Principle #7:  Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception

It is well known that before human beings can learn or make effective decisions, they must pay attention.  Attention is a natural phenomenon guided by interest, novelty, emotion, and meaning.  Attention is critical to memory.  What is less understood is the fact that human beings also learn from a context they rarely consciously attend to.

This is how the nuances of our cultures are taught and how children “pick up” behaviors, beliefs, and preferences or dislikes without ever having paid direct attention to how they were learning these (Schacter, 1996).  Educators need to engage students in situations that call for higher order functions invoking and engaging students’ natural and inborn need to attend and make decisions. 

Educators also need to understand how the context teaches and how to use that context to support the more explicit learning required of all students.

Capacity #7:  All students can learn more effectively when their attention is deepened and multiple layers of the context are used to support learning.

Principles: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12