The Twelve Principles for Brain-Based Learning

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The Twelve Principles for Brain-Based Learning
Sonoma County Department of Education

Principle One: The brain is a parallel processor.

Principle Two: Learning engages the entire physiology.

Principle Three: The search for meaning is innate.

Principle Four: The search for meaning occurs through "patterning".

Principle Five: Emotions are critical to patterning.

Principle Six: Every brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts and wholes.

Principle Seven: Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception.

Principle Eight: Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes.

Principle Nine: We have at least two types of memory -- a spatial memory system and a set of systems for rote learning.

Principle Ten: The brain understand and remembers best when facts and skills are embedded in natural spatial memory.

Principle Eleven: Learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat.

Principle Twelve: Each brain is unique.



One Principle One: The brain is a parallel processor.
Thoughts, intuitions, pre-dispositions, and emotions operate simultaneously and interact with other modes of information. Good teaching takes this into consideration. That's why we talk about the teacher as an orchestrator of learning.



Two Principle Two: Learning engages the entire physiology.
This means that the physical health of the child -- the amount of sleep, the nutrition -- affects the brain. So do moods. We are physiologically programmed, and we have cycles that have to be honored. An adolescent who does not get enough sleep one night will not absorb much new information the next day. Fatigue will affect the brain's memory.



Three Principle Three: The search for meaning is innate.
This means that we are naturally programmed to search for meaning. This principle is survival oriented. The brain needs and automatically registers the familiar while simultaneously searching for and responding to additional stimuli. What does this mean for education? It means that the learning environment needs to provide stability and familiarity. Provision must be made to satisfy the hunger for novelty, discovery, and challenge. At the same time lessons need to be exciting and meaningful and offer students an abundance of choices.

Marian Diamond's work is groundbreaking in the sense that she demonstrates that animals that were in an enriched environment, that is, they had lighted cages, more attention, a chance to play in the fields or jump over hurdles, showed a greater amount of brain cell growth. When the brains of these rats were compared with those of rats that had been in dark cages, had been isolated, and had not had the opportunity to engage in play, the rats from the enriched environment showed cortical changes. They had a larger number of glial cells and also a greater number of connections.

We want to know what things mean to us. In education one of the things we have to allow for is for children to have rich experiences and then give them time and opportunities to make sense of their experiences. They have to have a chance to reflect, to see how things relate. One of the richest sources of learning from the point of view of the brain is the learning that is available to us in these experiences.



Four Principle Four: The search for meaning occurs through "patterning."
Patterning refers to the organization and categorization of information. The brain resists having meaningless patterns imposed upon it. By "meaningless" we mean isolated and unrelated pieces of information. When the brain's natural capacity to integrate information is evoked in teaching, vast amounts of seemingly unrelated or random information and activities can be presented and assimilated. The brain tries to make sense of the information by reducing it to familiar patterns.

Patterning is everywhere. We want to impose our patterns on what we see, and breaking patterns is very difficult. It's as if we spend the first few years as an open system taking in information and experiences and drawing conclusions, and then the rest of our lives we go around proving that what we learned is in fact so.

The ideal process in learning is to present information in a way that allows the brain to extract patterns rather than attempt to impose them. The brain is capable of taking in enormous amounts of information when that information is related in a way so the brain can pattern appropriately.

The ideas behind thematic teaching and integrated curriculum are based on this principle of looking for patterns and seeing interrelated patterns. One topic can be related to all kinds of different topics, and when we do this, the brain tends to remember many more things. This is a way to teach science, literature and social studies -- to bring them together and teach them meaningfully. Patterning is behind that.



Five Principle Five: Emotions are critical to patterning.
One of the things I would like to erase is this notion of the affective domain, the cognitive domain, and the psychomotor domain. We have been taught that for years even though the evidence from the brain research indicates that this is not the case. In the brain you can't separate out emotion from cognition. It is an interacting web of factors. Everything has some emotion to it. In fact, many brain researchers now believe there is no memory without emotion. Emotions are what motivate us to learn, to create. They are in our moods. They are our passion. They are a part of who we are as human beings. We need to understand more about them and accept them.

One of the problems I have with cognitive psychology is that it tries to explain the role of emotions while adhering to a very traditional scientific model: take it apart, look at the pieces and they will tell you what the whole is about. Try to do that with concepts like love or compassion.

The other thing that is important in terms of the emotions is that we support each other. We are social creatures. We need each other, and we need social activities. When students in the class are more interested in what Johnny is doing tonight or what Mary is wearing, they are acting out of their social nature. The notion of a community of learners and communities in schools working with each other and learning about communication is very critical. The notion of cooperative learning fits here. We should become skilled at these things because they are innate drives in us. But we need to manage them better.



Six Principle Six: Every brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts and wholes.
We have visited several neuroscientists across the country to discuss our twelve principles with them. One of the things we found was that they were very hesitant to speak with educators because they were frightened of what we would do with the information. Educators had gone wild with the left brain/right brain research. They had based entire consulting firms on it. But to these neuroscientists we had greatly oversimplified it. So as we went back over the research, we said, "Yes, there is something to the hemispheric theory." However, the real message for us as educators is that we need to engage both sides, which in real life we do anyway. As educators, we want learners to use both the left and right hemispheres; we want whole brain strategies. So the left brain/right brain doctrine has some meaning, but it is most useful as a metaphor for the fact that the brain processes parts and wholes simultaneously.
Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain, by Renate Caine.



Seven Principle Seven: Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception.
Think about this room. What are the peripheral messages inherent in a room such as this one? What are the messages about how you behave? The peripherals play an important role. Children learn from everything. Everything goes into the brain. In the early years they literally become their experiences. Therefore the environment is very important, and if they learn something in the classroom and never use it outside the classroom, then that learning, those connections, stop there. In other societies, children are immersed in learning in the school, in the home, in the community. Their knowledge is used and is expanded upon. They interact with each other in this rich learning environment.



Eight Principle Eight: Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes.
We learn much more than we ever consciously understand. Most of the signals that are peripherally perceived enter the brain without our awareness and interact on unconscious levels. This is why we say that learners become their experience and remember what they experience, not just what they are told.

What we call "active processing" allows students to review how and what they've absorbed so they begin to take charge of their learning and of the development of personal meaning. Meaning is not always available on the surface. Meaning often happens intuitively in ways that we don't understand. So that, when we learn, we use both conscious and unconscious processes. In teaching, you may not reach a student immediately, but two years later he may be in another class and say, "I get it now." You are a part of that, but you are no longer present.



Nine Principle Nine: We have at least two types of memory -- a spatial memory system and a set of systems for rote learning.
The spatial memory system (or autobiographical system) does not need rehearsal and allows for instant memory of experiences. It is very important for educators to understand these two systems and how they work. In the taxon memory system, things are learned by rote. We memorize information, but that doesn't mean we can use the information. The taxon system has nothing to do with imagination or creativity. It conforms very readily to the information processing model of memory. With this system, students are motivated by reward and punishment; many trials are usually needed; and the brain is easily fatigued since there is stress on a limited number of brain cells. This is the model schools are based on. We have limited education to "programming" these taxon systems and "teaching to the test." Can you see why people would say that our educational system is based on teaching to the test (and forgetting it afterwards) is not very successful?.

The locale memory system is very global. It doesn't stress one particular area. When you experience something deeply meaningful, you're creating those new connections. Things go in all at once. The locale memory experiences register automatically. It is motivated by novelty, and it's always operating. You can't stop this system and turn on the taxon system by saying, "stop that and memorize this." Memorization is memorization, not learning.

Learning means that information is related and connected to the learner. If it's not, you have memorization, but you don't have learning. There are still things we have to memorize, things that need to be repeated. Multiplication tables are very useful, but we want to make sure that children understand the concept of multiplication.

The locale memory system puts it all together as a picture. You're not just seeing one piece at a time and adding it together like a mathematical formula and coming up with a whole. That's a big message of brain research: parts are contained in a whole, and the whole has parts. It sounds very simple, but it's not when you start developing lessons.
Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain, by Renate Caine.



Ten Principle Ten: The brain understand and remembers best when facts and skills are embedded in natural spatial memory.
The solution is to embed taxon learning by immersing learners in well-orchestrated, life-like, low-threat, high-challenge learning environments. We need to take the information off the blackboard, to make it come alive in the minds of learners, and to help them to make connections.



Eleven Principle Eleven: Learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat.
In the classroom, "downshifting" is seen as threat related to a sense of helplessness. It has implications for testing and for grading, for the notion of the teacher as the controller, for empowerment, for performance objectives. The learner must be engaged in learning. Not that we throw performance objectives or tests out, but we need to understand what we are doing to the human brain under these conditions.

I am doing some research on how certain conditions affect learners, and if you wonder about dropouts, I can give you a formula that will produce some dropouts: the teacher is in control; there are predetermined outcomes; the student is graded with little regard to feedback; and there are timelines on the activity. This will produce some students who will downshift, will dislike learning, and will be totally demotivated. On the other side, students who "ace" this process become test-taking experts.

The hippocampus, which is located just above your nose and above your ears in the center where they intersect, is part of the limbic system. It has proportionally more receptors for stress hormones than any other portion of the brain. It is also critical in forming new memories and is linked to the indexing function of the brain. It allows us to make connections, to link new knowledge with what is already in the brain. It is like a camera lens, and, under threat related to helplessness, it closes off. We then move back into well-entrenched behaviors. It opens up when we are challenged and are in a state of "relaxed alertness." When the learner is empowered and challenged, you begin to get the maximum possibility for connections. That is why the brain needs stability as well as challenge. If short term stability is lost, then long-term stability must be substituted.

Many children come to school downshifted because they come from an environment of threat. There is threat in the home -- threat related to abandonment of one form or another is probably the most destructive of all. Children from a stable home can take a little downshifting in school and are fine. Children that come from a home where there is instability and a sense of abandonment cannot take short-term downshifting. They need more stability in the classroom.

Relaxation techniques are the only thing we know that will reverse the stress hormones in the body which result from stress related to threat and accumulate over time. We need to stop the incredible treadmill that we are on. Rest is the basis of activity. Notice how fresh you feel after a vacation. We need to teach our children that learning takes time. And children need to understand their natural rhythms. We need an orderly environment. We need to understand ourselves and our own needs better. We need to acknowledge our need for ritual, for orderliness. Our own rhythms are very fundamental to who we are, and we need to work with them.



Twelve Principle Twelve: Each brain is unique.
This looks at learning styles and unique ways of patterning. We have many things in common, but we also are very, very different. We need to understand how we learn and how we perceive the world and to know that men and women see the world differently.

"http://www.talkingpage.org/artic011.html"

Improve Your Memory (3)

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"Improve Your Memory (3)!"
“Is it not Better to Learn to Learn?”

There are a great number of techniques to improve memory, but they tend to act on a particular type of memory only, whether through mnemonics, repetitions of the same stimulus, or the creation of concept maps (giving meaning to things that they do not necessarily have in order to learn them more easily).

Joseph Novak has devoted considerable study to concept maps (see Novak, 2003) who noticed a significant increase in the ability of high school physics students to resolve problems through the use of these concept maps. This work still lacks a brain imaging study to define the cerebral areas activated during these different processes. Nevertheless, it has been observed that different areas of the brain are activated, depending to whether the subject is a novice or not in the subject concerned.

Neurological studies are thus still needed to understand how memory works. Considerable individual diversities exist, and the same individuals will use their memory differently throughout the lifespan depending on their age.

The science has nevertheless confirmed the role played by physical exercise, the active use of the brain, and a well-balanced diet (including fatty acids), in developing memory and reducing the risk of degenerative diseases.

Questions relating to the use of memory in current teaching methods and, especially to the critical role played by memory in student evaluation and certification in many OECD education systems, will probably have to be reconsidered in the future in light of new neuroscientific discoveries. Many such programmes rely more on memory than comprehension. The question “Is it not better to learn to learn?” cannot be answered through neuroscience but it remains highly pertinent.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 121

Improve Your Memory (2)

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Improve Your Memory (2)!"
Only A few People Have Eidetic Memory

What about those people who have a visual, almost photographic memory, who are very good at memorising a long list of numbers drawn at random or capable of simultaneously playing several games of chess blindfolded? Researchers have come to attribute these performances to specialised ways of thinking, rather than to a specific type of visual memory.

DeGroot (1965) took an interest in the great chess masters, getting them to co-operate in experiments where the layout of the chessboard was briefly shown and these excellent players had then to recreate the layout of the pieces. They succeeded at this challenge perfectly, except when the layout shown had no chance of happening during a real game of chess.

The conclusion DeGroot drew was that the ability of the great players to recreate the layout of the chessboard was thus not due to visual memory, but rather to the capacity to mentally organize the information of a game that they knew extremely well. On this view, the same stimulus is perceived and understood differently depending on the depth of knowledge of the situation.

This work notwithstanding, some people do seem to possess an exceptional visual memory, which can keep an image practically intact. This is “Eidetic Memory”. Some people can, for example, spell out an entire page written in an unknown language seen only very briefly, as if they had taken a picture of the page. The eidetic image is not formed in the brain like a picture, however – it is not a reproduction but a construction. It takes time to form it and those with this type of memory must look at the image for at least three to five seconds to be able to examine each point. Once this image is formed in the brain, the subjects are able to describe what they saw as if they were looking at what they describe.

By contrast, normal subjects without eidetic memory are more hesitant in their description. It is interesting (and possibly unsettling) to know that a larger proportion of children than adults seem to possess an eidetic memory; it seems as if learning, or age, weakens this capacity (Haber and Haber, 1988). These researchers also showed that 2-15% of primary school children have an eidetic memory.

Leask and his colleagues (1969) found that verbalisation while observing an image interfered with the eidetic capture of the image, thus suggesting a possible line of explanation for the loss of eidetic memory with age. Kosslyn (1980) also sought to explain this negative correlation between visual memorisation and age. According to his studies, the explanation resides in the fact that adults can encode information using words whereas children have not yet finished developing their verbal aptitudes.

There is still lack of scientific evidence to confirm or contradict these explanations. Brain imaging studies on this are needed.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, pages 120 - 121

Improve Your Memory (1)

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“Improve Your Memory (1)!”
The Capacity to Forget is Necessary for Good Memorisation

Memory is an essential function in learning and is also the subject of rich fantasies and distortions. “Improve your memory!” “Increase your memory capacity!” “How to get an exceptional memory fast!” cry the marketing slogans for books and pharmaceutical products.

The slogans are pushed with increased insistence during examination time. Do we now know enough to understand the processes and to envisage the creation of products and methods that improve memorisation?

Do we need the same forms of memory today as was called for fifty or a hundred years ago in a world of different skills and professions? Can we talk of different memories – for instance, visual, lexical, or emotional? Do learning methods use the memory in the same way they did fifty years ago? These are relevant questions in this context.

In recent years, the understanding of memory has advanced. We now know that the memory does not respond only to the type of phenomenon and it is not located in only one part of the brain. However, contrary to one popular belief, memory is not infinite and this is because information is stored in neuronal networks, the number of which is itself finite (though enormous). No-one can hope to memorise the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Research has also found that the capacity to forget is necessary for good memorisation. On this, the case of a patient followed by the neuropsychologist Alexander Luri is enlightening: the patient had a memory that seemed to be infinite but, with no capacity to forget, was incapable of finding a steady job, unless it was as a “memory champion”.

It seems that the forgetting rate of children is the optimal rate to build up an efficient memory (Anderson, 1990).

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 120

Nature and Nurture of the Brain

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Nature and Nurture of the Brain

This could lead to downright disturbing interferences. Is it possible that we are born with genetic predispositions that affect the strength of connection tracts in our brains, and these in turn predetermine - predestine - our abilities for the rest of our lives?

The truth is quite different. Genetic predispositions are just that - tendencies that influence brain growth, not absolutes that dictate it. Indeed, it has routinely been found that the genetic features we are born with are likely to be responsible for about half of the differences between one individual and another - with the other half arising from genetic influences, which include environment, parenting, siblings, peers, school, and nutrition, to name but a few.

Comparative studies have been carried out of twins separated at birth, no-twins siblings (biological brothers and sisters), and adoptive siblings. Separated twins shared all genetic features but none their environmental influences; biological siblings share some of their genes and much of their environmental influences, and adoptive siblings share their environment but not genetic material.

Statistically, about half of the similarities among these groups can be accounted for their genetic backgrounds, and the remaining half cannot, and must be attributed to environment. Genetic predisposition is a tendency, but it not clearly a predestination. It is like that brain pathways are influenced in equal measures by nature and by nurture.

Again, the effect may be quite indirect. Studies in identical twins are often interpreted strictly in terms of genes and brains, but of course the twins share body types, hormone levels, visual acuity, an countless other variables, all of which affect the way the world treats them. How a child gets along in school is influenced by their height, weight, athleticism, skin color; and how the child get along will certainly influence his or her mental makeup. This is one reason that some scientists find claims of inheritance of cognitive skills and talents to be only weakly supported.

Moreover, brain pathways may underlie the entire diverse spectrum of individual abilities. These pathways, influenced by genes and environment, play apart in specifying differential abilities in music, in athletics, in affability - in a broad range of characteristic that make us who we are. Far from determining a linear ordering of individuals who will "win" or "lost," differential brain paths arrangements can grant a range of talents and gifts, leading in diverse directions, helping to generate populations of individuals each with unique trails to add to human mix.

"BIG BRAIN", The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence, Gary Lynch and Richard Granger, 2008, pages 127 - 128

Get Their Children Interested in Music

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Get Their Children Interested in Music

All children with normal mental capacities grow up learning to speak and comprehend whatever language their family speaks. Early in life the normal brain develops to a point at which speaking and understanding occur naturally. But reading and writing must be taught.

The ability to use language is a unique human capacity. Love and appreciation for the rhythms and tones of music may also be uniquely human, and they may be related to our capacity for language. Evidence for this, described earlier, is that functional imaging studies are now demonstrating that the processing and production of music appear to draw on portions of the “language network” with which neuroscientists are now so familiar.

But children do not almost automatically learn (as they do with language) to produce or perform music without special exposure and training. And we do not yet know how important “critical periods” are for learning to understand, enjoy, and perform music.

Given this uncertainty, there are many reasons why parents should hedge their bets and give their children early exposure to music. We have already learned that orchestra musicians have more gray matter in their brains than non-musicians.

Unlike watching TV, which is passive and sedentary listening to music can be done while children do other activities, such as playing with puzzles or constructing with Legos. This gives them early experience with multitasking and dual processing. They can also sing along with the music that they are hearing, or they can dance to it, thereby exercising multiple networks in their brains.

What should they listen to? A balanced mixture of classical and popular, child-oriented music may be best. Why classical? Because it contains complex musical forms and themes that children perceive intuitively long before they can understand them analytically.

What about formal music educations? I personally am a strong advocate for this, and for beginning it at a relatively young age. The Suzuki music program, which permits children to learn to play when they are as young as two or three, is outstanding.

For the youngest it emphasizes strings (usually violin), but piano can also be introduced fairly early. Learning to perform on an instrument teaches many things in addition to music: the discipline of practicing, the joy of accomplishing and progressing, the poise of performing in front others, and the experience of playing in a group.

As a child matures and is able to play in an orchestra (or a band, for some instruments), the child learns to work as part of a team. And the child’s brain also acquires those synapse-building skills of reading printed music and perceiving visual/spatial relationships.

"The Creating BRAIN", The Neuroscience of Genius, Nancy C. Andreasen, 2005, pages 177 - 178

The Brain and the Meeting of Different Cultures

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The Brain and the Meeting of Different Cultures

Bruce Wexler explores the social implications of the close and changing neurobiological relationship between the individual and the environment, with particular attention to the difficulties individuals face in adulthood when the environment changes beyond their ability to maintain the fit between existing internal structure and external reality.

These difficulties are evident in:

• Bereavement.
  
• The meeting of different cultures (the experience of immigrants).
  
• The phenomenon of interethnic violence.

The experience of immigrants:
The clue of these difficulties comes from the experience of migrants to a new culture, in who suddenly find themselves in an environment that not match internal structure modeled on the rearing environment in their native land.

A common response is to recreate a microcopy of their native culture in their home and their friendship circles. Still, like bereavement, it is prolonged and difficult struggle to reshape internal structure to match the new, general cultural environment.

The children of immigrant families are more successful than their parents at the necessary internal transformations, which often leading to heightened and problematic differences between immigrant parents and their children.

"Brain And Culture" Neurobiology, Ideology, And Social Change, Bruce E. Wexl, 2006, pages 8 - 9

Linguistically-mediated Literacy Development (2)

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Linguistically-mediated Literacy Development (2)

The direct addressed route for accessing meaning without sounding words is likely to be less critical in languages with shallow orthographies, such as Italian, than in those with deep orthographies, such as English.

Brain research supports the hypothesis that the routes involved differ according to the depth of the orthographical structure.

The “visual word form area” (occipital-temporal VWFA) implicated in identifying word meaning based on non-phonological proprieties in English speakers appears to be less critical for Italian speakers (Paulesu et al., 2001a).

Indeed, preliminary results suggest that the brain of Italian native speakers employs a more efficient strategy when reading text than that of English native speakers.

Remarkably, this strategy is used even when Italian native speakers read in English, suggesting that the brain circuitry underlying reading for Italian native speakers develops in a different way than that underlying reading for English native speakers.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 88

Linguistically-mediated Literacy Development (1)

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Linguistically-mediated Literacy Development (1)

While much of the neural circuitry underlying reading is the same across different languages, there are also some important differences.

A central theme concerning the brain and reading is the way that literacy is created though the colonisation of brain structures, including those specialised for language and those best suited to serve other functions.

The operations that are common to speech and printed word, such as semantics, syntax, and working memory recruit brain structures which are specialised for language and which are biologically-based and common across languages.

There are biological constraints determining which brain structures are best suited to take on other functions supporting literacy. Therefore, much reading circuitry is shared across languages.

Even so, literacy in different languages sometimes requires distinct functions, such as different decoding or word recognition strategies.

In these cases, distinct brain structures are often brought into play to support these aspects of reading which are distinctive to these particular languages.

Therefore, the dual route theory of reading, which was developed mainly based on research with English speakers, may require modification to describe reading in languages with less complex spelling and orthographic features and it is only partially relevant to non-alphabetic languages.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 88

The “Dual Route” Theory for Reading

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The “Dual Route” Theory for Reading

The most comprehensive and well-supported model of reading to date is the “Dual Route” theory (Jobard, Crivello and Tzourio-Mazoyer, 2003). This theory provides a framework for describing reading in the brain at the level of the word.

As you look at the words on this page, this stimulus is first processed by the primary visual cortex. Then, pre-lexical processing occurs at the left occipito-temporal junction.

The dual route theory posits that processing then follows one of two complementary pathways. The assembled pathway involves an intermediate step of grapho-phonological conversion – converting letters/words into sounds – which occurs in certain left temporal and frontal areas, including Broca’s area.

The addressed pathway consists of a direct transfer of information from pre-lexical processing to meaning (semantic access). Both pathways terminate in the left basal temporal area, the left interior frontal gyrus, and the left posterior middle gyrus, or Wernicke’s area.

The pathway involving direct access to meaning has led to the proposal of a “visual word form area” (VWFA) at the ventral junction between the occipital and temporal lobes. This area was first proposed to contain a visual lexicon or collection of words which functions to immediately identify whole words when they are seen.

Recent research has suggested a modified conclusion that this region may actually consist of constellations of adjacent areas sensitive to various aspects of letter strings, such as length or order of words. The entire process from visual processing (seeing) to semantic retrieval (understanding) occurs very rapidly, all within about 600 mili-seconds.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 87

Literacy Being Built “on Top of” Language

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Literacy Being Built “on Top of” Language

While the brain is not necessarily biologically inclined to acquire literacy, it is biologically inclined to adapt to experience. It is, for instance, endowed with language circuitry capable of processing visual input.

The brain’s plastic capacities of adaptability enable the stimuli coming from experience to utilise language structures when constructing the neural circuitry capable of supporting literacy. This is often expressed as literacy being built “on top of” language. In the terms of Vygotsky’s classic metaphor, language structures provide scaffolding for literacy to be constructed in the brain (Vygotsky, 1978).

Since literacy is built, in part, with language circuitry, future research should investigate the possibility that developmental sensitivities for certain aspects of language acquisition influence the facility with which the different aspects of reading are acquired.

If such influences were identified, this would have implications for educational policy and practice regarding the timeframe for teaching different literacy skills, and could well reinforce the importance of developing pre-literacy skills in early
childhood.

Research aimed at delineating the cortical areas supporting reading is rapidly accumulating. The most comprehensive and well-supported model of reading to date is the “dual route” theory (Jobard, Crivello and Tzourio-Mazoyer, 2003).

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 87

Literacy in the Brain

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Literacy in the Brain

In contrast to language, there are no brain structures designed by evolution to acquire literacy. Experience does not trigger a set of biologically-inclined processes leading to literacy, as in the case of language.

Instead, experience progressively creates the capacity for literacy in the brain through cumulative neural modifications, expressed by Pinker (1995) as “Children are wired for sound, but print is an optional accessory that must be painstakingly bolted on”.

The crucial role of experience in building neural circuitry capable of supporting literacy suggests that attention needs to be given to differences in the degree to which early home environments provide a foundation of pre-literacy skills.

For example, Hart and Risley (2003) report that the sheer number of words that American children from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds were exposed to by the age of 3 lagged behind that of non-disadvantaged children by 30 million word occurrences.

Such limited exposure could be insufficient to support the development of pre-literacy skills in the brain, thereby chronically impeding later reading skills. These children may well be capable of catching up through later experience, but the reality is that they very often do not (Wolf, 2007).

Therefore, of policy relevance from this work: Initiatives aimed at ensuring that all children have sufficient opportunities to develop pre-literacy skills in early childhood are essential.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 86

Language and Developmental Sensitivities: Begin Early (4)

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Language and Developmental Sensitivities (4)
Begin Early

The earlier foreign language instruction begins, the more efficient and effective it is likely to be.

In addition, there is a sensitive period for acquiring the accent of a language (Neville and Bruer, 2001). This aspect of phonological processing is most effectively learned before 12 years of age.

Developmental sensitivities are for very specific linguistic functions, however, and there are other aspects of phonology which do not seem even to have a sensitive period.

In sum, there is an inverse relationship between age and the effectiveness of learning many aspects of language – in general, the younger the age of exposure, the more successful the language learning.

However, for early instruction to be effective, it must be age-appropriate. It would not be useful to take rule-based methods designed for older students and insert them into early childhood classrooms.

It is necessary, in other words, that early foreign language instruction is appropriately designed for young children.

Although the early learning of language is most efficient and effective, it is important to note that it is possible to learn language throughout the lifespan: adolescents and adults can also learn a foreign language, albeit with greater difficulty.

Indeed, if they are immersed in a new language environment, they can learn the language “very well”, though particular aspects, such as accent, may never develop as completely as they would have done if the language had been learned earlier.

There are also individual differences such that the degree and duration of developmental sensitivities vary from one individual to the next. Some individuals are able to master almost all aspects of a foreign language into adulthood.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 86

Grammar and Its Developmental Sensitivities (3)

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Language and Developmental Sensitivities (3)
Grammar

There is also a developmental sensitivity for learning the grammar of a language: the earlier a language is learned, the more efficiently the brain can master its grammar (Neville and Bruer, 2001).

If the brain is exposed to a foreign language between 1 and 3 years of age, grammar is processed by the left hemisphere as in a native speaker but even delaying learning until between 4 and 6 years of age means that the brain processes grammatical information with both hemispheres.

When the initial exposure occurs at the ages of 11, 12 or 13 years, corresponding to the early stage of secondary schooling, brain imaging studies reveal an aberrant activation pattern.

Delaying exposure to language therefore leads the brain to use a different strategy for processing grammar.

This is consistent with behavioural findings that later exposure to a second language results in significant deficits in grammatical processing (Fledge and Fletcher, 1992)

The pattern seems thus to be that early exposure to grammar leads to a highly effective processing strategy, in contrast with alternative, and less efficient, processing strategies associated with later exposure.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, pages 85 - 86

Phonetic and Its Developmental Sensitivities (2)

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Language and Developmental Sensitivities (2)
Phonetic

There are developmental sensitivities (the windows of learning opportunity) as language circuits are most receptive to particular experience-dependent modifications at certain stages of the individual’s development.

Newborns are born with an ability to discern subtle phonetic changes along a continuous range, but experience with a particular language in the first ten months renders the brain sensitive to sounds relevant to that language (Gopnik, Meltzoff and Kuhl, 1999). For example, the consonant sounds r and l occur along a continuous spectrum, and all newborns hear the sounds this way.

The brains of babies immersed in an English-speaking environment, however, are gradually modified to perceive this continuous spectrogram as two distinct categories, r and l. A prototypical representation of each phoneme is developed, and incoming sounds are matched to these representations and sorted as either r or l.

Babies immersed in a Japanese-speaking environment, by contrast, do not form these prototypes as this distinction is not relevant to Japanese. Instead, they form prototypes of sounds relevant to Japanese, and actually lose the ability to discriminate between r and l by ten months of age. This phenomenon occurs for varied sound distinctions across many languages (Gopnik, Meltzoff and Kuhl, 1999).

Therefore, the brain is optimally suited to acquire the sound prototypes of languages to which it is exposed in the first ten months from birth.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 85

Language and Developmental Sensitivities (1)

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Language and Developmental Sensitivities (1)
Language’s Areas

The brain is biologically primed to acquire language. Chomsky (1959) proposed that the brain is equipped with a recipe for making sequences of sound into representations of meaning that is analogous to the system for translating sensory information into representations of objects.

That is, the brain is designed through evolution to process certain stimuli according to universal language rules. There are indeed brain structures specialised for language: research has stablished the role played by the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left posterior middle gyrus (Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, respectively).

Broca’s area, long understood as implicated in language production, is now associated with a broader range of linguistic functions (Bookheimer, 2002). Wernicke’s area is involved in semantics (Bookheimer et al., 1998; Thompson-Schill et al., 1999).

Critically, these structures are for higher levels of processing, and therefore are not restricted to the simpler processing of incoming auditory stimuli – hearing per se. Visual information can also be processed linguistically, as in the case of sign language.

Though certain brain structures are biologically primed for language, the process of language acquisition needs the catalyst of experience.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 85

Read Requires Complex Skills (2)

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Learning to Read Requires Complex Skills (2)

Learning to Read Requires the semantic knowledge of word meanings. More than this, knowledge of syntactic rules governing the arrangements of words to show their relations to each other is also critical to meaning: Orsino loves Olivia does not mean the same thing as Olivia loves Orsino.

And more even than all this, each word must be integrated with previously-read words, which requires the co-ordination of different component functions and a working memory system.

The neural circuitry underlying literacy, which calls for all these skills, is guided by the interaction and synergy between the brain and experience, and hence the applicability of a dynamic developmental framework, such as skill theory, to the understanding of literacy (Fischer, Immordino-Yang and Waber, 2007).

Skill theory recognises that reading proficiency can be reached through multiple developmental pathways. Through this lens, neuroscience can enable the design of more effective and inclusive reading instruction.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, pages 84 - 85

Read Requires Complex Skills (1)

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Learning to Read Requires Complex Skills (1)

Learning to read requires the mastery of a collection of complex skills. First, the knowledge of morphology – the forms of either letters of an alphabet, syllabic symbols, or ideograms – must be acquired.

Then, orthographic symbols must be understood as the labels – spelling – that can be mapped onto sounds, without which the alphabetic symbols on this page would remain arbitrary shapes. Moreover, an understanding of phonetics – mapping words to sounds – is a vital, but by itself insufficient, tool for decoding words.

In alphabetic languages with deep orthographies, such as English or French, graphemephoneme combinations are variable, with English having the highest degree of “irregular” representation among alphabetic languages, at more than a thousand possible letter combinations used to represent the 42 sounds of the language.

Reading, particularly in languages with deep orthographies, therefore involves the use of supplementary strategies in addition to the phonological decoding of symbols into sounds. These strategies include using context clues, recognising whole words, and noticing partial-word analogies such as ate common to both “late” and “gate”.

Moreover, once a word has been decoded, understanding the meaning of the text requires additional skills.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 84

When the Brain Cannot Learn To Read (2)

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When the Brain Cannot Learn To Read (2)

What is it about the dyslexic brain seems linked in some people to unparalleled creativity in their professions, which often involve design, spatial skills, and the recognition of patterns? Was the differently organised brain of a person with dyslexia better suited for the demands of the preliterate past, with its emphasis on building and exploring?

Will individuals with dyslexia be even better suited to the visual, technology-dominated future? Is the most current imaging and genetic research giving us the outlines of a very unusual brain organisation in some persons with dyslexia that ultimately explain both their known weaknesses and our steadily growing understand of their strengths?

Questions about the brain of a person with dyslexia lead us to look both backward to our evolutionary past forward to the future development. What is being lost and what is being gained for so many young people who have largely replace the books with the multidimensional “continuous partial attentions” culture of the Internet?

What are the implications of seemingly limitless of information for the evolution of the reading brain and for us as a species? Does the rapid almost instantaneous presentation of expansive information threaten the more time-demanding formation of in-depth knowledge?

Recently, Edward Tenner, who writes about technology, asked whether Google promotes a form of information illiteracy and whether may be unintended negative consequences of such a model of learning": It would be a shame if a brilliant technology were to end up threatening the kind of intellect that produced it. ”Reflect on such questions underscores the value of the intellectual skills facilitate through the literacy that we do not wish to lose, just when we appear poised to replaced them with other skills.

"Proust and the Squid", The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, 2007, pages 9 - 10

When the Brain Cannot Learn To Read (1)

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When the Brain Cannot Learn To Read (1)

Knowledge about reading failure provides a different angle on this knowledge base, with some surprises for anyone who looks there.

Why so many children with dyslexia, have difficulty not only with reading but also with seemingly simple linguistic behaviours like discriminating individual sound or phonemes within words, or quickly retrieving the name of a colour. By tracking activity in the brain as it performs these various behaviours in normal development and in dyslexia, we are constructing living maps of the neural landscape.

The surprises on this landscape increase daily. Recent advances in neuroimaging research begin to paint a different picture of the brain of a person with dyslexia that may have enormous implication for future research, and particularly for intervention. Understanding these advances can make the difference between having a huge number of our future citizens poised to contribute to society and having a huge number who cannot contribute what they could otherwise.

Connecting what we know about the typical child`s development to what we know about impediment in reading can help us reclaim the lost potential of millions of children, many of whom have strengths that could light up our lives.

For we are also in the exciting early stages of understanding the title-studied that accompany the brain development of some persons with dyslexia. It is no longer reducible to coincidence that so many inventors, artists, architects, computer designers, radiologist, and financiers have a childhood history of dyslexia. The inventors Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, the artists Leonardo da Vinci and Auguste Rodin are all extraordinarily successful individuals with a history of dyslexia or related reading disorders.

"Proust and the Squid", The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, 2007, pages 9 - 10

We Were Never Born to Read

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We Were Never Born to Read

Human Beings invented reading only a few thousand years ago. And with this invention, we rearranged the very organization of our brain, which in turn expanded the ways we were able to think, which altered the intellectual evolution of our species.

Reading is one of the single most remarkable inventions in history; the ability to record history is one of its consequences.

Our ancestor invention could about only because of the brain’s extraordinary ability to make new connections among its existing structures, a process made possible by the brain’s ability to be shaped by experience.

This plasticity at the heart of the brain’s design forms the basis for much of who we are, and who we might become.

"Proust and the Squid", The Story and Science of the Reading, Brain, Maryanne Wolf, 2007, page 4

E-Learning

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E-Learning

Is a term used to cover a range of online methods of delivering material and resources for learning. System for computer-aided assessment may be provided in addition. You may be given online access to all these facilities via portal, which you may able to customise.

That systems offer you many useful facilities and capacity to access course material at a time and place of your choosing

Definitions: E-Learning Terminology

Blended Learning: A mix of e-learning and traditional teaching methods.

Computer-aided Assessment (CAA): Tests and exams delivered (and marked) using software. If delivered via web, also know as Online Assessment (OA).

Computer-based Learning (CBL): Software-driven interactive learning activity.

Portal: A web-based gateway to various useful web services, from learning enviroment to online news.

Effective E-Learning

There are four basic requirements if you are to make the most of your e-learning opportunties:

• You must have access to the Web through a reasonably speedy link.
  
• You will require basic Information Tecnology (IT) skills to navigate websites and manipulate files.
  
• You will need to make frequent visits to your portal or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
  
• You should participate actively.

Minimun IT Competences for E-Learning

These include basic skills with:

• Keyboard and mouse.
  
• File management.
  
• Word-processing and printing.
  
• Use of a web browser.
  
• Web searching.

Depending on your subject, you may also requiere knowledge of programs such spreadsheets, databases and computer languages.

"The SMATER STUDENT", Skills and Strategies for Success at University, Kathleen MacMillan and Jonathan Weyers, 2006, page 186

When you Learn, Do NOT Care the Gender

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When you Learn, Do NOT Care the Gender

The 2003 PISA study is only one of the latest to reveal gender-related learning and educational achievement differences. Far more questionable are the works which have appeared over recent years claiming to be inspired by scientific findings apparently to show that men and women think differently due to a different brain development.

Titles like "Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps" have become popular reading. How much is this founded on sound research? Is there a “feminine brain” and a “masculine brain”? Should teaching styles be shaped according to gender?

There are functional and morphological differences between the male and female brain. The male brain is larger, for instance, and when it comes to language, the relevant areas of the brain are more strongly activated in females. But determining what these differences mean is extremely difficult.

No study to date has shown gender-specific processes involved in building up neuronal networks during learning; this is another candidate for additional research.

The terms “feminine brain” and “masculine brain” refer to “ways of being” described in cognitive terms rather than to any biological reality. Baron-Cohen, who uses these expressions to describe autism and related disorders (2003), believes that men tend to be more “methodical” (ability to understand mechanical systems) and women better communicators (ability to communicate and understand others), and he suggests that autism can be understood as an extreme form of the “masculine brain”. But he does not propose that men and women have radically different brains nor that autistic women have a masculine brain. He employs the terms “masculine and feminine brain” to refer to particular cognitive profiles, which is an unfortunate choice of terminology if it contributes to distorted ideas concerning the workings of the brain.

Even if it were established that, on average, a girl’s brain makes her less capable of learning mathematics, would this be grounds to propose education specialised to these differences? If the goal of education were to produce intensely specialised human beings, then the question may be worth at least considering but so long as its most important role continues to be to create citizens with a basic culture, such a question loses its relevance for educational policy. Where differences can be shown to exist, they will be small and based on averages.

The much more important individual variations are such as to rule out being able to know if a young girl, taken at random, will be less capable of learning a particular subject than a young boy taken at random, etc.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, pages 117 - 118

Developing Difference: Sex/Gender (2)

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Developing Difference: Sex/Gender (2)

What differences do such normal or abnormal patterns make to brain development? As I have said, on average, males tend to have slightly heavier brains than females. On the other hand, female babies tend to be "more advanced" in terms of behaviour and functional capacity at birth than do males.

During post-natal development other tiny differences in brain structure appear. Although the two cerebral hemispheres appear identical in size and shape, there are small asymmetries, and male brains tend to be more asymmetric than female.

There are also claimed to be differences in structure and size in regions of the hypothalamus and corpus callosum. This is not surprisingly, a fiercely disputed area, because of the way in which both similarities and differences can be appropriated (or misappropriated) to claim explanatory power in explaining the persistence of the domination of men in a patriarchal society and I will return to in later chapters.

It is well known that certain traits, such as colour-blindness and haemophilia, can be carried through the female but are only expressed in the male, a consequence statement is that all human brains begin as female, and that some "become masculinised" during foetal development, a "masculinisation" for which a chromosomal difference is necessary but not sufficient.

A key to this "masculinisation" is the hormone testosterone. Popularly, testosterone is the "male" hormone, oestrogen the female.

However, in reality testosterone and oestrogen are produced and responded to by both males and females; it is only the proportions that differ, testosterone being on average present in higher concentration in males. Neither hormone is actually made in the brain, but both can enter through the blood stream, and there are receptors on neuronal membranes in the hypothalamus and other brain regions that recognise the hormones.

What "masculinises" the otherwise female brain is a surge of testosterone production occurring between eight and twenty-for weeks into pregnancy. This is part of the process of differentiation between male and female brains, with characteristic average differences appearing in the distribution of neuronal receptors for the hormones. The existence of receptors in the brain for testosterone and oestrogen produced in other regions also illustrates the importance of the multiple brain-body interactions mentioned earlier on this chapter.

The sex hormones are not the only steroids that affect brain processes and they are also closely chemically related to the brain’s own equivalent of steroid hormones, the neuroesteroids, which act a bit like BDNF (Brain-derived neurotrophic factor) and other growth factors, but which are present prior to birth in different concentrations in male an female brains.

These complex hormonal interactions, occurring even pre-natally, are but one of many reasons why it is not possible simply to "read off" average differences between boys and girls, men and women as "causes by genetic and chromosomal sex differences, and why the relationship between understanding gender has been so tricky.

Such differences are indeed average, and there is considerable variation, which is just part of the problem of attempting to reduce human differences in sex and gender (and still more in sexual orientation) to simple statements about chromosomes, hormones, or any other unilinear "biological" measure.

"THE 21st-Century BRAIN", Explaining, Mending and Manipulating the Mind, Steven Rose, 2005, pages 81 - 83

Developing Difference: Sex/Gender (1)

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Developing Difference: Sex/Gender (1)

Despite the opening paragraphs of this chapter which talked of both similarities and differences, the story so far has been a universalistic one, of generic "normal" brain development. But brains develop differently from one another even in the womb. Each is unique, genetically and environmentally, even prior to birth as the foetus begins the task of self-construction.

The general pattern of neuronal wiring, of synaptic connections, of cortical sulci and gyri, of modular neuronal columns is universal, but the specificities are individual, the constructs of every about-to-be-human foetus’s developing lifeline.

The complexities of interpreting such differences are of course the stuff of controversy, none greater than that surrounding sex and gender, insofar as these can be disentangled. After all, "boy or girl?" is likely to be the second question asked by the parents of any newborn baby, although the answer isn’t necessarily as straight forward as it sometimes seems.

Sex (as opposed to gender) begins at conception. Of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes containing the DNA we inherit, one pair differs from the start. In normal development, females have a pair of X chromosomes, males one X and one Y.

So the patterns of genetic inheritance also vary between the sexes from the outset. (There are also some abnormal patterns of inheritance such as Turner’s Syndrome, where a female inherits only one X chromosome, and XYY, in which males inherit an extra Y.)

"THE 21st-Century BRAIN", Explaining, Mending and Manipulating the Mind, Steven Rose, 2005, pages 81 - 83