A Day at the Science Festival

part 1.

The newest vehicle on Mars is named for Curiosity, the impetus that fuels science – the new god is crawling on the face of the old god.

I set out to be curious about a festival of curiosity. The British Science Festival is still on-going, but I was in Aberdeen for the one day only.  My day started early and started with a coincidence. I caught the 06:25 train out of Newcastle and I had booked a seat.  Already seated, across the table from my seat was a fellow South African, a friend who I had not seen or met for over a year.

The first challenge that I encountered upon reaching Aberdeen was that I don’t know Aberdeen and didn’t know how to find the venues for the festival from the station. There was no big poster saying welcome, no immediate indication that I should take a number however-many-it-was bus.  And when I walked into the maritime museum because the sign said “Tourist Information” the very helpful lady did not know about the festival; she wanted to know which of the two campuses I was headed towards and I didn’t know.  We worked it out and I took the number 20 bus.

On the campus there were posters and numbers with arrows and a main office and lots of people with bright science festival t-shirts on.  Of course it was easy to find the venue for my first talk.

Embodiment.

I caught the last half hour of Arthur Glenberg http://psychology.clas.asu.edu/glenberg talking about neuroscience, embodiment and using these results to improve the teaching of reading.

 

Lick Pick Kick.  They measured brain activity of people reading words and noticed that when one reads a word the body-action-centre of the brain lights up. So read the words

Lick

Pick

Kick.

As the person reads the word Lick, what lights up is tongue licking action part of the brain.  Reading Pick lights up the moving fingers part.  Reading kick lights up the foot kicking part of the brain.  The supposition is that this embodiment is missing when children have difficulty learning to read and linking words to action can help children learn to read.

Children were given a large toy scene with furniture and animals and characters and straw and machines.  After sounding out a sentence the child identifies the characters and walks the animals through the actions and the meanings of the sentence.  Reading and comprehension improved markedly.

 

So I was thinking…..

Can we teach Accounting this way?  Any sort of teaching must be able to make use of this idea.  I have run a small business, I have worked in a shop, I have costed out massive software projects.  When I read the word accounting I get a clear picture, an association, a body memory of money in, paying for raw materials, regular bookkeeping.  I remember my business experience in many ways. I am told during my interviews of postdocs and PhD’s that they want tuition in the nitty gritty of doing business, and this starts with accounting. When they need to deal with accountants, it feels as though accountants deliberately mystify them with obfuscating jargon. While this may be true, it is also true that even Bioscience or medical sciences students receive tuition in basic accounting and more such tuition is available for them.  It’s almost as if the tuition has not stuck.

Maybe this is the same as a young child having difficulty learning to read.  If the person does not have an idea or a body memory or context or experience to base the teaching on, the words are not real and the concepts mean very little, and there is no sense to be made from the tuition. What will work?

What has worked is Role Play.  My interviews reflect that the single tool in the previous spinout teaching workshops that was appreciated more highly than the others was the role play. Is role-play then the equivalent of toys for children?  Case studies are also very effective but did not get as much of a – ahhh that made it all make sense – feeling.