AERA 2003 in Chicago; late July deadline

Why learn?
Cost of learning
The benefits of learning need to be larger than the costs.

Make more money
It's enjoyable to learn

Learning is a mechanism that allows organisms to deal with rapid change.
(Evolution is a mechanism that allows organisms to deal with slow change.)
(Learning allows changes over the period of minutes, hours, days. Evolution allows changes over the period of years to tens of millenniums.)

Relation between learning and intelligence.

People are addicted to learning.

What kind of learning are they attracted to/addicted to?

What encourages deep learning?

Expertise is having multiple coordinated representations of the domain of expertise

An expert teacher would then have multiple learning theories that are coordinated so that the appropriate theory can be selected and used and switched among.

What are you learning and what are your goals?

One important dimension of learning theories is the unit of analysis (neural learning theories at one end of the spectrum; organizational learning at the other end).

Relationship between a learning theory and a curriculum

Differences in educational philosophy (based on a specific learning theory) between different countries: US, China, Australia, Korea

Generalist vs. specialist focus

Flexibility vs. efficiency

Lifetime learning

Learning to learn

What is the ability to learn? How is it related to technologies?
Intelligence related to ability to learn?

Sensory difficulties; motor difficulties;

Different students have different learning needs; but schools provide a standard learning environment;

Different expressions of what a student has learned;

Relation between learning and assessment/evaluation; learning theory implies a certain kind of assessment; conversely, an assessment implies/enforces a certain kind of learning theory

E. D. Hirsch's "cultural literacy": n things that every educated American should know