Dr. Judy Willis is a neuroscientist who also happens to be a middle school algebra teacher. After years in the lab, Dr. Willis decided to apply her knowledge on brain research to the classroom. At the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Annual Conference in New Orleans, Dr. Willis was a featured speaker sharing her expertise in neuroscience research and how teachers can benefit from greater awareness of neuroscience and apply strategies that are (as she puts it) “neuro-logical”.
The brain possesses a greater plasticity than was originally thought. For example, through cognitive therapy, stroke patients have the potential to relearn functions by creating and developing new pathways in the brain to take the place of damaged neural pathways. Willis recounted a case study of an individual with no measurable brain activity until a more sensitive fMRI test was done indicating near normal activity in the patient’s language centers of the cortex. Through deep electrical stimulation of the thalamus, “the patient’s speech improved, his movement became more fluid, and he was able to chew again—despite having survived brain damage for six months”. When they stopped deep brain stimulation, his abilities degraded over time and when stimulation was resumed, the patient’s abilities improved and sustained with therapy.
Another study points to changes in blood flow in the inner brain in an area known as the amygdala, related to the forming and storing of emotional memories. Studies indicate that decreases in cerebral blood flow can be found in this area when a person is in a stressful or negative emotional state, affecting their ability to retain information.
What implications does this have for teaching? Given that the brain has versatile neuroplasticity, developing student strategies to strengthen their abilities to create new pathways, connecting new knowledge to previously learned concepts and patterns, teaching students to look at problems from multiple perspectives or providing periodical shifts in attention when teaching through the use of word puzzles or discrepant events—what Willis calls “syn-naps”—can aid student understanding and capitalize on the innate processes of each individual. Such strategies are the hallmark of good teaching, but having a better understanding and intentional focus on brain-based strategies is a useful tool for any teacher.
Active Participation
In another session, Clarissa Reeson and Tracey Allen are two dynamic and extremely talented teachers from Yuba City, California that conduct workshops through their company, Real Educators. Reeson and Allen provided some specifics on how to engage students through active participation that directly and indirectly relate to Willis’ ideas.
Allen, a fireball teacher and reading specialist, started out by describing covert (non-measurable) and overt (measurable and observable) methods that allow students to integrate material at a deeper level with an emphasis on multiple learning styles (visual, auditory and kinesthetic).
In a lively 60-minute session, Reeson and Allen had the group moving around and singing “corny” songs to remember the names of the continents, doing quick “mix-pair-share” interactions to deepen the quality of people’s responses to questions, and energizing a crowd of over 100 people late in the afternoon after a long day of conference sessions.
Reeson introduced an activity called “Find the Question” that is a prime example of how teachers can challenge student thinking in a highly active way that motivates students and enhances retention. As an example, Reeson placed large sheets across the room, each with a vocabulary word on the top and a definition in the form of a question of a different word below it. Participants walked around the room trying to find the question that matched with the word written on the top of each sheet. In this way, students are challenged by thinking “backwards” to find the question and are actively moving around (especially if the activity is done outdoors) to stimulate blood flow and engage multiple learning styles in the process.
“This was great,” one teacher stated, “if I could only inject even one half of [the presenters’] energy I’d be set!”
More about neuroscience and learning:
The Brain and Learning
Brain Facts Primer (from the Society of Neuroscience)
I am always amazed at the amount of pseudoscience that passes for “brain research” as a way to justify specific teaching practices. At best, most of the current “brain research” touted in educational journals is correlational, yet somehow, the inference is causal. For example, how did experimental studies on one individual with specific trauma somehow become the justification for specific pedagogy, e.g. word puzzles, etc.? (or my favorite - games called “syn-naps” - cute and probably trademarked by now)
Reading further, it appears that engaging learners to find connections to other fields or subject areas is somehow related to “brain research”. We used to call that “transference”. This has been proven a successful technique for many types of learning for years, but somehow, it’s new again? Reading further, we see that animated presenters manage to engage their audiences - since when was this unknown?
If Dr. Willis’ work was published in “Nature” or some other peer-reviewed journal it would be more impressive.
I am impressed that “discrepant events” is mentioned as part of this concept. When is education going to wake up the fact that cognitive incongruity and cognitive dissonance are the key to intrinsic motivation? The itch should precede the scratch in teaching/learning. Motivation is the key and we insist that the key is fear of testing. Give them “weird facts” and they will come.
If their brains develop faster, so much the better.
What we at Creative Education Institute celebrate each time we encounter findings of cutting edge cognitive neuroscience research is that it tends to VALIDATE time-honored teaching practices. In other words, the findings are not necessarily new ideas, but for the first time now we have new scientific evidence to ground our work in education. Our programs for struggling learners (see http://www.ceilearning.com) incorporate multi-sensory processing strategies, varied and adequate practice opportunities, chunking/clustering, individualization, time-on-task, continuous progress monitoring, immediate corrective feedback, explicit instruction, emphasis on mastery and fluency in decoding and math facts, and other “brain-based” strategies. And they are remarkable in that they truly accelerate learning for kids who are economically disadvantaged, limited-English, learning disabled, or just due to specific situations find themselves behind their peers. The new brain research is going to prove helpful to teachers in teaching all students.
Teresa,
Let’s put this in our next newsletter. I’m thinking that when we have the web resources section, to include this article and website rather than printing the entire article.
thanks,
debbie
hi Robert! Thanks for blogging Judy’s session. We’ll be posting some photos from her presentation, and links to her ASCD articles over at ASCD’s Inservice blog (www.ascd.org/blog)–in addition to dozens of other ASCD Conference-related coverage. Please stop by and share your experiences!
I attended your session at the ASCD conference. Thank you. I’m an assistant professor at the University of Northern Iowa in Counseling Education. For years I have followed the developments in neuroscience and am proud to say that when I started my graduate teaching career (after being a school counselor for a number of years) I was attempting to translate what I was reading for my students and sharing the exciting things we were learning about the brain and the relevance of this information to our profession. NOT being a
neuroscientist, I’ve always felt a little vulnerable - - - wondering if the more complex things I read really translated into the more understandable language. I’m happy to say I have been validated over time (even checked out with “real neuroscientists). . . your presentation continued to validate, was fascinating, and sprinkled with some new leanings. I liked your comment at one point “as of this morning. . . “. It truly seems we are learning at a pace that is that fast. I enjoyed it so much.
Now, reading other blogs.. . . I hope your critics will understand who your audience is. I have always wanted to make the information clear to my students as well as relevant. If it isn’t, then our audience of educators will move on to something that is relevant and worth their time. Your method of presentation was completely appropriate for the target audience and I can’t imagine any teacher, principal, or other educator left without some new basic understanding and application!
Since educators and most psychologists have scant background in biology, their context for education is sociological/psychological and the biologic aspects are therefore mysterious, incomprehensible, threatening and unimportant (dismissed). When one takes a systems approach to education, the biologic systems are more basic and fundamental (although usually invisible from the educator’s point of view). When one accepts the possibility that biology might have links to observable behavior, then deeper understandings and more tools become available. Neuroscience includes anatomy, physiology, biochemistry phenomena that relate to nutrition, toxins, emotions, attention, scheduling, sleeping/napping, and many more familiar topics. It is certainly threatening to think that there are other literatures to read, new terms to learn, bridging to discover, and an endless and increasing flow of articles to confront the too-busy-to-read reading American educators. Being overwhelmed/threatened by the prospect that my background is inadequate to approach this new linkage of the biologic and behavioral is understandable, but we do not all have to know everything–we have interpreters of the research and we can put to use the interpretations. Without a biological background, there are limits to immediate understanding, but with reading popular articles from 60 years of Scientific American written at the layperson’s level, one can find reader-friendly articles for Americans (the Europeans say that
“Americans don’t read”–their professional literature). The researchers and brain science pioneers in education usually came from a clinical background and had a foundation in the biological brain contexts. Classroom teachers are hungry for the deeper understanding of the bridge between the biologic and behavioral aspects so let us welcome the readiness for brain awareness.
As the presenter of the ASCD lecture with the designated topic, “What today’s neuroscience might mean for the classrooms of tomorrow” discussed in these thoughtful blogs, I’d like to offer anyone interested a copy of the text of that presentation. I was asked to speak of future possibilities and enjoyed the opportunity to envision the future, but most of my books, articles, and presentations are about how the brain appears to learn best and what strategies are most neuro-logical, based on my experience as a neurologist, neuroscientist, and classroom teacher.
For those interested in that more practical information I can send you a handout from my RAD strategies presentations with much of that information. Also, my website has links to quite a number of articles I’ve written on the topic, links to free chapters from my ASCD books (Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning, Brain Research Based Strategies for the Inclusion Class, and my soon to be released, How the Brain Learns to Read), and links to my presentations.
Keep Igniting!
Judy Willis, MD, M.Ed
http://www.RADteach.com
Dr Willis: Is brain research pointing to one way that the brain learns-or is it suggesting that differences in the way people learn are hard wired? In other words how relevant is Gardner’s theories about different learning styles (this focus seems to have gone out of fashion recently). It seemed when Gardner wrote in the 1980sthat he had some powerful intuitive notions about how those with strengths in spatial -logical reasoning learned differently from those who learn in otherways and suggested that our schools were biased towards one kind of learner. I would appreciate hearing about this set of issues from you and the other commentators.
Laurence poses some wonderful points to ponder. It is true that brain research is illuminating common networks and brain regions most associated with different learning tasks, such as executive function highly related to pathways in and out of the prefrontal cortex, the compelling research about neuroplasticity suggests that how information is presented, including its compatibility with students’ intelligences and preferred learning styles influences the success with which new information is processed and the success with which it is wired into these neural pathways and long-term memory.
Students’ engagement, comfort, stress, personal connection to the information taught and they way it is presented is reflected in different activations in brain regions and these active networks correlate with cognitive testing and classroom learning. Neuroimaging and brain mapping are also suggesting brain regions that show variable activation associated with different types of information processing associated with multiple intelligences and learning styles. As more data are gathered about how specific learning strategies influence neural activity and the studies become more collaborative with cognitive tests and classroom data collection, it is likely that more specific recommendations with respect to strategies for students with defined learning strengths and challenges will come to light.
I agree with Gardner’s theories about how those with different intelligence strengths learn more successfully when they can be engaged through those strengths. It may be a combination of which brain wiring is most active in children with different learning strengths and the positive influence that learning through strengths has on the brain’s information filters (reticular activating system and amygdala for example) and the brain’s neurochemistry (such as dopamine release in positive learning experiences). When students are able to enter a unit of study through their strengths, their brains are appear receptive and information filters more likely to pass the data through to the higher cognitive networks.
Of interest is that although the top three current dominant intelligence styles of Linguistic, Visual-Spatial, and Tactile-Kinesthetic are the same that categorized most learners twenty-five years ago, but the percentage of students in each category has changed to a greater preponderance of visual learners and a drop in the proportion of linguistic (auditory) learners. Now Visual-Spatial intelligence strengths account for over fifty percent, thirty-five percent are Tactile-Kinesthetic, and the Linguistic dominant learners have dropped to fifteen percent. (Gardner 1999) Some attribute this to the influence of technology with students’ increased exposure to computers, television, and video games. The theory is that children no longer grow up visualizing images to accompany stories they hear (on radio or from parents) or books they read. The “visualizing” is done for them through video games, television, movies, computer illustrated books.
In a study of the learning styles of teachers, over fifty percent of teachers sampled were strongest in Linguistic intelligence and classroom observations found many teachers still rely on verbal instruction much of the time. (Chavez 1999) These statistics illuminate the disconnect between the way many teachers prefer to learn (and possibly teach) and the way most students are best adept at learning.
To better serve the changing learning dynamics of the student population, teachers and curriculum specialists are stepping out of the Linguistic learning comfort zones and including more Visual-Spatial and Tactile-Kinesthetic instruction to reach the majority of students.
Many successful brain-compatible strategies for individualized learning include experiential learning, experimentation, exploration, movement, and the arts. These are areas where funding and time allotment have been cut and replaced with designated, highly structured curriculum geared to rote memorization of facts. The result is less time for the multiple intelligence compatible lessons. This limits many students’ options for accessing the information through their learning strengths. As a result of these limitations in students’ opportunities to access information through their dominant intelligence, the information may not efficiently reach their hippocampus, become encoded into relational memories, and directed to their executive function prefrontal cortexes – resulting in reduced memory retention.
However, when lessons are adapted for multiple intelligences, the information students are offered is more likely to become personally meaningful and connect to relational memories for successful patterning. Preferred learning style instruction is also more likely to evoke positive emotional responses, so affective filters will not block information access to the brain’s processing centers and information can become knowledge.
Gardner, H. (1991) The Unschooled mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach. New York: Basic books.
It provides me a new direction for teaching the disabled.
What brain research has to offer to educators is absolutely facinating. But like all other research seeking to pin down the dynamic nature of the human being, it will never give us the ultimate answers about children and how we can best teach them. At best, research gives us interesting propositions which we our selves can test and reflect upon in the field. As for the strategies suggested by brain research, those too are subject to our own classroom based inquiry. Keep the insights coming. We will do our best with what we have. What else is there to do?