Introduction
Two questions drive this book. Though situated in any 21st century classroom, each question derives from a pair of unrelated but landmark events that were set in motion in the middle of the last century. The first question emanates from a noteworthy meeting of the Special Interest Group on Information Theory that took place at MIT on September 11, 1956. All teachers live under the shadow of what happened in that room on that day. The second question is focused on a paradigm shift that distinguishes behaviorist beginnings from mentalistic models related to neuroscience and learning. Both questions have implications for engagement and safety in learning spaces. These are the questions that teachers might ask themselves:
- What would I do differently if I used a cognitive neural lens in my classroom?
- How can I affect cognitive change in a behaviorist system?
Though we situate the questions in k12 learning spaces, they are equally meaningful for learning spaces in any workplace.
The neural lens is critical. Our brains are what make us who we are. They are the seat of personal identity and autonomy. Our biological system is made up of billions of neurons communicating with one another. It also includes chemicals in the blood as well as bacteria in the gut. We recognize a “gut” feeling for a person, place, or thing that sometimes makes all the difference. We are creatures of interaction and reaction. Genetics and epigenetics play their part, too. Our being is affected by where we were born, guardians who raised us, schools we attended, and social contexts in which we grow up.
Every day, in schools and homes, we see the results of genetics and environment at play. Children either thrive or struggle to learn. Guardians anguish over why one of their amazing children cannot compete in academics, or contribute at sports, and will show up in a negative and reactive way against all expectations and wishes. At the same time, we witness children who used to be dysregulated, disruptive, aggressive, and troubled achieve personal successes in the face of insurmountable odds that ought to incapacitate even the most resilient of our species. What is the difference? How can we explain the connection between the brain, personality, identity, and potential?
In this book, we attempt to draw together strings of neuroscience and learning sciences in order to make sense of children in their social contexts. It comes as a relief to teachers and guardians to know that there is a solution to the many distracting and disruptive behaviors that seem to dominate optimal learning scenarios. We explain, first, the neuronal structures that underlie learning. We accompany these with appropriate pedagogic nuances to illuminate successful learning environments. All children are born to learn; they are hardwired learning-machines. Yet, it is not a given that all children will achieve success even with purposeful mediation and practice. Knowledgeable and well-meaning guardians and teachers can lose some children.
Teachers are, therefore, the most important focus of this book. While we are interested in knowing about our brains and questions relating to personality, identity, and consciousness, we focus our inquiry in areas that pertain mostly to the learning brain. For instance, how does this piece of information about the hippocampus or amygdala relate to a child in a classroom? At the same time, we want to help guardians understand their child in the home. We view every piece of information through a lens that asks the question—does this information help a teacher who is doing her best to manage a disruptive student?
Sometimes that student is simply following the brain’s imperative, which is to survive. After all, our species—Homo sapiens—made it to this time and place! We are the ultimate survivors. As social beings, we appear to have an uncanny ability to “accurately” assess danger and the intelligence of another person. Such evolutionary preparedness for survival remains with every child in everyday social interactions. It’s a complex space. To reach into a child’s learning world, we might encounter conscious effort or subconscious involuntary reactivity, social capacity that is contributive or combative for engagement, and emotional intelligence that fosters or hinders growth.
Each brain is unique. Consciousness is unique to each individual. Mind, brain, and consciousness are in play for each individual separately. Mind is a person’s intellect—that something that enables one to be aware of their world. It allows us to engage with experiences, especially to think, and to feel. Mind is, thus, the faculty of consciousness and thought. The various functions of mind, like rationalizing and learning, are a set of processes carried out by the brain. Mind capacities are referred to as cognitive ability.
The word “cognitive” conjures a rich envelope for concepts that include notions of reasoning, predicting, and thinking. Without the brain, the mind would not function. For instance, stroke victims typically experience difficulty engaging in normal mental functions. Short-term memory exhibits degrees of impairment. Sometimes, they experience disorientation and have difficulties partaking in easy conversations. It is because we are able to think, feel, argue, laugh, act, learn, remember, and create that we are who we are. The brain is only roughly three pounds of squishy vesicles, yet it produces our every emotional and intellectual act. It determines our moods. It is also immensely powerful and full of potential—it can endow us with the capability for great joy, terrible fears, real sadness, and awful misery.
Teachers often struggle with disruptive and aggressive children. It seems that, for a lot of learners, anxiety can trigger a fight, flight, freeze reaction to “normal” teaching scenarios. The involuntary reactive system is triggered in situations of looming threat or imminent danger. For instance, in the wild, a baby zebra might react in a flight scenario when a lion chases it. Why is it that some children can manage to stay engaged, pay attention, follow instructions, and generally do well when the teacher introduces a new challenge, but other children become aggressive, disruptive, even antisocial? Disruptive individuals take everyone else down with them. It’s a lose-lose situation.
Teachers and guardians who are informed about how the human brain works and how children learn are quick to recognize when a child reaches the limitations of working memory. Too much information (typically at a time when the brain is already in an amygdala hijack) means learners are unable to process. What is working memory? What are its limitations? And what is amygdala hijack? The neural lens that this book will uncover focuses on understanding and demystifying these items.
Too often, teacher focus is on content. So much to teach and so little time! Such constraints are immediate triggers for cognitive overload. A perfect storm of inattention, frustration, fear, and anxiety manifests into amygdala hijack, with its constituent disruptive behaviors, acting out with aggression. Teachers’ ability to recognize, manage, and defuse an amygdala hijack is probably the most valuable toolkit that a neural lens delivers.
Working memory is not something that teachers typically strategize for as they prepare their lesson plans. Yet, it is often the most critical constraint that hampers a child’s ability to stay focused, to pay attention, to engage with fellows and/or content, and to feel good about progress. Teachers always ask, “Are there any techniques for increasing a child’s working memory?” The welcoming answer is a rousing YES! We can be intentional about increasing a child’s working memory, so that by the end of even one week, perceptible improvement can be obtained. Unfortunately, most everything the teacher does or says has the capacity to also decrease this hardwired biological phenomenon. It’s not the first thought that comes into a teacher’s head—“am I impacting the child’s working memory?”
These important pedagogic considerations do matter if we are to improve learning. School can be stressful for children. Adults should not make it more stressful by not knowing the critical components about what working memory is and how to engage with it. Teachers who are familiar with the neuroscience of learning are fully aware of the brain’s processing limitations and, in addition, cognizant of the many techniques for helping children navigate this difficult space. Children are born with the potential to learn, but they are not always able to get there on their own.
The learning brain is the focus of this book. Learning is about neuronal communication. Connection occurs through interacting circuitry in an electro-chemical exchange of information. Action potentials result in electrical propagation along axons, which, in turn, excite chemical exchanges at the synapse. A synapse is a space between two neurons—between the terminal of neuron one and the dendrites of neuron two. At the axon terminal, presynaptic vesicles are prompted to release chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) into the synaptic cleft, where dendrites from the next neuron are looking to bind with them. Postsynaptic receptors on these dendrites scoop up appropriate neurotransmitters and, depending on whether the message is excitatory or inhibitory, decides what to do with it. Since communication occurs at the synapse, it is easy to see that the synapse is currency for learning.
We highlight structural building blocks of the brain’s capacity for communication. The definition of learning is grounded in the physicality of making connections. To get there, it is necessary to comprehend mental models that uncover components, interconnections, and circuitry. Learning is a complex act involving survival, emotions, and logic. The brain is a busy and complex entity. Thus, learning is an intensely personal survival dance with partners like interest, attention, and working memory and, meanwhile, the brain is always learning something. We might think we know how to create optimal learning spaces, but what works for one child might be the exact opposite for the next child. When teacher says X + Y = Z, we have no idea how each child will interpret it. We can point out supporting methods and strategies, but acknowledge that there are as many covert as overt curricular items that embellish and/or hinder learning.
For this reason, the book is provisioned in functional sections that speak to the complexity of the learning process and to ongoing demands on various actors and inter-actors that contribute to success. We outline three grand schemas that propel the book’s forward motion: Breaking Paradigms, Rethinking Pedagogy, and Conceptual Collisions. We ask questions in each chapter. We offer evidence for why certain methods and practices work. Some are heady constructs. Neuroscientists are quick to admit that we have but a delicate toehold in this new world of circuitry and chemistry, of synaptic currency, and inhibition. It’s an exciting gateway into the world of cognition.
In Part I, we explore methodologies for engagement with increased capacity for learning. Chapter 1 sets up neural substrates for learning and the lens through which teachers view their world. Chapter 2 looks at the pervasive methodology that is steeped in grades, stars, and positive stimuli in order to cajole, coerce, or otherwise cause the child to enact behavior that is deemed appropriate and acceptable. Chapter 3 explicates why we revert back to Affect instead of Effect in the modern classroom. Chapter 4 examines the outcomes of children that are coerced, cajoled, or otherwise caused to desist from enacting behaviors that are deemed inappropriate or unacceptable. Chapter 5 focuses on underlying neural science that highlights the importance of physical activity, especially crossing the midline to foster powerful learning practice. Chapter 6 focuses on an intentional shift from a behaviorist rewards and punishment, to a teaching and learning model that is informed by a carefully curated neural perspective. Chapter 7 focuses on identifying and teaching to the most highly sensitive children as a way that engages and ignites optimal learning.
In Part II, we highlight neural constructs that are fundamental to original thinking. Chapter 8 unearths a paper from 1956 that changed the world, but seems to have been undiscovered by teachers. Chapter 9 rediscovers the man who gave us the notion of neural circuitry and systems. Chapter 10 dives deep into how the learning world shifts if we truly understand a malleable brain. Chapter 11 reveals science’s most attractive cellular model for learning and memory. Chapter 12 reveals a hidden feature of the survival brain that wields a powerful impact on the learning brain. Chapter 13 illuminates groundbreaking work, which looks at the construct of fixedness in relation to intelligence and talent. Chapter 14 outlines seminal work related to learning for adaptive or routine expertise.
In Part III, we reveal strategies that are essential for 21st century skills. Chapter 15 reveals a powerful new way to motivate children so that they can excel by being prepared for future learning. Chapter 16 illustrates an affective method for nurturing learning environments for safety. Chapter 17 engages inextricably with a need for autonomy as a child locates identity. Chapter 18 defines the cognitive revolution and places it firmly in the realm of learning. Chapter 19 asks the question, “What if Maslow didn’t take into account the sensitivity of Orchid Children?” Chapter 20 tackles a difficult episode in education that confounded progress. Chapter 21 unearths a critical flaw in Thorndikian educational thinking—one that had profound impact in teaching systems for many generations.
The book ends with an Epilogue that attempts to bring neuroscience together with methods and practice for success. Research evidence and empirical data is provided in the references, glossary, and index.
Today’s learning space inhabits a very unique era for children, their guardians, and teachers. For the first time ever, we have access to information that illuminates what is really happening at this developmental age inside individuals’ heads. This is the first generation that has access to this kind of information.