Neuroscience of Learning for Educational Organizations

Aug. 14, 2007 City College of San Francisco Neuroscience of Learning for Educational Organizations Ken WessonEducational Consultant: NeuroscienceSan Jose, CA USA(408) 323-1498kenawesson@aol.com

I hope I die during the speech on “All-faculty In-service Day,” because the transition would be so subtle.

...Own a Million-dollar Racehorse? If you did, would you… • Keep him up until the wee hours of the morning? • Allow him to skip 90% his training rituals on a regular basis? • Let him maintain a poor non-nutritious diet? (Pepsi and potato chips?) • Endorse an almost completely sedentary lifestyle? • Deem it acceptable for him to play video games for 3-4 hours a day? • Experiment on him with habit-forming and destructive drugs and/or hallucinogens? Sometimes combining them with alcohol? • Let him “hang out” with other un-ambitious horses listening to rock and rap music for most of the day?

...Own a Million-dollar Racehorse? If you did, would you… • Allow him to watch 9,000 hours of TV each year, complete with 45,000 gratuitous horse murders and expect him to be well- adjusted with a healthy self concept, and to see the world as a supportive, friendly place to grow, develop and a place where he will maximize his full potential? If you did, what would he be worth to you or to himself? Our students have multi-billion dollar brains! You should never allow their brains to be treated in ways far worse than you would ever allow a horse to be treated.

Only Gray MatterMatters in Neuroscience • Students come in a variety of colors, but all brains are basically gray. It is only the gray matter that truly matters when it comes to learning. • Boosting achievement and maximizing human potential hinges on developing a respectable knowledge base of “how the brain works.” • Brain-considerate approaches do not favor one culture or another nor one gender over the other. Instead, we examine the structural, functional and developmental characteristics of all human brains as they change over time.

“How does the human brain work?” • What are the most effective strategies for reaching learners (young or old)? • How is information best taught? • Why do some students “get it” quickly, while others struggle? They understand it quite well later, but why are some learners slower (a “delayed learning reaction”? • How is content more readily recalled? • What are ideal environmental conditions for learning? • What can you do to make a significant difference in learning outcomes?

The Science of Learning Schools of Education serving K-12 Teachers (Pedagogy) ∙ The history of education ∙ The philosophy of education ∙ The psychology of education → Go into the classroom and teach ∙ The history of aviation ∙ The philosophy of aviation ∙ The psychology of aviation → Enter the cockpit and fly! Colleges and universities (Andragogy) “You’ve taken enough classes and seen enough models of teaching, so you must be ready to teach.” At neither level is there any mandate that educators must know how the brain “works”” or understand how learning is best orchestrated.

Change? Complacency is Fatal Every morning in Africa, the gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning the lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up, you’d better start running. --African proverb

The illiterates of the future are not those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, un-learn, and re-learn.--Alvin Toffler

Our Focus… • The current status of research in the cognitive neurosciences (the psychological, biological, and emotional aspects of learning ) • Brain physiology • Inquiry-learning and memory (factors that facilitate or inhibit L’ and M’) • The five features of BCL that offer practical strategies to apply these principles from brain science to the classroom

Brain-considerate Learning: “PERC3S” • There are five BC elements that the human brain seeks while processing incoming stimuli for personal “meaning,” which makes the information “memorable” and worth remembering. • Patterns • Emotions • Relevance • Context, Content, and Cognitively-appropriate • Sense-making Patterns, emotions, relevance, context, content and sense-making are critical factors in driving (1) attention, (2) motivation, (3) learning, (4) memory formation, and (5) recall. Collectively, these factors serve as the primary criteria for long-term memory storage.to hot

Brain-based Research: Cognitive Neuroscience We’ve learned more about the human brain in thepast 5 yearsthan in our previous 200 years. Over90%of the neuroscientists who ever lived are stillalivetoday! (A longevity-sponsoring career?) TwentyNobel prizeshave been awarded to neuroscientists in the past 25 years. We are no further than the Wright brotherswell before their first flight at Kitty Hawk. More akin to Copernicus -- the theory of a heliocentric solar system was worthy of re-consideration.

Abandoning our 19th and 20th-Century Models

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The Very Narrow Profile • Schools were places where… • Curriculum designed based on a “one size fits all” (assembly-line) model • All learning was “synchronous” • Knowledge acquisition was “teacher/classroom-driven” • Personal interests, inquiries and gratification were “delayed” • “www.” = Contemporary impatience requires immediate information and access to knowledge Wherever, Whatever and Whenever.

The Science of Learning • Content and Curriculum • Must be readily available (research to purchasing) • Accessible on demand through a broad range of mobile and wireless personal devices (digitized instant stimulation, communication and gratification) • The new “Three Rs of Media” = Realistic, Relevant and Rich in quality and interactive/personalized by design (“my-ification”) • Volume and dimension are expanding exponentially. The “facts” continue to change ( and  content memory) • Content is no longer controlled by, orchestrated by or exclusively restricted to professor access.

Fall of ‘93, there were approximately 600 web sites total. • Today, over 500K on the human brain alone. • We can witness a solar eclipse in Central Asia, while sitting in North America. How can this be done? • By web-casting special scientific events such as eclipses, expeditions to South American rain forests, lush tropical ecosystems, and journeys to the ocean’s floor. • We are breaking the traditional academic umbilical cord that previously attached us permanently to the “professor-at-the- podium” learning model. • Videos, DVDs, computers, simulated dissections, Internet tele- communications projects, handheld graphing calculators, high-definition TVs, electron microscopes, which are merely tools added to our ever-expanding tool chest and given us unprecedented new ways for the human brain to learn and experience.

The Knowledge Explosion “The sum total of humankind’s knowledge doubled between 1750 and 1900. It doubled again between 1900 and 1950, again from 1950 to 1960, again from 1960 to 1965. It’s been estimated that the sum total of humankind’s knowledge has doubled at least every five years since then. And by the year 2000, ninety-seven percent of what is known at that time will have been discovered or invented since those of us in this room were born. It’s been further projected that by the year 2020, knowledge or information will double every 73 days.” Dr. James Appleberry - President, American Association of State Colleges and Universities

Expanding the Traditional Model of Thinking and Learning Does the name “Pavlov” ring a bell? Stimulus Response S R Teaching Learning Thinking and learning are neurobiological processes that take place inside the brain, just as digestion is another biological event that takes place in the pancreas and the stomach.

Factors Influencing Learning and Behavior In addition to desires, tendencies, appetites, instincts, inclinations… Genetics +Epigenetics and early nutrition +Pre-natal care +Age +Early development (0-3) +Emotions/emotional state +Parenting +Gender +Physical history +Perception/expectations +Neuro-physiology +Memory +Prior learning (situated L’) +Diet +Prior experiences +Self-esteem +Need state +Disability +Strengths +Neural circuitry/plasticity* +Formal Education +Stress factors Learning/Behavior * Neural plasticity: The flexible nature of the brain to modify structures, alter its functioning and re-route neural circuitry as a response to new stimuli and ongoing learning experiences.

Time Magazine “How to Build a Student for the 21st Century” December 18, 2006 • Many education analysts believe that we must seek a better balance between core knowledge and the“portable skills”-- critical thinking, making connections between ideas and learning how to learn -- the U.S. curriculum needs to become more like that of Singapore, Korea, Belgium and Sweden, whose students outperform American students on TIMSS (math/sci. exams.) • Classes in these countriesfocus on key conceptsthat aretaught in depthandin careful sequence,as opposed the succession of forgettable details so often served in U.S. classrooms. Textbooks and tests support this approach. • “Countries from Germany to Singapore haveextremely small textbooks that focus on the most powerful and generative ideas.”-- Roy Pea, Co-director of the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning.

The longer students stay in the current system the worse they do. According to the 1995 Third International Mathematics and Science Study, U.S. fourth graders ranked second. By twelfth grade, they fell to 16th, behind nearly every industrialized rival and ahead of only Cyprus and South Africa. Percentage of Twelfth Graders Proficient in Science Source: www.ed.gov/nclb/methods/science/science.html

91% of American educators use textbooks, reading materials, and the lecture approach nearly 95% of the time. -- Shymansky, Yore, and Good

The Montillation of Traxoline(attributed to Judy Lanier) It is very important that you learn about traxoline. Traxoline is a new form of zionter. It is montilled in Ceristanna. The Ceristannians gristerlate large amounts of fevon and then brachter it to quasel traxoline. Traxoline may well be one of our most lukized snezlaus in the future because of our zionter lescelidge. Directions: Answer the following questions in complete sentences. 1. What is traxoline? 2. Where is traxoline montilled? 3. How is traxoline quaselled? 4. Why is it important to know about traxoline?

∙ Marie Curie did her research at theSore Buns Institutein France.∙ The composer Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English.He was very large.∙I’m really glad we read Harper Lee’s masterpieceTequilla Mockingbird.∙Miguel Cervates wrote“Donkey Hotey”.∙ Julius Caesar's dying words were,“Tee hee, Brutus”.∙ The Greek goddess of love was Aphrodite. Aphrodite lives on today as a kind of haircut-- the Aphro.

Instead of Lectures, • More Neural Networks are Created by • Physical involvement • Emotional engagement • Time allowed for internal dialogue • Interactive discourse • A non-threatening environment open to idea exchanges • Opportunities for Reflection • Conversations encouraging revisions in thinking

The Homunculus Motor cortex Sensory Cortex The distribution of sensory receptors is unevenly concentrated on the parts of the body that are most involved in tactile perception. This is why hands-on learning is so powerful. For decades, these receptor fields were thought to be fixed and unchanging. However, cortical representations and sensory projections are rapidly reorganized following injury or surgical alteration. Wherever the hands go, that is where the brain will focus its attention.

Movement • Movement (kinesthetic learning) signals the liver to produce more glucose. • Glucose is especially important as the primary energy source utilized by functional brain cells. • Standing increases cerebral blood flow by 5%. • Movement increases cerebral blood flow by 5 to 15%.

You are here • Schools across the nation are responding to No Child Left Behind by tripling the amount of time spent teaching R’ and mathematics. • Center on Education Policy found that middle schools have left a 55-minute period daily, during which learning for all other subjects must occur. • The majority of low-performing schools have restricted the academic menu to math, reading and physical education. They have barred instruction in any other subject area. (Some students are guaranteed to be left behind in science. Content area repetition, drill, practice and testing consume the entire school day.)

"Not everything that can be counted, counts; and, not everything that counts,can be counted." --Albert Einstein

The New York Times NCLB to Require Proof of Learning at College Published: February 26, 2006 In response,the chairman of the Bush administration's Commission on the Future of Higher Education recently suggested that standardized testsbe used to determine how much college students are actually learning. The higher education community is up in arms about the suggestion, arguing that what colleges teach cannot be fully tested and that standardized tests would only dumb down an excellent education system. Those are important arguments, but they will not end the controversy, as long as business leaders keep complaining about the suspect quality of many college graduates from both public and elite colleges. Indeed, more than 40 states have now created accountability systems aimed at having colleges prove that their students are actually learning. Colleges and universities should join in the hunt for acceptable ways to measure student progress, rather than simply fighting the whole idea from the sidelines. Unless the higher education community wakes up to this problem — and resolves to do a better job — the movement aimed at regulating colleges and forcing them to demonstrate that students are actually learning will only keep growing.

…more High-stakes Testing? Kenneth Wesson, a founding member of the Association of Black Psychologists, once said, brilliantly, “Let’s be honest. If inner-city children consistently outscored children from wealthy suburban homes on standardized tests, is anyone naïve enough to believe that we would still insist on using these tests as indicators of success?” “The Big Picture” by Dennis Littky

Regardless of Age, All Brains Need Water Exercise Sleep Stress Reduction Oxygen Nutrition Positive Attitude (healthy brain)

Nutrition and Brain Development • During prenatal brain development, and later during the formative years, under-nutrition and other factors linked to poverty can slow brain development and permanently impact cognitive processing. • The longer a child's nutritional, emotional and educational needs go unmet,↑likelihood of brain impairment. • Iron deficiency anemia, (25% of poor children) is associated with impaired brain development.) • Iron repletion therapy can reduce some of the effects of anemia on learning, attention and memory. • Hungry children perform below their non-hungry low income peers on standardized test scores.

Achievement Gap? Poorer Families, Lower Scores A recent study shows that kindergartners' reading and math test scores are directly linked to the students' socioeconomic levels. SOURCE: Economic Policy Institute Vol. 22, Issue 5, Page 10 Published: October 2, 2002

Genetics reflect ancestralhistory, not personal destiny.

Development is Never Guaranteed No land = No frog During this sensitive period, tadpoles slow down the process of metamorphosis if there are no signs of nearby land. Development is environmentally-dependent.

Epigenetics • New research is changing the entire field of genetics with a sub-discipline -- “epigenetics” • There is a breed of fat yellow mice that were specifically bred to carry a gene called agouti,which gives these mice a characteristic pale yellow coat and a tendency towards obesity. Male agouti + female agouti = little fat yellow agouti pups. • Duke University: Agouti mice separated into two groups: • 1. Control group • 2. Pregnant group. • They fed the control group a normal diet and the fat yellow rats produced fat yellow offspring.

Epigenetics • The experimental group mated, but the expectant mothers were forgiven a compound of prenatal vitamins including folic acid, betaine, and choline and vitamin B12. • Genetically shocking results: Fat yellow (agouti) males and females suddenly were producing thin brown babies. • The vitamin supplements flicked the agouti gene into the “off” position. When the baby mice were born, their DNA still contained the dominant agouti gene, just as it did with other fat yellow pups, only the gene wasn't expressed, because the chemicals and attached to the gene and suppressed its genetic instructions (the blueprints).

DestructiveErrors • The two greatest and most destructive errors that we make in education, both are assumptions that are (a) erroneous (b) well-intentioned (c) widely-accepted (d) engrained in practices at all institutional levels and in all facets of organizations. • 1. With enough training,anyone can achieve excellence (or at least become highly competent) at almostanything. • 2. In every individual, the greatest room forgrowthand improvement will be in his or her area(s) of greatestweakness(es). • Neurologically under-invested and under-developed.

Optimal window Secondary Window Extent of Future Developmental Possibilities Vision 0 – 6 months 6 – 24 months The lack of visual stimuli entering the eyes will eventually cause permanent blindness in a perfectly healthy eye. (Primary visual cortex must process incoming visual information.) Motor develop-ment 0 – 24 months 2 – 4 years Capabilities rapidly decrease with advancing age. (Functionality of the cerebellum/motor cortex for balance/coordination can be lost). Auditory develop-ment 0 – 6 months 6 – 18 months Severe learning and language problems will result from CAPDs based on the lack of stimuli processed by the auditory cortex. Problems occur from the absence of any sounds to handle and/or distinguish. Language skills 0 – 24 months 2 – 5 years With the onset of puberty, “new language” mastery begins a sharp and typically uninterrupted decline. Reading skills 4 – 5 years old (girls) 6 – 8 years (boys) 7 – 12 years old (puberty) Learning to process symbolic language can occur throughout one’s lifetime. It becomes more difficult (1) with time, and (2) if there are only modest opportunities for auditory processing of the rich usages and varieties of ideas. Early drawing provides a foundation for languaging. Emotional develop-ment 0 – 24 months 2 – 4 years Screening events through one’s emotional filter becomes difficult; personal relationships are characterized by weak attachments that are easily terminated. (Similar to limbectomized mammals) A second language 0 – 5 years old 7 – 12 years old Learning a second language after puberty is far more challenging than language learning at any other prepubescent period. The “second” language will almost invariably be accompanied by an accent. Musical abilities 0 – 6 years old 7 – 12 years old Research suggests that early musical exposure enhances the development of spatial and mathematical skills. Beyond puberty, learning a musical instrument (particularly learning to read musical notation) is frequently as complicated as learning a new oral language.

Brain-considerate Classrooms: Strategies for Deep and Long-lasting Connections

Brain-considerate Learning: “PERC3S” • There are five BC elements that the human brain seeks while processing incoming stimuli for personal “meaning,” which makes the information “memorable” and worth remembering. • Patterns • Emotions • Relevance • Context, Content, and Cognitively-appropriate • Sense-making Patterns, emotions, relevance, context, content and sense-making are critical factors in driving (1) attention, (2) motivation, (3) learning, (4) memory formation, and (5) recall. Collectively, these factors serve as the primary criteria for long-term memory storage.to hot

Checklist for Brain-considerate Teaching • Patterns – Seeing and making organized connections • Emotions – Positive and effective use of human emotions; When the • brain enthusiastically presses the “Save” button (“That’s worth remembering!”); “Hope” – when students believe that success is possible/probable, they will try harder/work with rather than against the teacher to reach the pre-established relevant learning goals. • Relevance – Creating cognitive bridges between stored personal memories and a present event; Connecting the knownwith the new; Making a personal connection, “What does this mean to me?” • Context, Content, and Cognitively-appropriate – Is the target information within a “frame” that is realistic to the learner? Is the information cognitively accessible? (“Zone of Proximal Dev.” vs. “Zone of Performance Deficit” or Potential Disaster”?) • Sense-making – The concept is understood; “I know what this is, how it works, how it is used, where it is, why it is important, when to apply it,” etc.

The Ten Worst Human Fears (in the U.S.) 10. Dogs 9. Loneliness 8. Flying 7. Death 6. Sickness 5. Deep water/drowning 4. Financial problems 3. Insects and bugs 2. Heights 1. Speaking in front of a group

X + Y = 2X + 2Y = 3X + 4Y = 5X + 3Y = 4X + Y = 3Y + 4X =

Caps and Umbrellas

Neuroscience of Learning for Educational Organizations