What do we know about the brain and learning? We know that the brain constructs all learning, and all behavior is brain-based. We know that academic competence cannot be bifurcated from emotional literacy. We know a tangle of neurons in the limbic system (emotional brain) permeate the pre-frontal cortex (the academic brain) coloring all thought with emotion.
The challenge is how to translate what we know about the new science of learning into teaching?
How do we use the new neuroscience of learning to transform practices too long dominated by rewards and punishments? What framework enables willing educators to operationalize the science in a noisy 3rd grade classroom or in an inner city 10th grade English class?
The enthusiastic answer is: positive psychology! Positive psychology is brain compatible because positive psychology changes the brain as it informs interventions that optimize brain structure and function.
1. The brain is modular. That is, there are brain modules containing specialized neurons that roam the brain creating and crossing the neuronal bridges that the moldable and ever-growing brain builds. These modules are not isolated in their structure or function but interacting and transacting across the brain. Experiential input—teaching—changes the walk across the modules.
2. The brain communicates. That is, within the modules are systems that cross modules. The two largest systems are the limbic system (emotional brain) and the linguistics system (language brain) that communicate our emotions and thoughts that prompt our actions. Neurons not only walk themselves across the brain, the glial cells talk themselves across the brain. For example, some neurotransmitters are turned on or off by stress experiences. These chattering cells connect what children feel to what they know to what they understand to what they do. Experiential input—teaching—changes the conversation.
3. The brain is ever changing. That is, the brain is always growing (neuroplasticity) based on new connections (neurogenesis) formed and other connections pruned or eroded. The brain is always learning and adapting. When experience becomes a part of long-term memory it makes a deposit into the brain’s memory bank that is hard to withdraw—sometimes creating an indelible memory. Experiential input—teaching—is how the brain learns and adapts for better or for worse.
4. The brain is multi-dimensional. That is, the brain thinks about ideas, and feelings, and actions using language. The thought that underlies learning is feeling infused, cognitively mediated, and linguistically or physically expressed. Experiential input—teaching—is a catalyst for this three-dimensional, complex, positive learning.
Academic success is not only a function of academic knowledge or cognitive processing. Success is a function of the connections to self, others, and the world that shape our brain. Experiential input—teaching—is the best means to that end.
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AVAILABLE! Positive Psychology in the Elementary School Classroom and is the first in a series intended to help teachers build positive psychology classrooms consistent with affective neuroscience. http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-393-70758-8/
JOIN ME! I will give an invited talk at the Learning and Brain Conference - Self-Aware Minds: Using Brain Science to Boost Social and Emotional Skills - at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco on February 14, 2014. The conference is sponsored by Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Yale University School of Medicine, The Dana Foundation, NAESP, NAESSP, Edutopia: The George Lucas Educational Foundation, and the Learning & Brain Foundation.