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From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joan Walton [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2009 10:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Learning and reinforcing patterns in the brain

Hi Sonia

Somewhat coincidentally as your email came in, I was (somewhat sadly for a Saturday evening ), thinking about the connection between learning, teaching and personal/professional development, in preparation for a session next week with a group of second year undergraduate students.  They are working with me on a module 'active participation in learning'.  In keeping with the principle of 'active participation', they are essentially creating their own module, and as part of that, they have decided that they would each like to take  responsibility for planning and facilitating a session, which will be based on them researching a particular interest of theirs, then planning how they share/'teach'  that interest in a participative way with others in the group, so that they also learn about it, and hopefully are equally enthused.

It has been suggested to me by a long established professor within the faculty that my expectations of these students are too much, and that this kind of involvement would normally only be expected of masters students. However, the students themselves, although they recognise they are being challenged, are excited by the process; the three sessions that have taken place so far have been excellent, and reinforce in me a belief that I have long had that it is easy to make assumptions about people's capacity to learn, which then limits the opportunities we give them to do so.  (I want to make a clear distinction here between offering opportunities and supporting learning, and hothousing / forcing children to learn). 

'What the bleep do we know' seeks to explore the implications of quantum physics for human psychology, and aims to communicate complex ideas and a very different way of perceiving the world in an entertaining way, that supports this idea of us having an expanded capacity for learning.  It not only questions the view that consciousness is an emergent property of matter, but that the potential creative ability of consciousness may be unlimited, and hence our potential to learn is unlimited.  It supports the view that 'research' does not have to be limited by the assumptions / methodology of traditional science - all good news for practitioner researchers, who are encouraged to believe that they really can dissolve boundaries and create their own knowledge base / reality!  The film has obviously struck a chord with many people, though it has been very controversially received by traditional scientists and materialists, who see it as some kind of new age gobbledygook.  Although I couldn't comment on the ultimate 'pure scientific' validity of it all, I think (and have experience that) the more we open ourselves up to possibilities, the more interesting and creative responses we will experience - and I think ultimately that is what this film is encouraging us to do. 

There is a companion book called The Little Book of Bleeps, which contains a wide range of quotations and images contributed mainly by academics.  I'll include a few of the quotations here to give a flavour.

"When I  create my day and out of nowhere, little things happen that are so unexplainable, I know that they are the process or the result  of my creation. And the more I do that, the more I build a neural net in my brain and I accept that that's possible.  It gives me the power and the incentive to do it the next day".

"We've been conditioned to believe that the external world is more real than the internal world.  This new model of science says just the opposite. It says what's happening within us will create what's happening outside of us"

"We're in completely new territory, in our brain, and because we're in completely new territory, we're rewiring the brain, literally reconnecting to a new concept, and ultimrately, it changes us from the inside out"
 (Dr Joseph Dispenza).  

"The brain is capable of millions of different things.  People should just learn how incredible we actually are, and how incredible our minds actually are. That not only do we have this unbelievable thing within our heads that can do so many things for us, and can help us learn, but it can also change and adapt, and it can make us better than what we actually are. It can actually help us to transcend ourselves" (Andres Newberg,PhD). 

"We like to think of space as empty and matter as solid.  But in fact, the truth is almost exactly the other way around."
"Quantum mechanics allows for the intangible phenomenon of freedom to be woven into human nature" (Dr Jeffrey Satinover)

"Knowing that there's this inteconnectedness of the universe, that we are all inteconnected and that we are connected to the universe at its fundamental level, I think is as good an explanation for spirituality as there is"   (Dr Stuart Hameroff)

bw

Joan




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Dr Joan Walton
Faculty of Education
Liverpool Hope University
Hope Park
Liverpool
L16 9JD

Phone: 0151 291 2115
Email: waltonj@hope.ac..uk