https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dozen-ideas-brain-based-learning-julian-arhire/
Neuroscience lends credibility to many principles of good instruction,
but this field does not purport to prescribe specific ways to teach or a
new and improved curriculum. Nor do neuroscientists claim to know more
about parenting than the average parents. Much of the work on the brain
is applied from laboratory studies using mice, kittens, primates, fruit
flies, samples of fetal tissue, and others. Educators and parents must
exercise caution and control the impulse to generalize these findings to
baby's nursery or an approved early childhood curriculum. Yet, there is
significant evidence to warrant encouraging those charged with rearing
and educating young children to carefully tend to the brain's intrinsic
need for meaningful experience, nurturance, and safety. The next steps
in educational research
will appear as giant strides to those who review the initial goals of
the decade of the brain. The challenge is for educators,
neuroscientists, and parents to blaze new pathways to advance the
neurons, brain cells, children, schools, communities, and global
village.
12 Things Educators Need to Know About the Brain
1. Nobody else is you. Each brain is unique. Like
snowflakes, there are no two exact brains. Two brains born on the same
date can vary by as much as three years in developmental
characteristics.
2. Stress chills! Stress and threat reduce the
capacity of the brain for understanding, reading comprehension, memory,
and the ability to use higher order thinking skills.
3. Themes are patterns which are better than just the facts, Jack!
Learners seek patterns of information because the neocortex is driven
by patterns rather than facts. It's easier to go from the whole to the
part. Talk about dogs, then study Chihuahuas.
4. Feelings Rule! Emotions control the brain. Bad
vibes taint a learning experience; the brain spits out information
associated with negative associations. Good vibrations associated with
an event relate well to a love of learning about a particular topic. The
better we feel about something the more we try to understand and
remember what it means.
5. Learning is a multi-path simultaneous experience.
Learning is at once, a visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic
experience. Learning is optimal when input is multi-modal. Learning is
easier when it's within a context rather than bits and pieces.
6. Feed your head. Brains thrive on challenges, new and unique experiences, feedback, and changes in the environment.
7. Trivial Pursuits are just that. Brains function least well when put in rote, semantic situations (see/hear it -then- remember it). Brains retain information that is framed by episodes and events.
8. Descartes was right. The mind and body work
together. The better they get along, that is, a well cared for body can
better support a strong, lean thinking machine.
9. Lions do it the same way every day. Rituals,
automatic ways to deal with common experiences, give way to productive
expression. Productive rituals reduce stress, thus increasing creative
ways of thinking.
10. Brains thrive to survive. Brains are designed to learn, not teach. They drain when all of the attention is on teaching and learning lacks choices.
11. Peaks and troughs make a brain flow. Brains are designed for highs and lows, peak time and down time, not constant "on line" attention.
12. Evaluation is more critical to the brain than assessment.
Most of what the brain does can't be measured as a "Yes" or "No"
product. Deep understanding involves themes, models, and patterns of
creative learning.
Julian Arhire is a success coach, trainer, Certified Master of Web Copywriting and founder of http://EbooksChoice.com/. Julian is a prolific writer and Infopreneur having written many ebooks, articles and special reports.
Keywords: learning, good instruction, educational
