Motor cortex Somatosensory cortex

Movement and joint positions

Pars Sensory associative

opercularis cortex

Visual associative
cortex

Broca’s
BRAIN BASED APPROAH TO
area
LEARNING
Grammar Visual
and word cortex

production

Primary
Auditory cortex

Wernicke’s
Cerebellum
area

Language and Thought

Cognitive, Emotional, and Social Capacities
Are Inextricably Intertwined Within the
Architecture of the Brain
The Twelve Principles of Brain
Based Teaching/Learning
• What are they?
• What do they mean?
• What are the implications
of this information to
working with/teaching/
understanding ourselves
and others?
 Twelve Basic Principles
Related to Learning
1. Brain is a parallel processor
2. Learning engages the entire physiology
3. Learning is developmental
4. Each brain is unique
5. Every brain perceives and creates parts and
wholes simultaneously
6. Learning always involves conscious and
unconscious processes
7. The search for meaning is innate
8. Emotions are critical to learning
9. Learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited
by threat
10. The search for meaning occurs through
patterning
11. We have at least two different ways of
organizing memory: a spatial memory system
and a set of systems for rote learning.
12. The brain is a social brain
1. The Brain is a Parallel Processor
• Both hemispheres work together
• Many functions occur simultaneously
• Edelman(1994) found when more neurons
in the brain were firing at the same time,
learning, meaning, and retention were
greater for the learner.
Implications for education
•Good teaching "orchestrates" the learner's
experience so that all these aspects of brain
operation are addressed. Teaching must, therefore,
be based on theories and methodologies that guide
the teacher so as to make orchestration possible.
No one method or technique can by itself
adequately encompass the variations of the human
brain. However, teachers do need a frame of
reference that enables them to select from the vast
repertoire of methods and approaches that are
available.
 2. Learning Engages the Entire Physiology

• Food, water, and nutrition are critical components of

thinking.
• The brain is a physiological organ functioning according to
physiological rules. Learning is as natural as breathing, but
it can be inhibited or facilitated. Neuron growth,
nourishment, and interactions are integral to the perception
and interpretation of experiences
• We are “holistic” learners - the body and mind interact
– the peptides in the blood are chains of amino acids that become
the primary source of information transfer.
 Implications for education
• Everything that affects our physiological functioning affects our
capacity to learn.
• Stress management, nutrition, exercise, and relaxation, as well as
other facets of health management, must be fully incorporated into
the learning process.
• As many drugs, both prescribed and recreational, inhibit learning,
their use should be curtailed and their effects understood.
• Habits and beliefs are also physio­logically entrenched and therefore
resistant or slow to change once they become part of the personality.
• In addition, the timing of learning is influenced by the body's and
brain's natural development as well as by individual and natural
rhythms and cycles. For example, there can be a five‑year difference
in maturation between any two "average" children. Expecting
achievement on the basis of chronological age is therefore
inappropriate.
 3. Learning is Developmental
• Depending upon the topic some
students can think abstractly, while
others have a limited background
and are still thinking on a concrete
level.
• Building the necessary neural
connections by exposure, repetition,
and practice is important to the
student.
 4. Each Brain is Unique
• Although we all have the same set of systems, including
our senses and basic emotions, they are integrated
differently in every brain. In addition, because learning
actually changes the structure of the brain, the more we
learn the more individual we become.
We are products of genetics and experience
• The brain works better when facts and skills are
embedded in real experiences

4
 Implications for education
• Teaching should be multifaceted in order to allow all
students to express visual, tactile, emotional, or
auditory preferences.
• There are other individual differences that also need to
be taken into consideration. Choices should also be
variable enough to attract individual interests.
• We can vary the choices in this way, but doing so may
require the reshaping of schools so that they exhibit the
complexity found in life.
• In sum, education needs to facilitate optimal brain
functioning.
5. Each Brain Perceives and Creates
Parts and Wholes Simultaneously
• Some think more easily inductively while others
find deductive thinking more comfortable - use
both
• Shank (1990) Telling stories is one of the most
influential techniques because you give the
information, ground the meaning in structure,
provide for emotion, and make the content
meaningful. Our brain loves storytelling.
– How might you make use of this?
 Implications for education
• People have enormous difficulty in learning when either
parts or wholes are overlooked.
• Good teaching necessarily builds understanding and skills
over time because learning is cumulative and
developmental.
• However, parts and wholes are conceptually interactive.
They derive meaning from and give it to each other.
• Thus vocabulary and grammar are best understood and
mastered when incorporated in genuine, whole language
experiences.
• Similarly, equations and scientific principles need to be
dealt with in the context of living science.
 6. Learning Involves Conscious and
Unconscious Processes
• The brain and body learn physically, mentally, and affectively
• Body language as well as actual language communicate
• We learn much more than we ever consciously understand. As Campbell (1989) has noted, "What we are
discovering . . . is that beneath the surface of awareness, an enormous amount of unconscious processing is going
on"
• Most of the signals that are peripherally perceived enter the brain without the learner's awareness and interact at
unconscious levels. Lozanov (1978) writes, "Having reached the brain, this information emerges in the
consciousness with some delay, or it influences the motives and decisions"
• We actually become our experiences and remember what we experience, not just what we are told. For example, a
student can learn to sing on key and learn to hate singing at the same time.

•
 Implications for education
• A great deal of the effort put into teaching and studying is wasted
because students do not adequately process their experiences.
• What we call "active processing" allows students to review how and
what they learn so that they begin to take charge of learning and the
development of personal meanings.
• In part it refers to reflection and metacognitive activities. One
example might be students becoming aware of their preferred learning
style.
• Another might be the creative elaboration of procedures and theories
by exploring metaphors and analogies to help reorganize material in a
way that makes it personally meaningful and valuable.
• Teaching therefore needs to be designed in such a way as to help
students benefit maximally from unconscious processing
 7. The Search for Meaning Is Innate
• Each person seeks to make sense out of what he/she sees or
hears
• The search for meaning is survival oriented and basic to the
human brain.
• The brain needs and automatically registers the familiar while
simultaneously searching for and responding to novel stimuli
• This dual process is taking place every waking moment and,
some contend, while sleeping.
• The search for meaning cannot be stopped, only channeled and
focused.
 Implications for education
• The learning environment needs to provide stability and
familiarity, which is part of the function of routine
classroom behaviors and procedures.
• At the same time, provision must be made to satisfy our
curiosity and hunger for novelty, discovery, and challenge.
• Lessons need to be generally exciting and meaningful and
offer students an abundance of choices.
• The more positively like real life such learning is, the better.
• Programs for gifted children often take these implications
for granted by combining a rich environment with complex
and meaningful challenges.
• Most of the creative methods used for teaching gifted
students should be applied to all students.
 8. Emotions Are Critical to Learning
- Learning is affected by emotions. We do not simply learn
things.
- What we learn is influenced and organized by emotions
and mind‑sets based on expectancy, personal biases and
prejudices, degree of self‑esteem, and the need for social
interaction. Emotions and cogni­tion cannot be separated .
- Emotions are also crucial to memory because they facilitate
the storage and recall of information.
- Moreover, many emotions cannot be simply switched on and off.
They operate on many levels, somewhat like the weather, and they
are ongoing—the emotional impact of any lesson or life experience
may continue to reverberate long after the specific event.
 Implications for education
• Teachers need to understand that students' feelings and attitudes will be
involved in and will determine future learning.
• As it is impossible to isolate the cog­nitive from the affective domain, the
emotional climate in the school and classroom must be monitored on a
consistent basis, by using effective communication strategies and allowing
for student and teacher reflection and metacognitive processes.
• In general, the entire environment needs to be supportive and marked by
mutual respect and acceptance both within and beyond the classroom. Some
of the most significant experiences in a student's life are fleeting "moments
of truth," such as a chance encounter in a corridor with a relatively unknown
teacher or possibly "distant" administrator. These brief communications are
often instinctive.
• Their emotional color depends on how "real" and profound the support for
each other of teachers, administrators, and students is.
 9. Learning is Enhanced by
Challenge and Inhibited by Threat
• The brain’s priority is always survival - at
the expense of higher order thinking
• Stress should be kept to a manageable level
• Provide opportunities to “grow” and to
make changes
• Have high, but reasonable expectations
9
 Implications for education
• Teachers and administrators need to create a state of
relaxed alertness in students.
• This state combines general relaxation with an
atmosphere that is low in threat and high in challenge.
• The teacher must be in this state, and it must
continuously pervade the lesson.
• All the methodologies that are used to orchestrate the
learning context influence the state of relaxed
alertness.
 10. The Search for Meaning
Comes Through Patterning
• Patterning refers to the meaningful organization and categorization of
information.
• In a way, the brain is both artist and scientist, attempting to discern and
understand patterns as they occur, and giving expression to unique and
creative patterns of its own.
• The brain is designed to perceive and generate patterns, and it resists
having meaningless patterns imposed on it.
• "meaningless" means isolated pieces of information unrelated to what
makes sense to a student.
• When the brain's natural capacity to integrate information is
acknowledged and invoked in teaching, then vast amounts of initially
unrelated or seemingly random information and activities can be
presented and assimilated.
 Implications for education
• Learners are patterning, or perceiving and creating meanings, all the time
in one way or another. We cannot stop them; we can only influence the
direction.
• Daydreaming is a way of patterning, as are problem solving and critical
thinking. Although we choose much of what students are to learn, the ideal
process is to present the information in a way that allows their brains to
extract patterns, rather than attempt to impose the patterns.
• "Time on task" does not ensure appropriate patterning, because the student
may actually be engaged in busy work while the mind is somewhere else.
• For teaching to be really effective, a learner must be able to create
meaningful and personally relevant patterns.
 11. We have at least two different ways of
organizing memory: a spatial memory system and
a set of systems for rote learning.
• We have a natural, spatial memory system, which does not need rehearsal and allows
for "instant" memory of experiences
• Remembering where we ate and what we had for dinner last night does not require
the use of memorization techniques, because we have at least one memory system
actually de­signed for registering our experiences in ordinary three‑dimensional space
• The system is always engaged and is in­exhaustible. It is possessed by people of both
sexes and all nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. It is enriched over time as we
increase the items, categories, and procedures that we take for granted. (Thus, there
was a time when we did not know what a tree or a television was.) This memory
system is motivated by novelty. In fact this is one of the systems that drives the
search for meaning mentioned in point three above.
• Facts and skills that are dealt with in isolation are organized differently by the brain
and need much more practice and rehearsal. The counter­part of the spatial memory
system is a set of systems specifically designed for storing relatively unrelated
information.
 Implications for education
• Educators are adept at the type of teaching that focuses on
memorization.
• Common examples include multiplication tables, spelling words,
and unfamiliar vocabulary at the lower levels, and abstract concepts
and sets of principles in different subjects for older students and
adults.
• Sometimes memorization is important and useful. In general,
however, teaching devoted to memorization does not facilitate the
transfer of learning and probably interferes with the subsequent
development of understanding.
• By ignoring the personal world of the learner, educators actually
inhibit the effective functioning
 Memory
• When objects and events are registered by several senses,
they can be stored in several interrelated memory
networks.
• This type of memory becomes more accessible and
powerful.
• Conversation helps us link ideas/thoughts to our own
related memories. Students need time for this to happen!!
– Storytelling - Conversations
– Debates - Role playing
– Simulations - Songs
– Games - Films
12. The Brain is a Social Brain
• The brain develops better in concert with others
 When students have to talk to others about
information, they retain the information longer and
more efficiently!

 Make use of small groups,

discussions, teams, pairings,
and question and answer
situations.
How Might Brain-Based
Research Influence Your
Teaching?

Good night!!!!