The Ramifications of Brain Research

It may be a revolution in the making, but school leaders ought to update thier knowledge base before acting on the implications

It works," Doreen said emphatically. "I admit I was skeptical, but this information has changed the way I plan my lessons and select my strategies. I'm more effective as a teacher now because I understand more about what may be going on in their heads."

Doreen is an experienced 8th-grade social studies teacher. She attended an in-service workshop that I conducted last year on some ways of translating current brain research into classroom practice. When I was in her district again working with another group of teachers, she stopped in to share her experiences.

Despite her initial skepticism, Doreen has now joined the ranks of educators who recognize a rapidly growing research base in cognitive science and the potential implications for their districts and schools. Sophisticated medical instruments, such as functional MRIs and PET scans, produce new three-dimensional maps of the human brain in action. These maps reveal which parts of the brain are involved in performing various activities, including learning. The growing volume of case studies of individuals recovering from brain injuries and disease gives us amazing new insights into how the brain develops, ages, learns and remembers.

As a result of all the research activities surrounding the "Decade of the Brain," as some have dubbed the 1990s, we are in the midst of an unprecedented revolution of knowledge about the human brain, including how it collects, processes and interprets information. Never before have we known more about human learning. Never before have we had the potential for being so successful with more students. That's the good news.

Sadly, this valuable information is not getting to the educational practitioner fast enough. Teachers enter classrooms every day trying to teach the students of the 1990s with a pedagogical knowledge base that hasn't changed since the 1960s. Not only is this knowledge base outdated, but the student brain of today is quite different from the one of 20 years ago.

A Different Brain

From the moment of birth (some say earlier), the human brain learns from its environment. The home environment of a child several decades ago was usually quiet, even boring, some might say. Parents and children did a lot of talking and reading. The occasional radio program was an exciting event. For these children, school was a much more interesting place because it had television, films, field trips and guest speakers--experiences not usually found at home.

The child of recent years grows up in a very different environment. The rapidly changing multimedia-based culture and the stresses that result from an ever-increasing pace of living are changing what the developing brain learns from the world. Children have become accustomed to these rapid sensory and emotional changes and respond by engaging in all types of activities of short duration at home and in the shopping malls. To acclimate itself to these changes, the brain responds more readily to the unique and different--what we now call novelty. Adult skeptics need but watch MTV for just a few minutes to discover images that change every few seconds and play heavily on emotions.

Schools and teaching, however, haven't changed much at all. In many schools, the computers provide little if any of the options that students can get with their more powerful computers at home. In high schools, lecturing continues to be the main method of instruction and the overhead projector often is the most advanced technology used. Students remark that school is a dull, non-engaging environment that is much less interesting than what is available outside school. They have a difficult time focusing for extended periods and are distracted easily. Because they see little novelty and relevancy in what they are learning, they keep asking the eternal question, "Why do we need to know this?"

Educators can either decry the changing brain and culture or recognize that we must adjust schools to accommodate these changes. Now that we have a more scientifically based understanding about today's human brain and how it learns, we must rethink what we do in classrooms and schools.

What Research Tells Us

The cognitive research has indeed reaffirmed some of the strategies we have used for a long time. No one doubts, for example, that motivation is still a strong force in determining a student's interest level and persistence with learning tasks.

But the research also is opening up new areas of exploration. While we must use caution in deciding how these areas can impact on our practice, here are a few emerging topics and their possible implications.

* Windows of opportunity. This research examines how the young brain grows and learns. A newborn's brain makes connections at an incredible pace as the child absorbs its environment. The richer the environment, the greater the number of interconnections that are made, and learning takes place faster and with greater meaning.

As the child grows, connections that the brain finds useful become permanent, and those not useful are eliminated. The brain is selectively strengthening and pruning connections based on experience. This process continues throughout our lives but seems to be most pronounced between the ages of two and 11, as windows in different development areas open and close.

These windows represent critical periods when the brain demands certain types of input to create or consolidate neural networks. The window for developing emotional control, for example, seems to be from two to 30 months. Certainly, one can learn to control emotions after that age. But what the child learned during that window period will be difficult to change and will influence strongly what is learned after the window closes. The window for acquiring a second language with the same fluency as the child's native tongue closes around the age of 10 or 11.

Implications: More than ever before, we recognize how important the early years (ages 2-4) are in helping children establish meaningful associations between learnings and to make sense our of their world. The nation needs more public funding of early childhood education (only 26 states do this now) as well as courses for prospective parents.

We should start second-language instruction in 4th grade. This doesn't have to be a full-blown formal course. Just introduce the sounds and basic grammar unique to the second language so they are wired into the brain's speech and language areas along with the native language. We can save the formal instruction for middle or high school. The students then will be able to speak the second language without a foreign accent and will be less likely to challenge the logic of its structure with comments like, "Why do they do that?"

* Understanding emotions in learning. Daniel Goleman's 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, summarized the breakthroughs in understanding the strong influence that emotions have as we grow and learn. How a person "feels" about a learning situation determines the amount of attention devoted to it. Emotions interact with reason to support or inhibit learning.

To be successful learners and productive citizens, we need to know how to use our emotions intelligently.

Implications: Over the years, most teacher-training classes tell prospective teachers to focus on reason and to avoid emotions in their lessons. Now we need to enlighten educators about how emotions consistently affect attention and learning. For example, students must feel physically safe and emotionally secure in their schools and classrooms before they can process the enormous amount of information we give them.

School districts, therefore, must ensure that schools are free of weapons and violence. Teachers then can promote emotional security by establishing a positive climate that encourages students to take risks. Students must sense that the teacher wants to help them be right rather than catch them being wrong.

Moreover, superintendents and board members need to examine their actions, which set the emotional climate of a district. Is it a place where people want to come to work? Does the district reward or frown on appropriate risk taking?

We also have to explore what and how we teach students about their emotions. Coleman suggests we teach about such topics as controlling impulses, delaying gratification, expressing feelings and reducing stress. Students should recognize they can manage their emotions for greater productivity and can develop emotional skills for greater success in life.

* Making connections to past experiences. Past experiences always influence new learning. What we already know acts as a filter, helping us to attend to those things that have meaning (relevancy) and to discard those that don't. Meaning, therefore, has a great impact on whether information and skills will be learned and stored. If students have not found meaning by the end of a learning episode, there is little likelihood that much will be remembered.

Implications: Studies show that teachers spend nearly 90 percent of their planning time devising lessons so that students will understand the learning objective--and most do a good job of it. But to convince a learner's brain to persist with that objective, teachers need to work harder at helping students establish meaning. We should remember that what was meaningful for us as children may not necessarily be meaningful for children today.

Every day students listen to lessons that make sense but lack meaning. They may diligently follow the teacher s instructions to perform a task repeatedly and even may record the correct answers. If we expect students to see meaning, we need to be certain that today's curriculum contains connections to their past experiences, not just ours.

Further, the magnitude and the strict separation of the secondary curriculum areas do little to help students find the time to make relevant connections between and among subjects. Helping students to make connections between subject areas by integrating the curriculum, increases meaning and retention, especially when students see a future use for the new learning.

* Sensory engagement during learning. The cognitive research reaffirms strongly that we learn best when we are actively involved in interesting and challenging situations and when we talk about the learning. Task-centered talking is critical to the memory process since it helps maintain focus while enhancing sense and meaning. Yet in too many schools students sit quietly and passively for long stretches in rooms with little visual stimulation, listening primarily to teacher talk.

Implications: Districts must provide the technology and materials needed to make schools engaging and interesting. Teachers need to use a multisensory approach consistently so that students are actively involved in their learning. Classrooms should be visually appealing places where learners are teachers and teachers are learners. At appropriate intervals, students should be standing up, moving about (there's 15 percent more blood in the brain when we stand) and discussing with each other what they are learning while learning it. This social interaction also is emotionally stimulating and enhances the learning process.

* Shorter is better. Because today's students are accustomed to quick change and novelty in their environment, many find it difficult to concentrate on the same topic for long periods of time. They fidget, drift or get into off-task conversations. This is particularly true if the teacher is doing most of the work, such as lecturing.

Timing in the lesson is crucial. We tend to remember best that which comes first in a learning segment and remember second best that which comes last. And the percentage of remembering time increases as the learning episode shortens, and decreases as the lesson time lengthens.

These are not new discoveries, but recent research has rekindled interest in their classroom applications.

Implications: Shorter learning episodes usually are more effective than longer ones. Lesson segments of about 20 minutes are more likely to hold student interest and result in more retention of learning. New information or skills should be taught first when students are most apt to remember it.

Teaching two 20-minute lessons provides more remembering time than one 40-minute lesson. In block scheduling, an 80-minute period can be a blessing or a disaster, depending on how the time is used. A block containing four 20-minute segments often will be much more productive than one continuous lesson.

* The changing biological rhythms. Our daily biological rhythms vary with age. The rhythms responsible for overall intellectual performance start later in the day for an adolescent than for an adult. Because of this shift in rhythms, teenagers seem to perform better in problem-solving and memory tasks later in the day rather than earlier.

Implications: We need to look at what and when in the school day we ask students to perform certain tasks, such as taking tests. School district leaders may want to consider realigning opening times and course schedules more closely with the students' biological rhythms to increase the chances of successful learning.

* Other areas. The research also is looking into the effects of nutrition, sleep and memory-enhancing drugs on learning and retention, as well as the differences between male and female brains in structure, development and information processing.

Implications: It's too soon to predict because of the social and ethical issues involved. The possibilities include nutrition counseling, drug therapy and single-sex classes in certain subjects.

Where Do We Go From Here?

On an almost weekly basis, scientific research is revealing new findings about the human brain. Some discoveries bear directly on the teaching and learning process, yet it remains the responsibilities of educational leaders to determine their usefulness.

But before we can decide how to use the research productively, we have to learn much more about these scientific endeavors. We should read the appropriate research and engage in conversations among ourselves and with the scientific community. Only when we understand the science involved can we then devise strategies and techniques that translate the research into effective classroom practice.

Of course, no magic answers are available to make the complex process of teaching and learning successful all the time. But the revolution in brain research provides teachers with new information and insights that can increase their chances of success with more students.

True professionals are committed to updating their knowledge base continually. School district leaders must provide frequent opportunities for this to occur. As Doreen, the 8th-grade teacher, put it, "We work with the human brain every day. We ought to know as much as possible about how it learns."

David Sousa, the author of law the Brain Learns: A Classroom Teacher's Guide, is an educational consultant.

COPYRIGHT 1998 American Association of School Administrators
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