Reflections on the Science of Memory - Dual Coding

The Learning and the Brain conference is an overwhelming experience.  That’s not a complaint.  It’s the best professional development I’ve ever participated in.  It’s overwhelming in the way a magnificent artwork is overwhelming, just too much to take in.  It’s overwhelming in the way meeting a beloved public figure would be overwhelming, just wanting to remember every part of the moment but also knowing that you won’t.  I have attended this conference twice now, and I have come away both times with the same mixture of feelings.  First, I feel mostly affirmed that much of what I and my colleagues are doing is in line with how student's brains work.  Even though much of it has been developed through trial and error or intuition, we seem to have done a lot right.  Second, there are some changes we need to make to some of our practices.  Holding those two thoughts simultaneously weighs down my luggage on the trip home.

The only way I have found to deal with the sheer volume of information I get from this conference is to reflect on parts of it a little at a time while I figure out how I might like to apply them.  Since this blog is for me to reflect and process my thoughts and let you read them if you wish, I’ll be dealing with those here for a while. We are nearing the end of these.  I have two more after this one.

In the last post, I poked at education's sacred cow of learning styles.  Even when presented with evidence, there are many teachers who still hold on.  I think it is because they have found that teaching in multiple styles is helpful.  That part is true.  Teaching in multiple ways creates a rich environment for the coding of information in the brain.  This is called the science of Multiple Modalities.  It's not just a semantic difference.  Teaching in multiple modalities frees you from thinking that you must address three different learning styles for every single thing you teach (which I found overwhelming for the first decade of my career).  Pairing visuals and words is good for everyone.  You don't have a "visual" student learning from the pictures and "verbal" student learning from the words.  Also, text words on a page are processed by the same part of your brain as spoken words, so it isn't about the path of input.  Having kids play with content specific manipulatives helps all of your students when paired appropriately with content.  It's not just for a mythical "tactile" student.

While this is initially upsetting to teachers, it should ultimately be freeing.  Incorporate multiple sensory inputs where you can, and relax about not being able to include the others.   The reason teaching in multiple modalities works is because of something called Dual Coding.
The idea here is that when words are combined with visuals, we have two pathways into the brain being processed for meaning by two parts of the brain and then being integrated and connected.  Your brain can assign meaning in a richer way.
The processing of words happens sequentially as you must hear or read one word at a time.  When looking at an image, your brain takes in a lot of information at once.  Combining them has a powerful effect on the brain as it processes them separately and puts them together.

There is more than one way to accomplish this.  As an input tool, it involves simply including images while you are talking.  Most of us do that already, but it could be done better by carefully choosing the images you use.  The image should not just be related, but one which assigns meaning to the concept or definition.

The second use of this is having students draw pictures to go with the words or concepts they are using.  Using these six steps could result in better learning of vocabulary.

1. Show or say the word.  Ask students if they have ever heard it before or any word that sounds like it (Words with similar roots often have similar meanings, so if they know a similar word, it could be a good connection.
2. Show or tell the definition - The brain reacts to spoken and visual words the same way, so it does not count as dual coding to read the words while projecting them.  They are both being processed in the verbal center of the brain.
3. Ask the students to use the word in a sentence they create.  
4. Ask students to draw a picture that represents the definition or concept.  It's important that the drawing be simple, so artistry is not an advantage.
5. Explain the picture to a neighbor. (This involves retrieval and the social aspect of learning which will be addressed in another post.)
6. Label the picture with words from the definition.

If your students are including these in their notes, the words and pictures (including the labels) should be as close to the image as possible.  

This is a great way to make thinking visible as well as making the knowledge sticky.  I'd start by doing this in class the first time you try it because you will be available to answer questions and make your expectations clear.  After that, this seems like a great homework assignment for the vocab list at the beginning of each new chapter.