How Can Teachers Address the Implications of Brain Research?

 

Good teaching orchestrates the learner's experience so that all aspects of brain operation are addressed (i.e., emotions, imagination, analytical thinking, etc.).
Everything that affects our physiological functioning affects our capacity to learn. We need to be sensitive to physical needs and the maturation continuum.
The learning environment needs to provide stability and familiarity; at the same time, provision must be made to satisfy students' curiosity and hunger for novelty, discovery, and challenge.
Learners are patterning, or perceiving and creating meanings, all the time in one way or another. Ideally, teaching should present information in a way that allows brains to extract patterns, rather than attempt to impose them.
Because it is impossible to isolate the cognitive from the affective domain, the emotional climate in the school and classroom must be monitored on a consistent basis, using effective communication strategies and allowing for student and teacher reflection and metacognitive processing.
Good teaching builds understanding and skills over time because learning is cumulative and developmental. Learning occurs best in authentic, meaningful contexts that allow the student to relate new information to previous learning and experiences.
Peripheral information can be purposely organized to facilitate learning. Teachers need to engage the interests and enthusiasm of students through their own enthusiasm, coaching, and modeling, so that the unconscious signals appropriately to the importance and value of what is being learned.

“Active processing” allows students to review how and what they learned so that they begin to take charge of learning and the development of personal meanings. Active processing refers to reflection and metacognitive activities.

We understand and remember best when facts and skills are embedded in natural, spatial memory. Teachers should also reduce the amount of times learners have to learn material by rote, or they should embed this material in conceptual/thematic contexts to reinforce its meaning and relevance.

The brain downshifts under perceived threats, and learns optimally when appropriately challenged. Teachers and administrators need to create a state of relaxed alertness in students. This combines general relaxation with an atmosphere that is low in threat and high in challenge.

Since each brain is unique, teaching should be multifaceted to allow all students to express visual, tactile, emotional, and auditory preferences.

 

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This site was developed by the Department of Staff Development, in collaboration with the Division of Instruction. Questions, comments, and other inquiries may be addressed to Allene Chriest (achriest@pgcps.org) or Jeff Maher  (jmaher@pgcps.org).