Monthly Archives: November 2018

Expanding time with slow thinking

Dr Sam Peng, Head of Economics Précis: The subjective nature of time perception suggests that we can expand students’ brain time in learning by engaging them in more slow thinking.   Today is a special day for the current Year 12 students. It is a day on which they celebrate growth, maturity, friendship, learning, independence, responsibility and a new beginning. Today is also a special day for their teachers, as waves of joy, pride, happiness and memory will gently tap their hearts. At this very special time for farewell and reflection, I wonder how our students will remember their education at Brisbane Girls Grammar School. Will their memories play out as a rapid time lapse of sunrise and sunset in this vibrant learning space, a slow motion of some unforgettable, enlightening moments, or a montage of both? What determines how moments of their learning experience are processed in their brain and contribute to their cognitive development?…

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I think, therefore I remember

Dr Peter Jenkins, Head of Mathematics Curriculum Development From 2020, Year 12 students in Queensland will sit external examinations that assess content learned over almost two years. Evidently, the ability of students to effectively remember a large volume of content, skills and understanding will be crucial for success. In Mathematics, there is often a reluctance to talk about the role of memory, possibly due to a fear that focusing on the act of remembering somehow minimises the importance of conceptual understanding. But not only is memory crucial in the process of developing conceptual understanding (Byers and Erlwanger, 1985), conversely it is the development of conceptual understanding that makes mathematical ideas memorable. As noted by McInerney (2014), the most important characteristic that makes information memorable is meaningfulness. Meaningful information is information that is already related to networks of ideas, or schemas, in long-term memory, and thus gives rise to the feeling of making sense. The richer the…

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