The buzz phrase, learning how to learn, has been around for a number of years. Over the last decade or so psychologists have begun to discover more of how the brain works, how facts can be rapidly and deeply fixed in long-term memory and how we learn. The teaching method of Accelerated Learning has drawn upon the work of Dr. Georgi Lozanov, a Bulgarian research psychologist and Harvard educator, Dr. Howard Gardner. It also includes studies of Nobel laureates such as neuroscientist Roger Sperry and neurobiologist Gerald Edelman.

SURVIVAL SKILLS
Two skills – fast learning and clear thinking are the key to survival in the 21st Century. These skills produce self reliance; an ability to manage your own learning, to master the volume of information and to see its significance and meaning, and to know how to use the information to design and develop creative products and creative answers to problems.

LOZANOV METHOD
Lozanov constantly advocated that everything in the classroom needed to suggest success. Negative limiting expectations needed to be broken down and positive expectations needed to be built up. Six main principles featured in the classrooms of Lozanov and form the basis for Accelerated Learning classrooms.

1. Remove all negative mental blocks that cramp the natural learning ability. Desuggest the idea that your ability is limited.
2. Relax – information is rapidly and effortlessly absorbed in a relaxed state.
3. Create a mental map of the information you are going to learn.
4. ‘Active Concert’ – the medium is the message. Music, rhythm, drama, visual stimuli are a part of the learning process.
5. Take a short break. ‘Receptive Concert’ – subconscious time to absorb the review process involving sound and visual stimuli.
6. Sleep on it followed by ‘Activations’- series of games, or puzzles and/or activities devised to review the previous day’s work.
(Rose: 1985: 84-86)

This style of teaching is designed to bring about ‘learning in the round’. Colin Rose, author of a number of resources on Accelerated Learning, personally experienced a learning episode using the Lozanov method and says “ …every single element of the class is positive – no criticism, just encouragement. It is the sort of supportive atmosphere that a child normally learns in. Everything was focused to ensure effective, stress-free learning. Words, pictures, and sound were all coordinated. Left brain/right brain activity was coordinated. Conscious/subconscious influences were coordinated. The childlike joy of learning was married to the adult’s store of prior knowledge. The Lozanov method is holistic learning at a very refined level.” (Rose: 1985: 87)

Taken From: Accelerated learning in a digital information environment