What is “brain-compatible” teaching, and how does it apply to social and emotional learning? With findings about the brain being publicized at conferences and in the mass media, educators naturally want to know how they can apply this new knowledge as they struggle to bring a generation of young people to higher standards. Because of my long interest in learning, and because I have participated in several invitational meetings at which educators and neuroscientists discussed the use of brain research in schools, I address this timely, fascinating question here, even though the answer is not completely clear.
Copyright ©2003 by Corwin Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from EQ + IQ = Best Leadership Practices for Caring and Successful Schools, edited by Maurice J. Elias, Harriett Arnold, and Cynthia Steiger Hussey. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. www.corwinpress.com.
Before considering how brain-based education applies to social and emotional learning, I had better start with the broader question of what educational practices, if any, can be justified by what is known about the brain. Below briefly, are capsule views of consultants who specialize in interpreting brain science to educators.
David Sousa (1998) argued that “what we are discovering about learning from brain research has the potential for making the greatest contribution to our practice in recent memory” (p. 52). Referring to new findings about memory, emotion, and sensory engagement, he advised that “Classrooms should be busy, interactive environments… . At appropriate intervals, students should be standing up, moving around, and discussing with each other what they are learning while they are learning it” (p. 35).
Renate Nummela Caine and Geoffrey Caine (1997, p. 19) listed 12 interrelated learning principles (such as “The search for meaning is innate” and “Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes”), which they formulated from a wide range of sources, especially brain research. Based on these principles, they advised that educational experiences should have three qualities: relaxed alertness, orchestrated immersion in complex experience, and active processing. The richness of their ideas cannot be conveyed in a few words, but in general, the style of education they advocate is substantially different from conventional practice. Brain-based teaching is “more learner centered because genuine student interest is at its core … with experiences that approach the complexity of real life” (p. 219).
Another popular consultant, Susan Kovalik (1994), developed a complete model of teaching, called Integrated Thematic Instruction (ITI). The curriculum in an ITI classroom is organized around a yearlong theme that incorporates key concepts. As much as possible, meaningful content is learned in real-life situations. Students are provided many choices. As they work on teacher-planned “inquiries,” they are encouraged to practice life skills, such as integrity, curiosity, and responsibility.
Eric Jensen, who has written several books about the brain, made numerous practical suggestions for Teaching With the Brain in Mind (1998). Like Kovalik, he recommended that students be given choices and that curriculum content be engaging and relevant (“make it personal: relate to family, neighborhood, city, life stages, love, health, and so on,” p. 48). He advocated physical movement, music, and extensive use of color, emphasizing the importance of emotions in learning.
Based on her study of brain research, Pat Wolfe (1997) called for an enriched learning environment. She defined this as “stimulating and challenging, and in which the students’ minds are actively involved” (pp. 23–24). She noted that projects are “a rich source of both learning and motivation” (pp. 31–32) and recommended simulation, role-playing, and learning through direct experience.
Biologist Robert Sylwester (1995) seldom prescribes classroom practice on the basis of the brain science he explains. “Current brain theory and research now provide only the broad tantalizing outlines of what the school of the future might be,” he wrote (p. 41). But he has offered hints about the kinds of school programs he considers appropriate when he advocates “thematic curricula” and advised taking advantage of “our brain’s strengths” (such “cooperating and conceptualizing,” rather than “things that require solitary sustained attention and precision,” p. 141). He also described the ideal teaching environment as “continually changing and challenging” and teachers as “facilitators who help to shape a stimulating social environment” (p. 139).
These well-informed consultants have different backgrounds and points of view, but they appear to have quite similar conceptions of desirable educational practice. They say brain research shows that curriculum content should be interesting and relevant and that students should learn cooperatively through active engagement in realistic activities. These recommendations are generally consistent with a style of schooling characterized for years as progressive, as opposed to traditionalist.
Some observers might describe their conclusions not as objective science but as a continuation of a long-standing commitment of leaders of American education to a romantic vision of schooling (Ravitch, 1983). They might even suggest that, as members of a single-minded professional community, the consultants were already committed to the progressive philosophy before they encountered brain research, and so found what they were looking for.
I know each of these consultants personally, and I respect their intellectual honesty. But as an educator long committed to innovative ideas, I recognize the possibility of bias in my own perspective. One thing we have learned from cognitive neuroscience is the fallibility of our minds. Michael Gazzaniga (1998) stated flatly,
Our mind and brain accomplish the amazing feat of constructing our past and, in so doing, create the illusion of self… . The interpreter, the last device in the information chain in our brain, reconstructs the brain events and in doing so makes telling errors of memory, perception, and judgment. (pp. 1–2)
Richard Restak (1994) added,
Our claims to be “logical” and “reasonable” often mask the operation of modular processes that are inaccessible to our awareness, and persuade us not on the basis of facts but by inducing in us seemingly incontrovertible feelings of certitude. (p. 53)
Optical illusions illustrate the way our brains try to make sense of incomplete sensory information by filling in for what is missing.
As I studied explanations of brain functioning in recent years, I have struggled with the question of what they mean for education, determined not to overstate the implications. Psychologist John Bruer (1997) advised educators not to concern themselves with the physical brain at this point but to focus instead on cognitive science, which he says has more immediate relevance to classroom practice. Many brain researchers take a similar position. Scientists at an invitational conference I attended, held in 1996 under auspices of the Education Commission of the States, recommended that educators not rush to put new research findings into practice. And although I have talked directly with relatively few neuroscientists, I believe most would probably refrain from endorsing innovative practices supposedly based on their work. Nevertheless I find myself in agreement with the consultants quoted earlier who say brain science, although incomplete, already demonstrates the importance of novelty, interaction, and personal involvement in learning experiences.
Specifically, consider a few statements about brain organization and functioning that can now be made with reasonable assurance:
1. The brain is modular. As a result of millions of years of evolution, the human brain “is not a unified neural network that supports general problem solving” (Gazzaniga, 1998, p. 174). It is a collection of learning systems nested together to allow for specific responses to specific challenges. Although researchers do not yet understand how this decentralized system works together to give us consciousness, they have concluded that the brain is not organized hierarchically with functions controlled from a central module (Restak, 1994). Every brain is highly complex, a network of numerous specific capabilities.
2. Brains change physically in response to experience. Although human brains are structurally similar, each brain is different, partly because of genetic inheritance and partly because brain organization changes, to some extent, in response to experience. Throughout life, but especially in the very young, brains form more synaptic connections in complex than in unstimulating environments (Diamond & Hopson, 1998).
3. Emotions play a crucial role in learning. The brain processes many inputs simultaneously in multiple ways. We pay immediate attention to, and we recall more readily, experiences that have strong emotional overtones (Damasio, 1994; LeDoux, 1996). Our personal decisions are influenced by our emotions, often unconsciously.
4. Elaboration strengthens memory. Memories are not stored whole but are reconstructed by recombining aspects of the original experience. Daniel Schacter (1996), a neuroscientist specializing in memory, wrote that “our recollections are largely at the mercy of our elaborations; only those aspects of experience that are targets of elaborative encoding processes have a high likelihood of being remembered subsequently” (p. 56).
We cannot deduce a theory of education from these statements alone. However, like the consultants I quoted earlier, I see findings of this nature as highly consistent with what I know from other sources, including cognitive science, educational research, and my own experience as a teacher and an observer of education. In schools I have visited, I have seen students doing intellectually demanding activities meaningful to them. They were typically in settings where they were expected to show initiative, prepare plans, and actively search for and use information on a topic that aroused their curiosity. I am confident that those students, because of their emotional involvement and their elaborated experiences, will remember and understand the subjects they were studying much better than the many other students I have seen who exhibited no personal connection with, or sense of purpose for, their schooling.
Of course, active engagement in itself does not guarantee that students will learn what they need to know. Productive learning depends on other factors as well (Brandt, 1998), including the nature of the tasks students are assigned and teachers’ ability to inspire, explain, demonstrate, inquire, and offer feedback. A report from the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (1999) summarized research on learning as follows:
• Lessons should be tailored to what students already know, deepening and expanding their understanding.
• Curriculum should be designed to help students learn with understanding rather than to memorize disconnected facts and skills.
• Students should get feedback that encourages them to revise and improve the quality of their thinking.
• The setting should create a sense of community that encourages high-quality learning.
To summarize, I am convinced that, when combined with knowledge from other sources, information about brain functioning is consistent with educators’ experience that students learn well when they have opportunities to make choices and work actively with others on purposeful projects.
How does this general concept of “brain-compatible” teaching apply to social and emotional learning? Some of the answers can be found by reviewing information about the brain and social and emotional development. As one of their brain–mind principles, Renate Caine and Geoffrey Caine (1997) noted that “the brain is a social brain” and explained it this way:
Throughout our lives, our brain/minds change in response to their engagement with others—so much so that individuals must always be seen to be integral parts of larger social systems. Indeed, part of our identity depends on establishing community and finding ways to belong. Learning, therefore, is profoundly influenced by the nature of the social relationships within which people find themselves. (pp. 104–105)
Restak (1994) explained that this is so thanks to the growth and enhanced functioning of the frontal lobes. “No other creature,” he continued,
including the higher primates, comforts the injured or the bereaved, because other creatures cannot imaginatively identify with another. Prehistoric man was also singularly lacking in this capacity to put himself in another’s place. With the development of this capacity within our species … came the capacity for imaginative identification with others. Societies and organized communities followed. (p. 108)
Brain researchers’ views suggest that when discussing education, limitations on the nature and extent to which changes can be effected in students are kept in the forefront. For example, Restak’s comments are in connection with his description of how injury to the frontal lobes impedes social interaction. “How curious and sobering it is to realize that our most advanced and evolved mental activities depend on unimpaired functioning of a specific part of the brain.” Asked by a high school teacher about students “whose attention span, motivation, autonomy, and emotion appear to be diminished,” Restak mused, “Is it possible that many of these children are being deprived directly or indirectly of adequate frontal development because of environmental deficiencies? … This question is intriguing but unanswerable” (p. 108). Contending with such problems, teachers can do only what is possible under classroom conditions to make up for what family and community may not have provided.
In addition to underestimating how damage or neglect affect students’ social skills, we may have overestimated how much of behavior is learned. Gazzaniga (1998), known for his work with Roger Sperry on right–left brain patients, now takes a decidedly evolutionary perspective, asserting that many brain functions are not, as Jean Piaget claimed, learned through experience. “Instead, so-called learned responses reflect continuing maturation of the brain. We don’t learn to talk, as most think. We start to talk when the brain is good and ready to say something” (p. 58). Gazzaniga seems to take delight in being provocative, but his statement accurately reflects the growing influence of evolutionary psychology. If, as evolutionists contend, many aspects of brain functioning are primarily genetic rather than constructed from experience, educators will find it advantageous to work in tune with the brain’s built-in capabilities. “We are a finely honed machine that has amazing capacities for learning and inventiveness,” Gazzaniga wrote,
Yet these capacities were not picked up at a local bookstore or developed from everyday experience. The abilities to learn and think come with our brains. The knowledge we acquire with these devices results from interactions with our culture. But the devices come with the brain, just as brakes come with a car. (p. 59)
Our understanding of emotions has also deepened greatly in recent decades. Antonio Damasio (1994), for example, showed that, contrary to what might be assumed, emotions play an essential role in such mental activities as planning, monitoring, and making personal decisions. These functions are carried out in partnership between the amygdala, which plays a key role in processing of emotions (LeDoux, 1996) and the frontal lobes, which mature very late and which, as Restak observed, are home to the most human of all mental activities and personal and social decision making.
The intimate relationship scientists have discovered between emotions and the decisions that shape our interactions with others shows the appropriateness of the term social and emotional learning. This insight, along with the more general observations about brain-compatible schooling I made earlier, lead me to offer three suggestions:
1. Social and emotional learning should be conducted in accord with what is known about the capabilities and limitations of the human brain. Stanislaus Dehaene (1997), a French mathematician turned cognitive neuroscientist, referring to complaints on both sides of the Atlantic about poor student performance in mathematics, believes that “our school system is not to blame. Innumeracy has much deeper roots: Ultimately it reflects the human brain’s struggle for storing arithmetical knowledge” (p. 138). Based on his knowledge of the brain, Dehaene advised that “bombarding the juvenile brain with abstract axioms is probably useless” (p. 241). He noted approvingly that in the United States, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is now deemphasizing the rote learning of facts and procedures and is focusing instead on teaching an intuitive familiarity with numbers. Describing a successful program for underprivileged children, he said, “The results are remarkable … in fact, most children are only too pleased to learn mathematics if only one shows them the playful aspects before the abstract symbolism” (pp. 142–143).
Similarly, social and emotional learning should be taught in accord with what is known about brain functioning. For example, because the brain apparently stores verbal and conceptual knowledge differently from procedural knowledge (such as swimming ability), teachers who wish to teach behavior must give students practice in the necessary skills rather than depending on words alone.
Perhaps the most important insights into human behavior coming from recent brain research are those explaining how emotions affect our thoughts and actions. Discussing implications of his research, Damasio (1994) observesd the following:
Educational systems might benefit from emphasizing unequivocal connections between current feelings and predicted future outcomes, and that children’s overexposure to violence, in real life, newscasts, or through audiovisual fiction, downgrades the value of emotions and feelings in the acquisition and deployment of adaptive social behavior. (p. 247)
Educators might protest that this should be of concern to parents and society in general more than to schools, but Damasio may have been thinking of educators’ role as advocates for children and as educators of current and future parents. With increased recognition of the pivotal importance of nutrition, emotional states, and other aspects of nurturing in the earliest years, it seems clear that our society must find ways to give better support to parents of young children, especially those most in need.
2. To understand themselves better and to manage their own behavior, students should know the capabilities and limitations of their brains. Not only should teachers take brain functioning into account in their teaching; they should also help students to understand their own biological natures. For example, knowing that feelings are the tangible indication of emotions that are sometimes otherwise unconscious may help students learn to recognize and deal with emotional upheaval.
Students also should be helped to understand the fascinating relationship between emotions and decision making. Rather than seeing emotions as opposed to rational thought, as the two have been portrayed in the past, they can learn to make use of their emotions when making personal and social decisions. Damasio (1994) cautioned that
Knowing about the relevance of feelings in the process of reason does not suggest that reason is less important than feelings, that it should take a backseat to them or that it should be less cultivated. On the contrary, taking stock of the pervasive role of feelings may give us a chance of enhancing their positive effects and reducing their potential harm. Specifically, without diminishing the orienting value of normal feelings, one would want to protect reason from the weakness that abnormal feelings or the manipulation of normal feelings can introduce in the process of planning and deciding. (p. 146)
Other knowledge about the brain may encourage students to be more tolerant of others. For example, students should know that human memory is unreliable and that when information is incomplete (as it often is) our brains make sense of situations by filling in what seems to be missing. Gazzaniga (1998) warned,
Nowhere is our automatic brain in more trouble than in recalling the past. The interpreter, working from noisy data, compounds the problem by embellishing on what it does recall. The story remembered on one day becomes part of the memory for the next time it is told. Soon begins a rich narrative about past events. The narrative most likely becomes less accurate and much more elaborate in its detail. The old adage that so and so just can’t see it, can’t see he has certain negative features in his personality, is true. He has weaved another tale about himself. (p. 148)
Knowing that all human beings are subject to such distortion should help students recognize that because their perceptions may not be completely accurate, they should try to understand other points of view and negotiate their differences if necessary.
Ironically, the success of efforts to educate children about emotions depends greatly on the students’ emotional state. Neuroscientist Candace Pert (1997) explained as follows:
In order for the brain not to be overwhelmed by the constant deluge of sensory input, some sort of filtering system must enable us to pay attention to what our body-mind deems the most important pieces of information and to ignore the others… . Our emotions (or the psychoactive drugs that take over their receptors) decide what is worth paying attention to. (p. 146)
3. Like other school subjects, social and emotional learning will be more effective when students are engaged in personally meaningful activities. As I admitted earlier, advice to make instruction “personally meaningful” is probably far too broad to be helpful. Nevertheless, it seems apparent that human brains are designed to ignore what seems irrelevant and focus attention on whatever seems more pertinent. Given the way in which strong emotions can dominate people’s sense of what is most pressing at any given moment, it is difficult to justify an educational system that does not address students’ emotions explicitly and intelligently. This suggests that instruction in social and emotional learning should use interest-enhancing methods such as stories, projects, simulation, and role-playing as much as possible. A particularly intriguing approach is problem-based learning (Torp & Sage 1998), which was first used in medical schools but has also been used successfully in K–12 education. The method depends on development or selection of real or simulated problems to teach curriculum content. Students acquire the intended knowledge and skill in the course of analyzing and attacking the problem from a variety of points of view.
Knowing the brain’s complexity, and aware that much about it remains mysterious, I have nevertheless offered broad guidelines for education in general and for the conduct of instruction in social and emotional learning. Educational leaders, as well as front-line practicing educators, need to be guided in their work by empirical findings, but they cannot wait for absolute clarification; they must do what they can with what they have now. Unlike researchers, educators must make specific applications of knowledge to large numbers of students day in and day out, drawing on a variety of sources in what are often unpredictable and confusing circumstances.
When we act on partial knowledge, we run the risk of making mistakes, but educators cannot avoid that quandary; we will never know all we need to know. That does not excuse irresponsible or uninformed behavior, but it does mean that, armed with the best available knowledge, we have an obligation to move forward. Brain research, albeit imperfect, is an important part of that knowledge. At this critical time, teachers need to understand and attend to their students’ social and emotional needs, their cognitive knowledge and skills, and the way these areas are intertwined. These areas of human functioning are the common province of the same brain, and so what we know about the brain applies in common to these areas. Faced with many competing demands, administrators and policymakers need to support social and emotional learning with training materials, instructional time, continuous professional development, and enthusiastic leadership. As they do these things, all concerned can be reasonably confident that their actions are consistent with current knowledge about the human brain and that we will be providing students with the best academic, social, and emotional learning experiences possible.
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