Student Centered Learning
and the Brain
Dr. Sarah Jane Fishback
Kansas State University
Educational Leadership
Student Centered Learning focuses
on what the students are learning,
not what instructors are doing.
Instructors become facilitators and
creators of learning environments
Not a bag of tricks, or methodology
NOT
NOT
Instructors Need to Know
• What students are learning
• How they are learning
• How they might use the learning
In order to accomplish this an
instructor must understand how
the brain works.
The body and the brain interact
when learning, but the brain
processes and stores what we
learn.
What We Need to Know About the
Brain
•
•
•
•
Neuroplasticity
Attention
Memory
Critical Thinking
We are pattern creators and
meaning makers
A Cow
Neuroplasticity
• Brain constantly changes
• 100 billion neurons that connect
in trillions of different ways
• Neural networks are created
through associations with already
stored schemata
• Most of this occurs unconsciously
animals
PURPLE
fruit
flowers
Gems
Symbols
The brain filters out most sensory
information
Factors that Impact Attention
• Novelty
Fear
Emotion
Passion for
playing
Love what you do
Elated all the hard work paid off
Memory Systems
Memory
Declarative Memory
Non-Declarative
Episodic
Memory
Semantic
Memory
Cerebellum
Personal
Reminiscences
Of Life Events
Facts
and
Figures
Automatic
Memory
Declarative
• Hippocampus sorts incoming
information, passes to working
memory which sends it on to long
term storage.
Hippocampus
Hippocampus impacted by stress,
multiple tasks and aging.
If memories are not stored so they
can be retrieved, they are
unavailable to the prefrontal
cortex which is involved in critical
thinking.
The prefrontal cortex is the
“decider”- where we solve
problems, evaluate solutions and
critically reflect.
An instructor can only do this for
him/herself. We cannot do this for
students.
Only the student can attend,
remember and think for his/her
self.
We cannot crawl into a student’s
brain.
We may impact them if they chose
to attend, listen or think about
what we say, but it is always the
students set of memories and
experiences that this new learning
is attached to.
What we can do is create a
learning environment where
students are likely to learn.