There is some very interesting educational research about Dual Coding that has such relevance for professional learning experiences. We all know the saying about “a picture is worth a thousand words” and certainly in any form of education, whether educating children or professional learning, the aim is not to confuse the learner or make them take unnecessarily prolonged paths to their learning, but to accelerate learning wherever possible so that it is impactful and has greater chance of being assimilated into the infinitely complex neural connections in our brains. And this is where Dual Coding comes in, by finding ways of presenting information in such a way as to make it more accessible and more relevant. I think this is one of the big differences between professional self development through reading books and attending a course or a conference. The ability to see and listen to information presented and to participate in discussions requires so many different neural pathways to be activated rather than decoding the words on a page.
