My name is Mattea McGregor, I am an artist, teacher and parent and have applied to complete the Graduate Certificate in Brain-based Education at CQU. Since first becoming a secondary teacher, and then having children of my own (currently 4 and 2yo), I have become more intrigued by different modes of learning, and how our environment and socio-cultural structures can aid or hinder our unique inner propensities for learning.

The educational systems within Australia are increasingly focused on standardised literacy and numeracy, learnt at a desk inside a classroom, which makes some sense in our technology-rich modern world, but does appear to come at the cost of integrating hands-on creative and nature-based experiences. It seems to me that our information and communication technologies, more easily facilitate individualised, indoor, sedentary modes of learning, over meaningful interpersonal, active and environmentally connected learning (not to say that the technologies cannot support this learning, just that it is not inherent in the structure of the current systems).

Historically, oral or non-literate cultures have used creative, active, arts-based modes of information transmission contextualised within the environment to pass on and store vast amounts of detailed knowledge that has often been overlooked by literate societies.

Creativity and connection to our natural world are two areas that I believe are incredibly important for our global community, in ensuring and improving quality of life in all avenues from personal wellbeing to sustainability.
My interest in the Graduate Certificate of Brain-based Education is at it's most basic level a desire to better understand learning, and on a grander level to look for connections and ways to integrate the teaching and learning of different kinds of knowledge that will be important for future learners.

I should mention at this point that I do not have a social media account of any kind. I am interested in the power and potential of social media to bring people together, however, it seems to me that many of these platforms are driven by advertising and financial gain through manipulation of the users without the informed knowledge of said users, and as such, I choose not to participate in them.