Understanding How Adults Learn: A Key Process for Soil and Water Conservation.

Research on how the brain works as well as evidence from practice, indicates that adults learn best when they reason about a problem or issue they perceive as “important” or “interesting.” This presentation will review research on how experience is transformed into conscious attention, how conscious attention is transformed into memory, how memories are selected to form a “remembered present ”, and how memories are organized to “extend consciousness” in ways that inform thinking, reasoning, and decision-making. The presentation will also describe how this research is translated into principles of best practice for enhancing adult learning. During the presentation participants will engage in interactive discussions in which they will apply these principles of best practice to their own work with adults on topics related to soil and water conservation.