ANNOUNCEMENT: I’m leading a 4-part Pro-D certificate course for Educators, Caregivers, Counsellors and others, through the Trasnformative Learning Foundation, starting next Thursday Sept. 17th.

See more details here:

Learning Your Way Pro-D course with Michael Maser

“The brain develops throughout life, following a trajectory that is broadly consistent for humans but it is also individualized by every learner’s environment and experiences.”

– How People Learn – II; The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine; 2018

Course summary: Learning Your Way offers educators, caregivers, counsellors and others new insights and strategies to help them better support learning in their professional interactions with others. This includes recognizing the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic (its presence, not its actual symptoms) on individuals and populations.

Assisted by the digital revolution, information about human learning has never been as vast or well understood as it is at this time in history. From the domains of neuroscience, cognitive science, a suite of ‘softer’ learning sciences, holistic science, sociology and philosophy, insights pour in and fill journals on a weekly basis.

Many new insights and emerging situations – like the Covid-19 pandemic – are challenging and re-shaping precepts about learning that were, and sometimes still are, reflected in mainstream educational practice. For example, practices emphasizing rote and norm-referenced learning, learning reinforced by rewards (and punishments), and streaming practices based on IQ testing are all being challenged, or abandoned, thanks to new, emerging theories.

Such evolution of knowledge and practice is an important basis of empirical science. What is also true is the new knowledge we are gaining is leading to brilliant new sub-categories about learning found in emerging concepts like mindset, trauma-recovery, personalized learning (my domain of research), neurobiological (‘brain-based’) learning, neurodiversity, neuroplasticity, and many others.

These new insights are permeating all aspects of human society and may be found well beyond familiar educational practices. Professional health care, personal coaching, human resources training, marketing and AI are but a few industry domains where new learning insights are taking hold and flourishing.

I’m excited to offer my certificate course, ‘Learning Your Way – Neurobiology and Learning’, as a way for students to explore their interests in this emerging field and gain valuable insights. I hope you’ll join me. – Michael Maser