How can we become better learners? By Ken Nourolahi

How to develop better learners is a question that has been pondered since the beginning of humankind. The survival of early humans depended on the ability of the young to observe and duplicate the parents’ model of food gathering, shelter building, and nurturing the young. When humans developed language and reading and writing skills, teaching methods became more sophisticated ranging from the Socratic Method to John Dewey’s pragmatist views that spawned public education, to the brain-based research that influences teaching and learning methods today.


Current technology, including NMRI (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imagery) and MEG (Magneto Encephalography), allows researchers to detect brainwave patterns and track brain activity while a person performs specific learning tasks. More important information on how a person learns has been provided by current genetic research. Plomin, Kovas, and Haworth (2007) explored the genetic link between the brain, mind and education in their research.

Research confirms that children’s sleep patterns, diet, amount of exposure to television, parental attention and exposure to reading, and even the amount of water a child consumes during the day has a direct impact on their ability to learn. Eric Jensen points out in his book, Teaching With the Brain in Mind, that educators must explore how children learn before they can provide opportunities for them to learn. One of the more interesting sections of Jensen’s book is the one on Memory and Recall (Chapter 11). We should look at memory as a process rather than a particular location of the brain. Giving students a variety of ways to retrieve information will help them reconstruct and activate patterns that allow them to make an emotional connection to the content.

Social and emotional connections to learning cannot be understated. For example, Dr. Oscar Ybarra, University of Michigan, has researched how social interaction can influence cognitive performance. The influence of social interaction on learning is especially apparent with the development of the internet and websites like My Space. The internet provides us with unlimited opportunities for learning. However, it is important to direct this learning in constructive and profitable ways. Our approach to teaching and mentoring our associates takes into consideration the different methods that people learn. Using the written, audio, and video mediums allow us to combine the learning and doing to accelerate their success.

Get more details by visiting my website www.WhoIsKenNourolahi.com and subscribing to my private newsletter.

To Your Success,

Ken Nourolahi