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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.
Learning environments need to provide stability and familiarity; at the same time, instruction should satisfy students' 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.
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.
Learning is cumulative and developmental. It occurs best when students are encouraged to relate new information to previous learning and experiences.
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.
We understand and remember best when facts and skills are embedded in natural, spatial memory. Teachers should embed 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 in 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.
R. N. Caine and G. Caine. (1991). Teaching and the Human Brain. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.