ABSTRACT
This chapter moves away from general skills that influence learning across subject areas and looks at some topic-specific skills that apply to literacy, mathematics, arts and science. It discusses the core abilities that appear to underlie ability in specific areas, such as phonological awareness in reading and number sense in mathematics. Such abilities may be barriers to learning when they are slow developing, or alternatively may present opportunities to accelerate learning. Some approaches common to teaching the arts and the sciences which can be beneficial to both are presented. The brain has been discussed in terms of its general operation – pattern recognition, memory systems, integrated emotions, attention – but in education, one must learn specific things – how to read, how to do sums, how to dissect anything from a Maya Angelou poem to a frog. People are so accustomed to reading and writing and to the conventions of maths, that it is easy to forget just how many different processes have to be efficiently brought to bear to perform these activities without even thinking. In the arts and sciences, additional processes which support creative and critical thinking and manage higher-level concepts, come in to play. In this chapter, these are broken down to better understand the core of complex activities, pointing to places of possible weakness and suggesting means of amelioration.
