walsh college keynote what brain research has to tell us about

8/8/2019 Walsh College Keynote What Brain Research Has to Tell Us About

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What Brain Research has to Tell Us

about Teaching and Learning

Developed by Professor Terry Doyle

Ferris State University

[email protected]

www.learnercenteredteaching.com


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Institutional Goals

Most institution agree onwhat skills, knowledge andbehaviors they want theirstudents to have by thetime they graduate?

What they seldom agree onis the best way to helpstudents reach theseoutcomes.


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What is the Best Way?

The best way is to

follow where theresearch leads us.


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Folklore vs. Science

In A Celebration of Neurons by

University of Oregon Education

Professor Robert Sylwester in 1995.

He said : the

information upon which

we make our teachingdecisions is much closer

to folklore than science.


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What our Students Need

to Know is Changing

The meaning ofknowing has shiftedfrom being able to

remember andrepeat informationto being able to findand use it.

Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon 1996


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What our Students Need

to Know is Changing

The goal of education is

better conceived as

helping students

develop the intellectualtools and learning

strategies needed to

acquire the knowledge

necessary to thinkproductively.

Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon 1996


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International Federation of Library

Associations and Institutions (IFLA)

As many as one million

new books are

published worldwide

each year.


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U.S. Department of Labor-2006

Students age 18 will by

age 38, on average have

10 to 14 different

jobs/positions.


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Growth of Scientific Data

80% of all scientist that have ever

lived are alive todaythis

number is 95 % for neuro-

scientist.

It is estimated these

scientist produce 2000

pages of new data everyminute of every hour of

every day. (countdown.org)


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An undergraduate college education gives

students their learners permit.


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Definition of Learner Centered

Teaching

A Question---

Given the context of the learning situation( # of students, time of day, difficulty of material, etc)

will this teaching action optimize our students

opportunity to learn?


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How Do we Optimize each Learning

Situation?

Follow the research on how humans learn!


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Where does the research come from?

What we know about the

brain comes from

biologist who study brain

tissue, experimentalpsychologist who study

behavior, cognitive

neuroscientist who study

how the first relates to

the second and

evolutionary biologist.(Medina, 2008).


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The Pace of Brain Research

Digital Overload: Is Your Computer Frying Your Brain?

Re-engineering a brain

High-risk autism gene 'changes brain patterns

Bionic implants melding man and machine

Good conversation can boost brain power, study finds

Beetroot juice good for brain

Glia:The Other Brain, The new frontier in brain science


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The Pace of Brain Research

Electrical brain zap 'boosts math ability

Sleep Deprivation Changes Gene Expression in the Brain

Fingers spot typo ahead of the brain

Juggling = better brain power

Science Will Capture Your Dreams

Viva! Stem cells revive dying brains

Brain cells of rats used within experimental robots

Scientists discover how to 'switch off' pain of migraines


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Learning is when Neurons Wire

Learning is a change

in the neuron-patterns of the

brain.(Ratey, 2002, Goldberg 2009)

www.virtualgalen.com/.../ neurons-small.jpg


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Teachers Definition of Learning?

Learning is the ability to use information aftersignificant periods of disuse

and

it is the ability to use the information to solveproblems that arise in a context different (if onlyslightly) from the context in which the information

was originally taught.

(Robert Bjork, Memories and Metamemories, 1994)


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Learning Activates the Reward

Pathways in the Brain

Real life, meaningful,

and authentic learning

activates the rewardpathways in the brain.

This is a key to learning.

(Dr. Janet Zadina, 2010)


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Progress is Vital

A feeling of making

progress is what allows

students to deal with

tasks, especially tasksthey dont necessarily

like to do.

(James Zull, The Art of Changing the

Brain, 2002)


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Basic Finding of Brain Research

It is the one who does

the work who does thelearning.


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What can brain research tell us to help us meet

our students learning needs?


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The Human Brain

The human brain weighs three (3) pounds but

uses 20-25% of the bodies energy (Ratey, 2002)


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The Human Brain

The adult human brain has a 100 billion

neurons (It does grow thousands of new cells daily)

www.enchantedlearning.com/.../gifs/Neuron.G IF


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The Human Brain

These 100 billion neurons

are capable of making40,000,000,000,000,000

(Forty quadrillion connections )

(James Ratey, Users Guide to the Brain, 2002)

www.bpkids.org/.../content/pagebuilder/10386.gif


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The Brain and Learning

The human brain was

designed to solve

problems of survival in

outdoor, unstableenvironments while in

almost constant

motion.

( Dr. John Medina, Developmental Molecular

Biologist, University of Washington and Author

of Brain Rules)


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The Brain and Learning

If educators had set

out to design a learning

environment that was

in complete oppositionto what the human

brain is good at they

would have designed

the schools of yesterdayand today.

(John Medina, Brain Rules, 2008)


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The Human Brain and Learning

1. Exercise

significantly

enhances brainfunction


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Newest Findings

Exercise increases

production of

neurotransmitters that help:1.Focus and attention

2.Motivation

3. Patience

4. Mood (more optimistic)

(Ratey, 2008)


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Exercise and BDNF

(Brain-derived neurotrophic factor )

Exercise produces BDNF( Miracle Grow for the Brain)

Improves brain health

Enhances the wiring ofneurons

Is a stress inoculator

Makes the brain cellsmore resilient

(Ratey, 2008)


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The Brain is Social

2. Survival is accomplished

by working with other

brains.

Groups of brains

almost always

outperform a single

brain.


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Multitasking is not Possible

3. The brain can

only pay

attention to onething at a time.


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Multitasking is not Possible

Unlike most skills,multitasking doesn't geteasier the more you do it.

A 2009 study foundfrequent multitaskers wereeven worse at multitasking

than infrequentmultitaskers.

(Nass,2009)


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Memory

4. Memory

Repetition and

elaboration are

necessary for

memory formation

and recall.Daniel Schacter, Seven Sins of Memory, 2002


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Cramming does not Produce

Long Term Memories

Intensive study for a

short period of time

fails to produce much

(if any)long term

memories.


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Emotion and Memory

Emotional arousalorganizes andcoordinates brain activity(Bloom, Beal & Kupfer 2003)

When the amygdaladetects emotions, itessentially boosts activityin the areas of the brainthat form memories (Hamann& Emony, UN.)


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Multiple Senses

5. The brain works

best when

multiple sensesare involved.


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Using all Our Senses to Learn

Those in multisensory

environments always do

better than those in

unisensory environments.

They have more recall with

better resolution that lasts

longer, evident even 20

years later.

(John Medina, Brain Rules)


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Vision Trumps All

The more visual the

input becomes the

more likely it is to be

recognized and recalled.

This is called the

Pictorial Superiority

Effect.

Paivio, A. (1986). Mental representations:

A dual-coding approach.


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Patterns and Learning

6. The brain is a pattern

seeking device.

The brain relates

whole concepts to one

another and looks for

similarities, differences,

or relationships

between them. (Ratey, 2002,pg.5)

Sales

Marketing


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Looking for Patterns

We know humans learn

through recognizing

patterns - all knowledge is

embedded in otherknowledge - learners look

for meaningful patterns.

(Antonio R. Damasio, M.D. and M.W. VanAllen, Professor and Head of Neurology,

University ofIowa)

www.norfacad.pvt.k12.va.us/ puzzles/illusion8.gif


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It is in our nature to seek control

Having choices in what

and how to learn and

having some control

over the learningprocess are key

elements of Learner

Centered Teaching.

(Weimer, 2002)


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Having Some Say

Having some say in what

happens in the learning

process is intricatelytied to a willingness to

engage in the activity.(James Zull,Art of Changing the Brain, 2003)


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Helping Our Students Learn Responsibility

One of the reasons we

all need to ask studentsto take on moreresponsibility for theirown learning is becausethey will be responsiblefor it the rest of theirlives.


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A Gift for My Students

You must take personal responsibility.

You cannot change the circumstances,

the seasons, or the wind, but you can

change yourself. That is something

you have charge of.Jim Rohn


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References

Medina, John, Brain Rules, Pear Press, 2008

Sylwester, R. A Celebration of Neurons An Educators Guide to the Human Brain, ASCD:1995

Sprenger, M. Learning and Memory The Brain in Action by, ASCD, 1999

.How People Learn by National Research Council editor John Bransford, National Research Council, 2000

Goldberg, E. The Executive Brain Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind ,Oxford University Press: 2001

Ratey, J. MD. Spark: The New Science of Exercise and the Brain, 2008, Little Brown

Ratey, J. MD :A Users Guide to the Brain, Pantheon Books: New York, 2001

Zull, James. The Art of Changing the Brain.2002, Stylus: Virginia

Weimer, Maryellen. Learner-Centered Teaching. Jossey-Bass, 2002

Sousa, David. How the Brain Learns(Corwin Press, Inc., 1998),

Long-Lasting Novelty-Induced Neuronal Reverberation during Slow-Wave Sleep in Multiple Forebrain AreasSidarta Ribeiro,Damien Gervasoni, Ernesto S.Soares, Yi Zhou, Shih-Chieh Lin, Janaina Pantoja, Michael Lavine, Miguel A. L. Nicolelis , 2004

(Foerde, K., Knowlton, Barbara J., and Poldrack, Russell A. 2006. Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 103: 11778-11783.)

3 Dux, P. E., Ivanoff, J., Asplund, C. LO., and Marois, R. 2007. Isolation of a Central Bottleneck ofInformation Processing with Time-Resolved fMRI. Neuron.

52 (6): 1109-1120Leamnson,R.(1999)Thinking about Teaching and learning: developing habits of learning with first year college and university students. Sterling , VA: Stylus

U.S. Department of Education. (2001)National Commission on the High School Senior Year www.ecs.org/html/Documents.asp?chouseid=2929

Nass, 2009 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,


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