di: DI and Neuroplasticity?

[ROBERT]

Jim, how did your daughter turn out?I chanced to spend several months with my step grandmother when I was five in a village with no preschool.But she had boxes of Readers Digest magazines which I digested by the handful, with her help.The coal stove, water box and outhouse were no handclap.I've loved reading ever since.Bob

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------ Original Message ------

From: James Rice
To: k at kathyandcalvin.com
Cc: bhullinghorst at comcast.net, DI at lists.uoregon.edu
Sent: September 11, 2018 at 11:10 PM
Subject: Re: di: DI and Neuroplasticity?

Robert and all,

I first came across the understanding of neuroplasticity in an article I read about people that played the violin. It seems that, besides the hours of practice, the coordination of left and right hand needed to successfully play caused an increase in nerve pathways in the brain to the extent that long time players experienced a noticeable growth in one particular area of the brain. Later studies showed similar growth in the same area of the brain of guitar players. The repetitive use of the same neural pathways reinforces and strengthens those very pathways, until it no longer is a slender thread but a neural highway.

This is not at all different from what Sig described when he first wrote about Direct Instruction. When my first daughter expressed an interest in learning how to read (at age 3-1/2) I agreed to teach her. After that promise, I found myself shaking my head. I had no training, no evidenced skill at teaching, and no clue how to even start, but I was game for the challenge. Fortunately, I liked to browse the book stores and one Saturday I found Sig's first book,Give Your Child a Superior Mind.In the book he talked about eliminating all ambiguous concepts so that only one concept remains in the lesson you are trying to teach the child. It is this singular idea that allows the child to develop a direct neural pathway, instead of a neural "bush" that must consider several vaiables in the child's quest to develop the understanding of an idea. The repitition of this single concept strengthens the new neural pathway until the child achieves mastery. If I remember correctly, he compared it to a mouse in a maze. Eventually, the mouse will find his cheese at the end of the maze, but it will only happen after much trial and error and it will take a relatively long time. Sig's solution was to block off all the entrances to the dead ends, leaving only the true path. After several trial runs the mouse learns the way to the cheese and will run directly to it. Even after the blocked pathways are opened up the mouse will find the correct way to the cheese without error. The lesson being that Direct Instruction provides the most efficient way to construct new neural pathways and teaching to mastery stregthens those new pathways until they are near permanent additions to the child's brain-the basic bulding blocks of Neural Plasticity.

Jim Rice


On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 12:32 PM Kathy Pusztavari<k at kathyandcalvin.com(mailto:k at kathyandcalvin.com)>wrote:
> I’m just a parent but I would imagine that any research that shows effectiveness or is tied to why it is effective can’t be a bad thing. I would also imagine that funding would be hard to get, unless there is a university interested in this line of research.
>  
> - Kathy
>  
> >On Sep 7, 2018, at 10:45 PM, ROBERT<bhullinghorst at comcast.net(mailto:bhullinghorst at comcast.net)>wrote:
> >
> >For several months, I have been reading serious books and articles about Neuroplasticity.While some of the information is too technical for me, and some is hokum, there seems to be much promise in the direction of this research.
> >
> >As a former public official, I have been similarly interested in Direct Instruction for more than a decade, because DI is the most promising route for making public education more successful for all students.While I am not a teacher, I have attended DI classes and observed outstanding successes.
> >
> >I would like to begin my participation in the DI forum by positing a simple question--has there been research about how DI may relate to Neuroplasticity?
> >
> >The simple answer is probably NO.Even though the unique, structured educational approach of DI may significantly support, or benefit from, the phenomena being uncovered by research on Neuroplastinity.
> >
> >If the answer is, in fact, NO, I would like to elaborate on my suspicions about the relationships between DI and neuroplasticity, and possible areas of research.Unless too many members of the forum tell me I am crazy.
> >
> >Sincerely,
> >
> >Bob Hullinghorst
> >Boulder, CO
> >
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