Accelerated Learning

Origins

The concept of accelerated learning goes back to psychiatrist Georgi Lozanov’s idea of suggestopedia. Lozanov points out that learning involves attitudes, not just aptitudes. Thus, he suggests that learning can be enhanced by decreasing anxiety and relaxing the learner. Lozanov’s theory is put forth ultimately for foreign language teaching and learning. Moreover, he suggests that merging psychotherapy and psychology could facilitate faster learning. Accelerated learning involves two parameters: time and learning. The duration of accelerated learning is expected to be shorter than learning by traditional means. Accelerated learning results in better learning, which is accomplished through the active and collaborative involvement of the students.

Characteristics and Principles

The characteristics of accelerated learning can be categorized under two headings: characteristics related to the learner and characteristics related to teaching situations. Accelerated learning seeks to place the learner at the center of the teaching-learning situation. It is nurturing and relaxing and is based on the learner’s inquiries. It is multisensory and humanistic; thus, it takes into consideration the learner as a whole. In other words, accelerated learning involves the mental, emotional, and physical being of the learner.

Giving the responsibility of learning to the learner and seeking to develop the learner as a whole person, the teaching situation should be multipath, should encourage collaboration among learners, and should focus on accelerating learning. Because learning occurs through the creation of neural pathways in the brain, accelerated learning attempts to create optimum conditions for creating and reinforcing neural pathways. Involving multiple senses is one instructional technique to optimize brain-based learning.

Developing an understanding of how different parts of the brain work can shed light into accelerating learning. Educational consultant and author Tony Buzan’s seminal work into the two halves of the human brain suggests that the left side of the brain focuses on mostly sequential activities and academic subjects like logic and mathematics, facilitating analytics and academics and the right side of the brain focuses on artistic activities such as art, color, music, and looking at things holistically, facilitating creativity and dreaming.

Researchers have identified four main learning modalities that combine the environment and the senses to achieve accelerated learning: somatic (learning through movement and touch), auditory (learning by talking or listening), visual (learning by seeing or illustrations), and intellectual (learning through finding solutions and reflecting). The Mozart effect is a concept arising from research on how using music to induce relaxation improves concentration. Using music or colors in a learning process stimulates both hemispheres of the brain, leading to stronger neural pathway formation. Accelerated learning aims to improve learning by [Page 2]involving all areas of the brain. Suppression of feelings and functions associated with stress and discomfort and achieving relaxation is important. Participating in activities relating to different intelligence types and involving different sensory modalities activates the entire brain.

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