I am often asked why I am so opposed to the drill-and-test curriculum that has been foisted on the public schools by corporatists and legislators over the past couple of decades in the name of accountability.  There are many reasons, of course, but I will focus on what I consider the core issue here.  The big issue for me is that the so-called reform efforts pay no attention to what is known about the brain and how we learn.  As you read the following article, think about what research supports and the instruction that is actually going on in schools today.  Then answer the question: What do you want for your children?

COGNITION-BASED PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING

By Bob Valiant, Ed.D.

INTRODUCTION

A growing body of research is helping us understand not only how the brain works, but what we can do to enhance learning. Parents and teachers now have available much of the information they need to help guide the development of their children. In this article we will review some of the areas cognitive researchers in many fields agree are important findings regarding the brain and learning. This paper will provide a brief narrative description of each research finding followed by some suggested strategies for the adult caregiver including learning activities directed specifically to the finding.

GENETICS

At birth, our brain is made up of tens of millions of basic neural networks, each programmed through natural selection to process a specific element of the environment such as a horizontal line, a color, or a specific action of a body part. The bad news is “you get what you got.” We are born hard-wired for these processes and any early damage or misalignment will generally not be replaced or repaired. The good news is that through learning and experience “work-arounds” can be developed for all but the most severe deficiencies.

STAGE DEVELOPMENT

The growing brain is especially well equipped for particular kinds of learning at certain stages of development. Although the basic neural connections are available at birth the brain can continue to develop additional connections throughout life. Spurts of development appear to take place for various brain functions at certain fairly specific life stages. For example, the brain structures that support higher-level decision making do not develop for most people until their late teens or early twenties. Knowing when these spurts occur can assist us in planning curriculum and experiential activities at a time when it is more likely to be assimilated. High-stakes assessments not at the appropriate developmental level are useless as measures of accountability and perhaps harmful to the children.

MENTAL MODELS

Infants form mental models about how the world works and, as they receive new information from the environment, they modify their theories to better explain to themselves what they are seeing, hearing, and feeling. As adults, we retain many of these explanations our early-childhood brain developed. We often trivialize evidence (including textbook learning) that refutes the original mental model. Once embedded, these early theories are difficult to dislodge.
One thing we can do to help children build flexible mental models that are continuously refined is to talk to them about their beliefs about how the world works and how they came to their conclusions. I am often amazed at the complex (and almost always incorrect) theories children have developed about such everyday things as rainbows, falling objects, evaporation, or behavior patterns of their friends. Once we know their current level of understanding we can provide activities that will help them gain experience in the field of inquiry and can suggest reading that might help build new knowledge. Reading without experience is a poor substitute, however.

EMOTIONS

Emotion plays a central role in cognition both by driving attention and by aiding in memory storage. High challenge and personal meaning enhance learning while threat inhibits it. Each of us can describe in vivid detail the circumstances surrounding highly-charged emotional events in our lives.
The trick for parents and educators is to find the emotional hooks that will make learning memorable. We obviously cannot stage major events with emotional hooks for every item we would like a child to remember. We can, however, tie chunks of learning to hooks. Music, which has high emotional content, might be utilized with theme songs for the various categories to help children remember them. The idea of theme music along with smells (Does baking bread bring up any memories?) can be extended to almost any important learning task. Think about teaming these ideas along with dramatic encounters with historical or literary characters. Chemical reactions with dramatic color changes, flashes of light, etc. are other examples of this principle.

The second component of this principle directs us to lower the level of threat to the child while still providing challenging learning activities. The child (or older student) should feel confident that they have the skills and knowledge to successfully meet the challenge or that, at least, the skills and knowledge are within reach. If the activity has sufficient interest and the challenge seems reachable, we sometimes reach an optimum learning situation Csikszentmihalyi calls “Flow.” Your goal in assisting your child is to know their interests, skills, and knowledge level and continuously ratchet up activities to match the newly acquired levels without adding pressure that is perceived as threat.

BRAIN PLASTICITY AND THE ROLE OF EXPERIENCE

Brains are self-organizing, making connections and allocating space in response to each individual’s experience and perceptions. They are capable of growth throughout life.

Learning is a reflective activity that allows us to draw upon past experiences to create meaning, formulate deeper understanding, and shape our futures. Knowing depends on engagement in practice.

The first of these statements refutes the axiom, “You can’t teach old dogs new tricks.” Evidence has now convinced us that we can learn new tricks throughout our lifetimes. The key is continuing to seek out new experiences and to reflect on their meaning in light of what we already know. Adults can model this behavior for the young ones in their lives. It is important to talk with children about the life-long learning principle and to demonstrate how it works. How we learn should be discussed and our interests and learning styles need to become a common topic of conversation if we wish children to become aware of their own learning and take responsibility for it.

For parents and educators the second statement provides a roadmap for helping our young charges grow intellectually. Experiences along with opportunities to talk about them or otherwise reflect on them (drawing, writing, model-making, etc.) are the primary input for the growing brain. Just about any experience counts as long as there is time to reflect on the activity and think about how it fits with what is already known. It might be a trip to the zoo or just a observing a bouncing ball. The adult’s job is to ask questions, encourage reflection, and suggest other experiences to help answer questions that arise. When you drop a ball, is the second bounce as high as the first? What about the third, fourth or fifth? Why do you think this is so? Can you think of other things that behave in a similar way? Do all balls behave the same way? Are there balls that do not bounce at all? Is there a mathematical relationship that describes the height of successive bounces of a ball? What causes some balls to bounce higher than others? Does the surface you drop the ball on have any effect on the height of the bounce?

THE SOCIAL NATURE OF LEARNING

Learning is essentially a social, collaborative, problem-solving activity. This is not to say that we cannot learn when we are by ourselves, but learning is certainly enhanced when we can bounce our ideas off others and get feedback about both the process of learning and the knowledge itself. Thinking about and discussing the processes of thinking and learning is called metacognition. It can play an important role in nurturing cognitive growth.

Questions such as, “How did you figure that out?” or “What steps did you go through to solve that problem?” focus the child on the thinking processes. “Can you think of another way to do the same thing?” suggests there are many ways to arrive at an answer and, perhaps, some ways are more efficient or more likely to produce valid results. Making public your thinking and learning processes is risky business, of course, so the adult needs to create an atmosphere where it is okay to make mistakes as long as continuing pursuit of knowledge is the goal.

School-based programs such as cooperative learning, project-based learning, and problem-based learning use social activity as part of the learning process and are consistent with the finding under discussion here.

ADEQUATE TIME

Adequate time is needed for assimilation and integration of new knowledge.

One way for a parent or teacher to deal with this need for extended time is to develop the idea of becoming an “expert” in some particular field of interest. This can start with a hobby or some general area of interest, but should be child-centered, something they are particularly interested in. Let’s say it is insects. Observation skills can be fostered and the child can learn to observe physical characteristics, behavior, etc. Recording observations should be encouraged. Books, even at a somewhat challenging level of reading difficulty, can be introduced once the child is sufficiently interested to pursue the literature on the topic under study. Adult encouragement of this type can lead to lifelong interest and development of expertise in a particular field.