Chapter 1. Preface
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order ... the continuous thread of revelation.
~ Eudora Welty
Now is an exciting and pivotal time to be an educator. Neuroimaging and brain mapping research has extended beyond the confines of studying medical and psychological diseases and has opened windows into the brain. We can now see brain activity as information from the senses that is categorized and organized into working, relational, and, ultimately, long-term memories. In short, we can now see what happens to brain activity and structure when teachers teach and when students learn. Educators can now relate the powerful discoveries of learning brain research to classrooms and curriculum by incorporating research-based learning strategies to help students learn more effectively and joyfully. The potential for discovering the most effective ways to educate students is unlimited.
These chapters demonstrate specific classroom strategies that have been developed from research in how the brain accumulates, connects, stores, and retrieves learned material. Information obtained through brain imaging such as positron emission tomography (PET scans), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and quantitative electroencephalography brain wave monitoring (qEEG) during the learning process have given us a science of education to add to our already powerful knowledge of the art of teaching. Educational professionals who understand the relevant aspects of brain development, alertness, attention, and memory storage and retrieval, and who use the strategies derived from this research, will find their work becoming more effective and exciting and will find their students more engaged.
My personal revelations about the brain started not as a classroom teacher but as a neuroscience researcher during my premedical years at Williams College. There, in 1970, I used one of the first generation of electron microscopes to look at synapses connecting brain cells in the cerebral cortex in the brains of chicks. I was looking for a visible change in brain structure associated with learning. My heart still races as I recall the night I sat alone in the darkroom of the science center developing my electron micrographs and saw a greater collection of protein in the synapses of chicks that had been imprinted (had learned) to follow a moving light. It was like seeing something that had been, until that moment, only an abstract concept.
In the ensuing 35 years, I attended UCLA Medical School and became a neurologist in clinical practice treating children and adults with a wide spectrum of dysfunctions in their nervous systems. My work was fascinating, and especially exciting were the innovations in neuroimaging that became available to practicing physicians during those years, from the early computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, to brain mapping through specialized electroencephalogram (EEG), to the more recent decades of PET scanning and functional MRI scans.1
As my daughters went through their early school years, I found myself drawn to the dynamic classrooms of gifted teachers. I went from being a physician and mom who volunteered a few hours a week to being an occasional substitute teacher, and finally went back to being a student myself. I attended the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I earned my teaching credential and master's degree in education. I had come full circle and was back to studying the process and products of learning, only this time it was in children, not chicks.
During my six years as a full-time classroom teacher in elementary and middle school, I have continued to practice neurology during school vacations. The focus of my academic reading is no longer predominantly on neurological diseases, but rather on the neuroscientific studies of the learning process. Unfortunately, as with many scientific discoveries, the information that brain-imaging tools have yielded has sometimes been misinterpreted and misrepresented by nonscientists. Every day there are new claims of ways to improve learning and memory, from herbs and vitamins to meditation and hypnosis.
As I compared the claims of some self-proclaimed educational experts with the actual neurology research, I found many disconnects between the objective scientific data and the interpretations and conjectures made by people lacking the scientific background to properly assess the research. I became concerned about some of the conclusions being made and recommendations for strategies being proposed as “scientific.” How are teaching professionals to know which of these are valid? How can teachers learn about and ultimately create their own strategies based upon reliable brain-based learning research?
I realized that my background in neuroscience and education could help other education professionals gain the neuroscientific background to evaluate for themselves the brain research and the associated claims. After writing about the neuroscience of learning for educational journals, and speaking at conferences and seminars, I followed the requests of my colleagues to compile the material into this book. I have included information about the exciting discoveries relating to the brain activity that occurs during all aspects of the learning process. The major focus of this book, however, is to help educators acquire or hone strategies to guide students' brains to more effective focusing; sustained attentiveness; and active learning, storing, connecting, and retrieval of learned material. In each chapter you'll find a few brief sections titled “Gray Matter.” These sections give more in-depth, technical information for readers who are interested in exploring the neuroscience that underscores the teaching strategies provided.
As you learn more about brain-based teaching and learning strategies, you'll find yourself discovering greater joy and renewed enthusiasm in your classroom, school administration, and curriculum planning because you will have added a new or greater dimension to your skills as an educational professional. Starting with chapters about brain-based strategies for attention focusing and memory building, and moving through more specific applications of these techniques for students with learning differences, attention disorders, varied learning styles, and gifted and challenged students, you will find support for strategies you currently use and recognize the value of new ones.
Other chapters will consider your role as an informed educator with the potential to shape educational policy during one of the most pivotal times in the history of education. You are in the field of education at the exciting yet challenging time when science is discovering or confirming the most effective brain-based teaching strategies.
Simultaneously, partisan politicians are becoming more intrusive in legislating what outcomes are expected for our students. It will be the obligation of education professionals informed in the science and art of education to use their understanding of valid research, together with their professional skills and experience, to keep critical educational decisions in the domain of professional educators. Your own expertise and accurate understanding of brain-based learning strategies, from neuroimaging and brain mapping, will increase your expertise on what constitutes the best educational techniques for students. The greater your understanding and participation in the decisions being made now, the less power politicians looking for political capital will have to serve their own needs by manipulating our country's most valuable natural resource—our children.
Copyright © 2006 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. No part of this publication—including the drawings, graphs, illustrations, or chapters, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles—may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from ASCD.