glenda mac naughton

Glenda Mac NaughtonAssociate Professor and Director Centre for Equity and Innovation

in Early Childhood, Faculty of Education, the University of Melbourne

My early learning story:Miss George & the stinging blush

YOUR EARLY LEARNING STORYShare an early memory that you have of learning something ‘stinging’, ‘blushing’ or equally emotion-packed.Why has it stayed with you? Make some notes

A is for apple

Why did you come to a session on

critical a look at the brain?

What are 5 things you know about the brain & learning?

What are 3 questions & or

niggles you have about the

brain & learning?

What is similar/different between your niggles

and mine?

What is similar/different between what you know

and what I know?

What if Miss George knew:• Brain development is helped when

children are encouraged to be active, to question and to build their own meanings

• Young children’s brains process information best in ‘wholes’

• Positive, nurturing environments are important for healthy brain development

• Stressful environments can reduce brain cells and neural connections

(Catherwood 1999; Puckett, Marshall & Davis, 1999; Dockett, 2000)

Linear causality - this causes that…

‘Tree-like’ logic

Early stress can have a negative impact on brain

development(The World Bank Group, 2002, p. 1)

Early stress

Poor brain

growth

Your own tree

• Draw a tree with a single main branch - roots and all - to show what causes it to grow

• AS YOU HEAR A CASUAL STATEMENT - -

• ADD A NEW BRANCH

A + B = C

Degrees of confidence - beyond a reasonable doubt

The allure of beyond a

reasonable doubt

CI95%M+t(Ω=0.5 df =n-1) [SD/√n]

=.35+2.447 [.108/√7]

=.35+.10

Linear causality - this causes that…

‘Tree-like’ logic

What do you think directly caused you to learn and to remember your ‘early

learning’ story?– Are there any A+ B = C’s?– What degree of confidence do you have that you

can explain the causes of your learning?Early stress

Poor brain

growth

Looking at some brain research

• What is the titletitle of the article?• What can we say collectively about the titles?• Read the- try to put it into your own words. • Read the- what ‘hard facts’ have they

produced?

1. The first years are critical to later development

2. Children learn through their five senses

3. Positive and trusting relationships with teachers matter to children’s learning

4. Play is important to children’s learning

5. Emotional well being, parent involvement and a healthy body are each important to young children’s learning

1. Comenuis (1600s - European philosopher)

2. Jenson (early 2000s - USA educator)

3. Bailey (early 2000s - USA early childhood researcher)

4. Rousseau (mid 1700s - European philosopher)

5. Hubel & Weisel (1970s - neuroscientists)

6. Pestolozzi (late 1700s - Italian educator & scholar)

7. Froebel (early 1800s - German educator and philosopher)

8. McMillan (late 1800s - British educator and health worker)

9. Bower (late 1900s - USA neuroscientist)

What about…• Comenuis (1592 - 1670) - the first years

are critical to later development• Rouseau - children learn through their five

senses (1712 - 1788)• Pestolozzi (1746 - 1827) - positive and

trusting relationships with teachers matter to children’s learning

• Froebel (1782 - 1852)- play is important to children’s learning

• McMillan (1860 - 1931) - emotional well being is important to young children’s learning as is parent involvement and a healthy body

• And so on…..

Other logic….

Linear causality - ‘tree-logic’

- cause and effect- hard facts- certainty- universality- knowable

• The rhizome’s ‘lateral’ structure – a collection of mutually-dependent ‘roots’ and ‘shoots’ – is a metaphor of a dynamic, flexible and ‘lateral’ logic that encompasses change, complexity and heterogeneity.

• We are becoming rhizomatically - we are not caused…

• Tension 1Tension 1: it’s not about us in all our changeability

The allure of beyond a reasonable doubtThe status of hard facts and ‘real’ research

How do we…• explain the ‘late bloomer’?• argue for investment in life-long learning if the early years matter so much?• plan for learners whose environments are ‘deprived’ in their early years?

-What are the twists and turns in your life that make you the learner that you are now?-What changes in you that makes your learning story matter one day and not the next?-What is unstable in who you are now?

• Tension 2Tension 2: it’s not about us in all our diversity


How confident of this are you?

Where does your confidence come from?

Does it embrace all?

The real brain research

• What are the origins of this piece of neuroscience?

• With what groups of people or animals was it done?

• How generalisable are the findings to the groups of people you work with?

• Do the researchers attempt to generalise?

• Tension 3Tension 3: it doesn’t like our noisiness


Where is the noise?How will you hear it?

tools for critical engagement with the brain

– A postmodern approach to analysis, which aims to show the fragility of all positive statements. Deconstruction points at the contradictions and cracks in any text and the assumptions it builds upon.

(Alvesson, 2002, p.178)

Tactics for

• Erasure• Metaphor• Binary analysis -

attending to and affirming the other

Erasing the brain - what can’t the word say?

Erasure Erasure

• marking a term is inadequate for what we want to say

• casting a shadow over it

• highlighting strategic undecidability

• playfully mistrusting a word

What is the brain?

Erasure

SEEING MEANINGS AS PROVISIONAL

the brain - what is the brain?

QuickTime™ and aGraphics decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Erasing the brain - what can’t the word say?

Re-imagine yourself:

- your age, gender, culture, ethnicity, geography, historical time

What is the brain?What cultural biases construct your ‘brain’?

Metaphor - a tactic to wonder a new

• What metaphors can you generate to describe how the brain works

• Try writing: THE BRAIN IS A …. ? BECAUSE IT…?

Metaphor - a tactic to wonder a new

• What is similar and different in your metaphors?• What is contradictory?• What are 5 metaphors could you not do without?• What do loose by choosing these?• Arrive from MARS - try to create a totally new

metaphor • How does your culture bias the metaphors you use?• How do your metaphors bias meaning?• Whose voices are silent in your metaphors?

Meanings, brains and politics

• Meaning is not fixed in words - we construct it through culture and through history.

• Meaning based on binary thinking is political because it always silences an Other

• Understanding how meaning works politically is critical reflection

• Binaries (are pairs) - what are the binaries that the text relies on to create its meanings?

• How does this text create assumptions about what is normal or desirable?

• Who benefits from this?• Disrupt the hierarchy - how is the norm

exceptional?

BE PLAYFUL WITH MEANING

Binary analysis• How does

this text create assumptions about what is normal or desirable?

• Who benefits from this?

Children with the fewest numbers of siblings perform the best on tests of intellectual skills and educational achievement. The reason for this appears to be that additional children dilute parental resources. These resources would include time, money and interactions.(Downey (2001). American Psychologist, vol 56(6/7), 497-504. (http://www.Brains.org/ downloaded 6.4.04)

http://www.Brains.org/

Binary analysis

• How does this text create assumptions about what is normal or desirable?


Practice not only makes perfect, it makes the brain efficient. What has previously been seen with monkey brains now has been seen on humans. Using functional MRI, a German University has shown that when learning a motor movement (in this case learning to play the piano), a great deal of the motor region of the brain is used. With experience, smaller and smaller regions of the brain are used. In professional musicians, only very tiny regions of the motor cortex are involved in their playing. Thus practice makes neural networks efficient and frees up regions of the cortex again to be used for other things.( Jancke, L., et.al. 2000. Cognitive Brain Research. Vol.10(1-2), 177-183.)




According to Ronald Kotulak, the author of Learning How to Use the Brain, scientists learned more about the brain during the last decade than they learned during the entire century preceding it. So if you've been out of school for even five or ten years, chances are that much of what you learned about how the brain develops and functions is obsolete. Does it matter? Take a look at some of the latest research and find out. (Growing Bigger Brains, download 6.4.04)




The brain makes the most neural connections when it is actively involved in learning, therefore, learning should be multi-sensory and interactive. (December 1998 Education Week commentary, Is the Fuss About Brain Research Justified?, David Sousa)




Perhaps the most important thing to remember, however, is that the research shows that each brain is unique. The most effective teachers, therefore, provide many opportunities for enrichment and implement a variety of instructional strategies. Those strategies are most relevant and most successful when teachers base their efforts on what researchers have discovered about the brain. (Growing Bigger Brains, download 6.4.04)




"We need programs that give all prospective and current teachers a working knowledge of brain growth and development and that include frequent contacts with cognitive researchers to keep abreast of relevant research findings. With such a long-term commitment, teachers will have the competence to determine which classroom strategies are more compatible with the current understanding of today's brain.". (December 1998 Education Week commentary, Is the Fuss About Brain Research Justified?, David Sousa)




Stimulating Environment Affects Learning. A child's ability to learn can increase or decrease by 25 percent or more, depending on whether he or she grows up in a stimulating environment. (brainconnection.com, download 6.4.04).

Why bother?

Meanings matter because they produce power-Power to define normality-Power to define what is desirable-Power to act on others

How do your meanings of the brain matter?

Questions for ‘brain research’ & its consumers

• Whose voice is heard and whose is silenced in the use of brain research?

• To what extent are traditionally marginalised voices present?

• Who is not speaking today?• How have gender, ‘race’, ethnicity, ability

& class been listened to?• Who has exercised power, how & with

what effects?• Do the effects of ‘brain research’ reinforce

or challenge unjust power dynamics?• How can we remake its effects justly?

glenda mac naughton

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