Nonlinear Method of Learning

This article describes the Connections Across Cultures (CaC) project. This project focused on the underrepresented members of a learning community such as females, American Indians, African ... See More

This article describes the Connections Across Cultures (CaC) project. This project focused on the underrepresented members of a learning community such as females, American Indians, African Americans, and Latinos. The student found that these populations of students that a personal analogy about a concept would serve as a structure on which they could later build knowledge upon. This helped these students make connections. These connections could be student-generated, teacher-generated, or teacher-generated summaries.

Teaching to Diverse Populations

This was a 7-year project about how to teach to underrepresented and diverse student populations. The targeted populations included females, American Indians, African Americans, and Latinos... See More

This was a 7-year project about how to teach to underrepresented and diverse student populations. The targeted populations included females, American Indians, African Americans, and Latinos. One major finding of the project was that science needed to be relevant to students by integrating students’ interests and by using meaningful and familiar experiences that related to their own backgrounds and lives. The author incorporated sound pedagogical strategies to help teachers make learning more meaningful for nonlinear learners. For example, the study found that it was important to find ways to connect new learning to “…some sort of structure or understanding on which to hang the information and facts that come later”. Several student analogies were provided for teaching the concept of converging plates (plate tectonics). In order for some students to see the “big picture”, personal experiences were used. An example of how a teacher helped a student understand vectors by having her outstretched arms represent vectors held at opposing 45-degree angles, made the concept crystal clear after just a few moments of the teacher pulling each of the student’s arms along their axes. The strategies in this article can be used to help all children bring conceptual understanding to their learning.