The Impact of Modern Neuroscience on Contemporary Teaching

By John R Frew

Since the 1990s, there has been an explosion in the awareness of the impact of the development and function of the brain on schooling. The availability of techniques like magnetic resonance imaging allows scientists to examine how the brain functions with increasing accuracy; it is at the core of neuroscience and, increasingly, psychiatry. The results have allowed educators to improve their approach to teaching and learning, but these ideas habitually clash with the traditional structure of educational theory, which is underpinned by cognitive practices.

This new information can assist teachers in dealing not only with a students learning but also in understanding the causes of severely dysfunctional behavior and techniques for managing behaviors that impact on the learning of individuals and their peers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Dec 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524520502

John R Frew

John R. Frew has worked in public education for over forty years, the last twenty-four as a school principal. In 1988, he established a unit for students with emotional disturbances and severe behaviours. Two years later, based on the success of the unit, he became the founding principal of the first school in New South Wales, Australia, dedicated to dealing with students with severe conduct disorder and oppositional defiance. John has written numerous books and programs on behaviour management. He has published numerous articles nationally and internationally. He has also presented at numerous conferences across Australia and internationally. He has also had a successful career in sport, which produced two books, The Art of Coaching Kids and Training Drills for All Team Sports. In his time in coaching, John wrote two columns for local and national papers.

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Copyright © 2017 by John R Frew.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016920726

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-2048-9

                Softcover        978-1-5245-2049-6

                eBook             978-1-5245-2050-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 12/22/2016

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CONTENTS

1.   Learning in the Modern Classroom

Since the 1960s or thereabouts, the approach to education has been one in which teaching is done to the student. Little or no concern has been given to the neurological state of the child in that classroom. This essay discusses the fundamental need for survival and how it impacts on classroom learning.

2.   Human Needs and Drives

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has remained unchallenged in the psychological literature. However, his approach lacks reference to the evolutionary structure of the brain. This paper presents a new model of human needs and drives that explains behaviour and clarifies the need for satiation of survival needs before cognitive learning can take place.

3.   Creation of Feelings

The impact of emotion on learning is at the heart of the position taken throughout these essays. This one examines the evolution of the sense of self through feelings and the impact abuse has on that sense.

4.   Dealing with Stress

Stress is the result of being dissatisfied with the current state of homeostatic equilibrium—that is, being satiated. However, in some cases, the threat to survival can be so great that behaviour becomes extreme. This essay examines the impact of extreme stress on normal development, particularly from childhood abuse, and techniques to address this stress.

5.   Belief: It’s a Matter of Survival

Belief is the narrative of emotion. Beliefs are the words that express feelings. They reflect our sense of self. As such, any attack on our beliefs is an attack on our self, and so the natural response is to defend our self. The potential intensity this defence can take is seen in the current tragedy of the Middle East conflict. This essay traces the evolution of beliefs and their power.

6.   Faulty Beliefs

The previous essay pointed out the power of beliefs. This essay discusses how faulty beliefs impact on behaviour. This includes an examination of Ellis’s faulty beliefs as well as those currently adopted by many education theorists.

7.   Mirror Neurons

Mirror neurons have recently been discovered, and the significance of this discovery is profound for educators. Their existence explains how we are equipped to learn not only through experience but also by observation. The implication for teachers and parents is that what we do is just as important as what we say.

8.   The Second Chance: The Teenage Brain

It is now accepted that the brain develops from the back to the frontal lobes. This process has two beginnings: the first at birth and the second at the onset of puberty. It is this second period that has importance for teachers and parents, as the awkward behaviour of teenagers is not their fault but part of them becoming independent adults.

9.   The Core: Developing a Sense of Self

This essay examines the development of a child’s sense of self. The essay outlines the healthy process that most children experience but particularly focuses on those formed in abusive families. The essay examines the types of abuse and the impact they have on the child.

10.   The Development of a Sense of Shame

Shame is a powerful emotion that protects us from acting contrary to our set of beliefs. When we do so, we feel ashamed about what we did. Children from abusive backgrounds have a sense of shame, not about what they do but what they believe they are. This has a profound effect on these students’ ability to learn.

11.   Acting to Protect Yourself

Children who have a sense of toxic shame about their sense of self will act to protect this feeling of disgrace from others. This essay outlines the motives and techniques of protecting a sense of shame and healthy ways of acting to learn to live with imperfection. This essay offers an alternative explanation of addiction.

12.   Toxic Resilience, Stress, and School Leadership

Modern management of a school is a highly stressful occupation, and those who rise to take a leadership role by necessity have strong resilience. This essay describes the insidious impact constant exposure to high levels of stress has on those individuals who have succeeded in functioning in such environments.

13.   Emotional Considerations in the Modern Classroom

The need for students to engage in the content of the lesson is crucial for effective learning to take place. Unfortunately, to engage in the lesson, students must disengage in other interests. The teacher must ensure that the classroom is safe and secure, understand and deal with students who may be suffering from threats outside the classroom, and somehow make the current lesson worth the child’s attention.

14.   Learning: If It’s Not About the Brain, What Is It About?

A theme throughout the first section of this book is the importance of understanding the function of the brain and how this serves individuals, especially in learning. This essay examines the importance of neuroscience to the understanding of learning and critiques existing approaches made by many theorists.

15.   Three Shades of Grey … Matter!

This essay examines two issues: the significance of each student’s journey to Maslow’s self-actualization and the impact individual students’ dysfunctional behaviour can have on that journey.

16.   The Other Half of Learning

The leading theory for the improvement of educational outcomes has been a concentration on the improvement of the teacher’s set of skills. This belief assumes that learning is a passive activity for the student. This view has led to the development of a choir of conservative politicians and bureaucrats who chant the line that student failure only occurs because of poor teacher quality, and that struggling schools only need quality teachers. This essay investigates the contribution students make to learning outcomes.

17.   Creating Spock

Throughout these essays, there is a constant referral to the importance of the emotional content of lessons to be learned. This essay examines the modern shift to computerized learning and communication. This computer-based approach does offer a seductive promise of improved efficiency, but the cost is a loss of the influence emotional connection provides.

1

Learning in the Modern Classroom

Since the 1960s or thereabouts, the approach to education has been one in which teaching is done to the student. Little or no concern has been given to the neurological state of the child in that classroom. This essay discusses the fundamental need for survival and how it impacts on classroom learning.

Introduction

The education of children is central to humans’ success in evolutionary terms. No other species comes into the world as helpless and reliant as a human child. None takes so long to reach independence and maturity. Our success is underpinned by the development of that most exquisite organ: the brain. Its growth has addressed the problems of physical survival, social inclusion, and the ability to pose the ultimate questions of self-consciousness and purpose.

It is the ability to understand our world and pose abstract questions that sets humans apart. Other species have only one way of operating and will always do it that way. Humans have choices, and by understanding of the complexity of the world, we are able to respond in different ways to presenting situations.

However, this ability to choose is dependent particularly on the satisfaction of our more primitive needs, such as the instinct to survive physically and socially. If this is threatened, we, like all species, will address that threat. The survival drive takes precedence over the additional evolutionary development of cognition. This development in our species has taken place over thousands of years and is reflected in the evolution of each child as he or she progresses to maturity.

The brain functions that deal with threats are related to physical changes in the brain. At the base is the need to survive, which is linked to the early reptilian brain. The need to socialise resides in two more recent developments, the emotional limbic system and the cerebral cortex—the part of the brain that allows us to examine ourselves and our world in detail. The cerebral cortex represents the last stage of our development, and it is the part that formal educators focus on.

Schools teach theories and ideas that are dealt with through the functions of the brain that have evolved to understand these concepts. These are not directly linked to survival. However, if a student does come under stress, his or her instinctive drives are ignited, and energy and attention are taken away from learning those theories and ideas.

Although the brain has a division that separates each process, the processes are not independent. They are cumulative, and each is built on the satiation of the drive that underpins it. This cognitive evolution is paralleled by our ability to create and utilise tools, from the primitive flint knife to the most sophisticated spacecraft that has carried us to the moon. The tools support our development by providing an advantage for us to satisfy our needs: knives to prepare food, fashion to attract partners, and the printing press to disseminate information. Each type of tool supports our drive for safety and security.

A recently developed series of tools have allowed us to examine a living, working brain. These instruments gather insight and information to help us better satisfy our needs. This new information is particularly valued in the satisfaction of complex, abstract problems.

Developments in education theory, as in all psychological and social pursuits, have been limited since the 1960s, when academic acceptance depended on statistical evidence. It was the time when new ideas had to be tested, and because of limited access to the workings of the brain, all that could be tested was observed behaviour. Cognition-ruled statistical analysis validated the theories, experiments, and hypotheses that were constructed. To test the validity of any approach to education, research had to be framed in such a way that the input delivered would produce a predicted outcome. This was then tested for proof. Teaching became something you did to students to make them perform in a predicted manner.

This approach to education has underpinned teacher training and practise. Despite some success, there continue to be marked areas of abject failure in our current best practises, especially in resource-poor communities. The current practises are insufficient because they do not incorporate the recently demonstrated importance of a whole-brain approach to learning, and they downplay the significance of emotions in all forms of learning. This is understandable, as subconscious and unconscious cognitive processes have been hard to measure. Yet with the ability to now observe brain processes, it is obvious that success in abstract, school-centred learning is reliant on the support of the brain’s under-structure.

It is emotions that communicate to the brain the circumstances of our overall well-being. Remember that if we are physically threatened, we experience—we feel—fear, so we do not hear the words of the teacher. If we sense we are being rejected by a significant other, we suffer feelings of anxiety or alarm; we don’t require an intellectual explanation. Feelings convey our sense of personal security. This emotional response is primitive and significant. It has a powerful consequence for a student’s learning in the classroom.

Learning has an inherently emotional component that is tied to our human needs. It is not a passive or receptive activity. It is not done to you; it is a personal activity. It must be understood that students learn every time and all the time. Their match with presenting environmental conditions determines what type of learning takes place. In schools, curriculum almost exclusively requires a specific, abstract type of learning. Therefore, specific environmental conditions must be present for each child.

As we learn all the time, the brain must change all the time. Therefore, learning requires change to the brain. This paper examines the processes involved in learning in reference to a new understanding of the brain’s functions and activities. What will be clearly demonstrated is that it is the emotional atmosphere in the environment that determines what learning takes place.

A Definition of Learning

The presentation of a suitable definition for learning is difficult. We all intuitively know what it is; we do it all the time. But to describe the exact process is a challenge. Is it the acquisition of facts or the application of those facts? Whatever approach we take to answer the question, the answer always involves memory, but it is a particular definition of memory that best articulates what is meant by learning. This is working memory, our ability to gain and integrate pieces of evidence into an existing scheme of information and then, through comprehension and reasoning, apply that information in response to presenting situations to achieve a conscious or unconscious goal. Therefore, the definition of learning is the establishment and modification of working memory.

Individuals use their working memory for their optimum advantage; that is, to satisfy their needs. If children are hungry, they will remember how to get fed—initially by crying so carers provide food. And then, through evolutionary modification to their working memory, they just go to the fridge and help themselves. If a violent father arrives home drunk and is likely to attack them, they will learn avoidance lessons to maximise their chance of survival.

The brain, the mechanism of working memory, doesn’t make value judgements. It just serves the individual’s needs. Learning is personal. In schools, however, learning is anything but personal. It is prescribed by curriculum. If it is to be successfully adopted by the student as personal, the teacher’s task is to produce an environment where that student needs to learn the lesson presented. The following two considerations must be taken into account when structuring learning tasks:

1. The need to understand abstract ideas is not a human priority. Physical and social survival is a much more powerful drive and must be satisfied before cognitive learning can take place.

2. Learning in modern curriculum is cognitive and requires the use of specific neural networks. These networks are only available when physical and social needs are satisfied.

The Brain

Before we discuss the process of memory formation in detail, a brief description of the brain and its evolution will help us understand the premise this essay is based on. The explanation provided takes a model developed by American neuroscientist Bruce Perry. His model divides the brain into four sections, each of which reflects functions that support our evolution as a species and the sequential maturation of each individual.

It is important to point out that the description of brain functions provided here is grossly simplified. The processes are massively complex, both in potential and detail, but the broad descriptions of the underpinning conditions required for learning are accurate.

The lowest, most primitive level is the brain stem. This area controls the basic survival functions for each of us; things like heartbeat, blood chemistry, reflexes, and the like are regulated by neural processes situated here. The brain stem is referred to as the reptilian brain and is fundamental to all species.

The next level is the midbrain, which manages things like movement, balance, and proprioception or awareness of self in space—things that equip us to move about in our environment. The midbrain and brain stem functions are common to most mammals. Their task is to oversee