THE NEUROSCIENCE OF JOYFUL EDUCATION

summer 2007

Most children can't wait to start kindergarten and they approach the
beginning of school with awe and anticipation. Kindergartners and first
graders often talk passionately about what they learn and do in school.
Unfortunately, the current emphasis on standardized testing and rote
learning encroaches upon many students' joy. In their zeal to raise test
scores, too many policymakers wrongly assume that students who are
laughing, interacting in groups, or being creative with art, music, or
dance are not doing real academic work. The result is that some teachers
feel pressure to preside over more sedate classrooms with students on
the same page in the same book, sitting in straight rows, facing
straight ahead.

The truth is that when we scrub joy and comfort from the
classroom, we distance our students from effective information
processing and long-term memory storage. Instead of taking pleasure from
learning, students become bored, anxious, and anything but engaged. They
ultimately learn to feel bad about school and lose the joy they once
felt.

Current brain-based research suggests that superior learning takes
place when classroom experiences are enjoyable and relevant to students'
lives, interests, and experiences. Many education theorists have proposed that students retain what they learn when the learning is associated with strong positive emotion. Classrooms can be the safe haven where academic
practices and classroom strategies provide students with emotional
comfort and pleasure as well as knowledge. When teachers use strategies
to reduce stress and build a positive emotional environment, students
gain emotional resilience and learn more efficiently.


Link to the article and blogs at Educational Leadership




Fall 2007

What You Are Doing Right?
As you learn about the strategies that increase your ability to discover the key needs of your students and individualize your lessons to reach them joyfully and successfully, your initial learning curve will be a steep one. These are times to acknowledge what are you doing right and what is working. Some of this information will come from your independent observation and authentic assessments. More personal feedback will come from your work with students’ on their goal modifications and guided metacognition. A strong collegial faculty community can provide the opportunity for colleagues to pair with you in peer observations so you can hear their professional feedback on what strategies you are using that appear to be most successful in engaging your students’ attentive focus.
It is important to keep yourself motivated. Instead of limiting your self assessments to your students’ performance on standardized tests, consider what you achieve each time you stimulate a student’s curiosity, see students use strategies you taught them (especially in a new context), or work cooperatively with a classmates. Just as students are more successful with positive feedback, so are you as their teacher, so take the time to acknowledge your own successes!


Did You Know?


Through neuroimaging studies (of the amygdala, hippocampus, and the rest of the limbic system and through measurement of dopamine and other brain chemical transmitters) we now have visible evidence that there is a profound increase in long-term memory and higher order cognition when students have trust and positive feelings for teachers, and supportive classroom and school communities.

The more dopamine students have released by positive emotional experiences (in school and out) the less likely they are to seek dopamine/pleasure surges from high risk behavior of drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, risky fast driving, overeating. More sports, music, dramatics, and enjoyable learning = less high-risk behavior and suicide in teens. This brain research demonstrates that superior learning takes place when classroom experiences are enjoyable and relevant to students’ lives, interests, and experiences.

Learning connected with positive emotional significance that leads to the new information being stored in long-term memory. Learning associated with strong positive emotion is retained longer, and stress/anxiety interfere with learning, so those lessons do not sustain for end of the year testing, even if students pass unit tests.

Syn-naps: Any pleasurable activity (singing, walk about the room and chat with friends, listening to music, having a few pages of a class book read aloud to them, or sharing jokes) used even as a brief break can give the amygdala a chance to “cool down” and the neurotransmitters time to rebuild as the students are refreshed.

Dopamine release (and the pleasure associated with it) has been found highest in school children when they are moving, laughing, interacting, being read to, feel a sense of accomplishment, and when they have choice.

Discovery Learning: Interest and discovery drive achievement. Students are more likely to remember and really understand what they learn if they find it compelling or have some part in figuring it out or discovering some part of it for themselves.

The last part of the brain to mature (through plasticity and pruning is the prefrontal lobes. Children and many teenagers do not have fully developed delayed gratification skills during their school years. The prefrontal regions are major participants in the executive function networks of judgment, prioritizing, and delayed gratification processing. This is one reason students from kindergarten through high school continue to need support and encouragement from their teachers to keep their efforts directed on long-term goal achievement.

A longitudinal study of middle schoolers noted that teachers who emphasize competitive comparisons of student ability discourage students from asking for help.

For children with attention focusing difficulties, each time they focus their attention they are activating the brain’s alerting and focusing pathways. This repeated stimulation of these pathways makes the neural circuits stronger and increases their ability to actively direct their attention where it is needed.

Enthusiasm is generated when children are presented with novelty and find creative ways to explore or connect with the new material and are inspired by it. Whenever you can generate this awe and sense of wonder, your children will be pulled into the school lessons they bring home and they will be motivated to connect with the information in a meaningful way.

Students experience a greater level of understanding of concepts and ideas when they talked, explained, and argued about them with their group, instead of just passively listening to a lecture or reading a text.

Use more senses: The experiential education motto is that you learn 40% of what you hear, 60% of what you hear and see, and 80% of what you hear, see, and do.