The Learning Cycle: Insights for Faithful Teaching from Neuroscience and the Social Sciences

How teachers teach is not necessarily how learners learn. Educators focus on content delivery, but much of the learning process involves affective and behavioral factors. Veteran educators Muriel and Duane Elmer provide a holistic model for how learning takes place. Their learning cycle moves beyond mere recall of information to helping learners value and apply learning in ways that are integrated into behavior and practice. With insights from neuroscience, educational psychology, and learning theory, they address how the brain can become more receptive, how emotional environments affect learning, and how learning tasks and experiential exercises can help foster the development of skills and habit formation. They do so in the context of a thoroughly Christian framework that emphasizes not just knowledge, but character, integrity, and wisdom. Learning can be accomplished in and beyond the classroom to move from content mastery to life experience. Here are sound avenues for helping your students become the lifelong learners God intends.

Muriel I. Elmer (PhD, Michigan State) is a retired adjunct professor for Trinity International University where she taught in both the educational studies and the intercultural studies PhD programs. She has taught nursing and intercultural communication at various institutions and has been an international consultant and educator for many cross-cultural organizations. She was the director of child survival programs and a training specialist at World Relief as well as a missionary in South Africa.

Duane H. Elmer (PhD, Michigan State) has taught in over seventy-five countries and has provided cross-cultural training to Fortune 500 companies, relief and development agencies, mission organizations, churches, and educational institutions. He previously served as director of the PhD program in educational studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He has also conducted peace and reconciliation efforts in several countries. His books include Cross-Cultural Conflict, Cross-Cultural Connections, and Cross-Cultural Servanthood. The Elmers live in Winfield, Illinois.