Nearly 1000 educators rose before dawn in the Big Easy for an 8:00 a.m. panel discussion on the brain and learning. That alone would have been cause for suggesting they should have had their heads examined. Rather, they were getting a closer look at three areas of brain research that some scientists say educators have misinterpreted. These are the concepts of critical periods, enrichment, and plasticity (specifically, the concern about the loss of synapses after birth), as explained in John Bruer's recent book The Myth of the First Three Years (New York: Free Press, 1999).
The panel members included a neuroscientist, Dr. Larry Carver of the Louisiana State University Neuroscience Center of Excellence, and several well-known educators and interpreters of knowledge about the brain, Eric Jensen, Renata Caine, and Robert Sylwester. Leading the panel discussion was Ron Brandt, ASCD's executive editor emeritus of Educational Leadership. "Educators are excited about using brain research," Brandt said, "but some highly qualified scientists say that nothing in brain research can be used for educational practice. And educators say, `Just tell me what the truth is. . . . I don't want to hear all the arguments.'"
But getting to the truth about how brain research applies to education is not as easy as one, two, three. In the first place, the world of discovery about the brain is just beginning to open up. "We're really in the infant stage of understanding how the brain works," admitted neuroscientist Larry Carver. "I relate our stage of understanding to a favorite quotation by Alexander Pope: `A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.'"
"We're in those shallow draughts," he explained, "and we're all a little intoxicated about the knowledge that we have."
In their eagerness to apply new discoveries in the classroom for the sake of their students, educators may move more quickly than the evidence would warrant. Eric Jensen is convinced that we have to learn about the new research systematically and cautiously begin to discuss ways it might enhance practice — but we can't expect the scientists to give us all the answers. "By nature, most scientists are `what' people," he said. "They're interested in what the research says. By nature, most educators are `how' people. We want to know how do we do this, and what do we do on Monday. So . . . asking someone who's a `what' person and expecting them to be a `how' person — it's not going to happen."
Robert Sylwester agreed that we have to educate ourselves about the biology of how the brain works so that we can accurately justify the practices we use. "It's just a part of the knowledge an educator today has to have." He warned that the education profession will lose credibility if its members misuse research findings. "If we say that brain research conclusively proves that this program that we're trying to institute is appropriate, and someone says, `Will you please cite your sources,' and you can't cite your sources," he said, "then you're worse off than you were before. You would have been better off saying, `We want to do it because we want to do it.' At least you'll be credible."
The challenge of keeping up with the latest findings is considerable, especially when neuroscientists themselves don't always agree on exactly how the brain works. "But the one thing we do know," said Carver, "is that the brain is much more flexible and has a great deal more plasticity and capacity to change and to learn and to grow than we originally thought."
This plasticity and exuberance of neurons seeking to connect with other nerve cells is nature's way of ensuring that we have all the capacities we need to function normally in whatever environment we're born into. One widely held misconception that Bruer tried to clarify in his book is the idea that losing connections, or synapses, between nerve cells is a bad thing. In fact, it is nature's way of ensuring efficiency.
Carver explained that we are born with almost a set amount of nerve cells, but they are not functioning because they are not connected with one another. "Near the end of gestation and in the first months after birth, there is a rapid rate of changes in those cells," he said. "The way they get connected is that . . . axons grow toward other cells they want to connect with. The receiving cell picks up [neurotropic growth] hormones from around and inside the target cell. These entice the axon to grow toward that cell. But the cell entices a lot of nerves. What happens is the receiving cell can't use all those connections, so it starts pruning away the axons that aren't as active. It's important to prune, because there's too much `noise' if the extra doesn't get pruned."
Carver went on to explain that this process is critical within the first two years, and most of it is genetically determined. He said that the first "critical period" of synaptic growth lasts for the first two or three years, and then it slowly goes down until around the age of 5 or 6. And then, around puberty, there is another growth spurt of axons that seems to be related to the hormones of estrogen and androgen. "It may be that a lot of environmental . . . enrichment may change that a little," he suggested, "but it's really difficult to know. We do know that some changes are made that really create pathologies in those early years . . . that cause nerves to grow to the wrong place and cause illness. Now, whether we can enrich [the environment] and cause better things to happen is something educators are going to need to talk about."
Carver believes that educators have the clinical expertise that neuroscientists have yet to understand. "As educators and neuroscientists begin working more and more together," he stated, "we will see significant changes in how the brain science really affects learning and education."
Renate Caine believes that the new research will inform changes in the very nature of education. "It's a long way from brain research to the classroom, but I believe that the brain research ultimately will suggest that we get away from the delivery model of education," she averred. "That delivery model is so deeply entrenched in all of us. We grew up with it, we believe in it, and yet I believe that it does not adequately accommodate the learner by any means. When we understand what this human brain is capable of learning . . . and when we understand [that we need] to let the learner take the lead and that our job is to enrich their search for meaning, knowledge, their thoughts about application, their hypothesizing . . . that's when we will have paid some respect to the research."