.
• Development of teaching materials for reading and math, as carried out by various collaborators in different countries.
The participants will get several exercises of real-life situations and will consider solutions and explanations from memory research. Examples will also include common fallacies and their explanations. The target audience is everyone attending CIES.

The workshop is for 3 hours. Its essential topics have been offered since 2011 and gets high participation.
Audience is graduate students as well as professionals. Attendance based on prior years is 40+ participants.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Workshop Organizers

• Helen Abadzi, University of Texas at Arlington

• Aglaia Zafeirakou, Senior Consultant - The World Bank