Firecrackers and Magic Tricks.Is Providing Meaning That Easy

A teacher has many responsibilities to fulfill. One of those responsibilities is providing to the subject material to be learned. Literature in agricultural education acknowledges as a principle for effective teaching and learning (Newcomb, McCracken, Warmbrod, & Whittington, 2004). For some, providing has been lighting firecrackers to emotionally involve the students and get their attention or doing some kind of magic act to entertain, and then teach a subject matter that has little to no relevance to firecrackers and magic tricks. Does this process work? Do we merely need to get some emotional reaction out of the students to provide sound meaning? As a part of the brain-based research in education, which has been developed over the past decade, a theme could be that is important in the learning process (Wolfe, 2001; Jensen, 1998). As biology begins to point to the importance of in terms of learning (or retention), education should be responding to this by creating frameworks and practical applications for teachers to utilize. So to answer the preceding questions, from the brain-based research point of view, no requires a bit more than fireworks and magic tricks. Brain-Based Research and Meaning When information has more meaning, or if it fits into or adds to an existing in the brain, then the chances of it getting stored is much higher than if there were no or network (Wolfe, 2001, p. 103). Our mind is constantly being bombarded with sensory input or information. It's the brain's responsibility to sort out the relevant information and bring it to attention. If the brain processed every single piece of incoming information then it would overload with such memory. This is why bringing to what we are teaching is crucial for students to remember or retain information (Wolfe, 2001). Jensen (1998) introduces several ways or factors that can occur. The first is through emotion, the second through relevance and the third through context and patterns. All three areas have explainable, biological connections to the brain. Given the theoretical background of the three factors, in combination with literal definitions, then a hierarchical framework could be constructed to describe the relationship between the three factors of meaning. This is conceptualized in Figure 1. The three factors are represented in the three sections of the hierarchy triangle. In constructing differences among the three levels, the following questions were developed to answer the degree of in reference to a particular piece of information or concept that is to be learned: Context/Patterns: What is it compared to what I already know? Relevance: What is it compared to what I already know in relation to me? Emotion: What is it compared to how it will change my psychological state? Given those questions, then it could be easier to differentiate the degree to which a teacher provides meaning? Practical Applications Taking the framework for providing meaning, we are going to go through a few examples of how haphazard meaning compares to structured meaning. …