Patrick Touhey
ED 635
Final Research Paper
3/21/14
Neuroscience Meets the Classroom: A Novel
Approach
Teenagers are controlled by their hormones. Everyone knows this. They
behave erratically and irresponsibly and often irrationally because of all the new
hormones rushing through their bodies. The only problem with this common
knowledge is that it’s not true. Or at the very least, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
In her book, Secrets of the Teenage Brain: Research-Based Strategies for
Reaching and Teaching Today’s Adolescents, Sheryl G. Feinstein explains that
what is really going on with the adolescent person is far more interesting: the
teen brain itself is changing. The fact that the brain is being reconstructed, only
fairly recently confirmed by science, must be understood if one wishes to help
young people learn and grow and achieve (Feinstein 4-5). The changing brains
of adolescents present a wide range of challenges for them and, therefore, for
the adults in their lives. On the other hand, those same changes open the same
young people up to a whole new world of possibility as they grow into adults. If
educators can grasp the changes occurring within the brains of young people
and how the adolescent perspective differs from that of a full-grown adult, they
can use that knowledge to inform their classroom management practices.
Teachers can use neuroscience to their advantage in engaging all students across the cultural, economic and ability spectrum - and, hopefully, helping them
to achieve and become well-rounded adults.
It is important to understand that teens are not being inexplicable for the
sake of being inexplicable and they are not being unruly for the sake of being
unruly. Adolescents “do not plot their unruliness; they are just trying to cope in a
school run and designed by adults from and adult perspective - adults with brains
that are structured and that function in ways vastly different from their own”
(Feinstein 16). The teen brain is a work in progress, more a blueprint than a
finished skyscraper. Teens are learning to “(navigate) a cerebral hurricane
without a compass” (Feinstein 5). Studies done relatively recently revealed that
“rather than leaving childhood with a brain ready to take on the responsibilities of
young adulthood, teens have to contend with a brain that is destroying old neural
connections and building new ones” (Feinstein 5). All these statements, raise an
obvious question: what exactly are the changes happening in the brain of a
young adult?
Let us begin with a short explanation of basic brain functions. The brain is
constituted of two main types of cells: glial cells, which bind everything together,
and neurons, which are the communicators and the cells associated with
learning. Neurons receive information via their dendrites and send information to
other neurons via their axons. The space between neurons through which
information passes is called a synapse. “Gray matter,” consisting of dendrites
and synapses, is overproduced during adolescence and it opens teens to all
kinds of new opportunities by allowing so many new connections to be made
(Feinstein 11). However, synapses resemble muscles in that they are
strengthened through use and weakened or lost through neglect - “use it or lose
it” (Feinstein 9). Eventually, underused synapses will be pruned out of existence.
After synapses are established, a process occurring countless times
throughout the brain, glial cells produce the substance myelin, or “white matter,”
to insulate the connections. The more insulated the connection, the faster the
travel efficiency and the less likely that connection will be pruned (Feinstein 12).
In essence, myelin builds the brain according to a blueprint constantly being
reworked, part based on inherent processes and part on individual experiences.
This kind of construction occurs throughout the young brain, but not all parts
develop at the same time or rate because myelin is released to neurons in
stages, meaning some aspects of human beings develop at different times
(Feinstein 13).
“The parietal lobes (which process and desegregate sensory information
like sights, sounds, and smells), temporal lobes (which process visual
information), cerebellum (which processes coordination and thinking skills), and
hippocampus (seat of short-term memory) all benefit from the overproduction and
pruning of synapses” during adolescence (Feinstein 13). One of the final areas
to develop is also perhaps the most important in becoming an adult, the frontal
cortex. The frontal lobes are responsible for “abstract thinking, language, and
decision making” and keep the amygdala - the emotional center of the brain - in
check. The importance of this development is difficult to overstate because it
allows adolescents to “develop the ability to hypothesize, look into the future,
deduct, analyze, and logically reason” (Feinstein 13).
So how does this apply to teaching? Well, understanding this process is a
good way to begin considering how best to approach young adults in the
classroom. Well, if we wish to know what “software” - best practices - will work
for students, it’s important to know what “hard drives” they are using (Feinstein
25). Also, teachers must realize the importance of the adolescent years in a
child’s development. It is here that we find “a golden opportunity to build a better
brain. It is also a golden opportunity to waste the brain’s potential and water it
down instead” (Feinstein 11). Choices teachers make in the classroom can
promote a student’s interest and foster new skills to last a lifetime or allow the
same student to remain unmotivated and without new abilities. The stakes,
therefore, are high.
The first task of educators, the cornerstone of the classroom, is capturing
the attention of students (Feinstein 18). With all of the sensory information
bombarding them, it is difficult for the developing teenage brain to sort out what is
most important and what is most dangerous. One thing it does understand is
that it likes to maintain activities it finds pleasurable. Sheryl Feinstein explains:
(T)he adolescent brain is fascinated by (and seeks out) novelty and
emotion…Sitting through classroom instruction that fails to include either is the
real test of a teen’s attention. Many teaching strategies and testing options have
a great deal of difficulty keeping attention and arousing emotion. Worksheets
require students to pay attention to something that evolution and instinct quite
frankly say is irrelevant to life. Lecture, which can be an efficient way to deliver
instruction, is often not emotionally charged. Objective tests, such as those in
multiple-choice or true-false formats, rarely generate emotion and are extremely
difficult to apply to real-world applications…We miss academic opportunities
when we peruse strategies that neglect our emotional and cognitive constitution two powerful memory builders. (19)
This process means that young people often filter out school as “boring” or
“stupid” because they feel it does not apply to them. It is the teaching
professional’s job to understand this and apply it to their classroom strategies by
making things relatable and, hopefully, enjoyable.
As an extended example, when trying to pique young learners’ interest in a
subject like history, it might help to think outside the box. An educator might
show them a trendy, though seemingly unrelated, commercial for Apple’s iPad
Air. The commercial touches on all sorts of human endeavors, from love to
poetry to science and engineering, and it displays a wide range of interesting
human beings in the middle of activities, from a game of hockey to people
exploring to quiet moments of reflection, and it does so in dramatic fashion with a
narrator’s impassioned reading of a Whitman poem playing in the background.
The commercial has a universal message about what makes us human the what
the individual human being’s place in the great story of life. Helping students see
that contributing a “verse” to the “powerful play” is really about participating in the
subject of this class, history. Connecting the wide range of human interests, of
which students must share at least a few, directly to what will be studying seems
more exciting and novel when you put it that way than if you simply have them
read from a textbook. Hopefully, this novel experience will connect with students
emotionally and motivate them to take a personal interest in the subject and,
therefore, put up with some of the more mundane parts of class.
That example concerns a “big idea.” As Mariale Hardiman points out in her
book, The Brain-Targeted Teaching Model for 21st-Century Schools:
(W)hen we guide learning by providing students with broader view or “big
picture,” we promote an understanding of the connections between prior
knowledge and new learning and also demonstrate the relationships among
learning goals. This is consistent with the brain’s propensity to look for patterns
and associations between information at the forefront of thought and information
stored in memory. (80)
So finding a novel approach to engage students in the “big ideas” of your class
can pay serious dividends, but novelty can take many forms. Educators should
“(throw) novelty at teens from all sides - vary the pace and tone of your voice,
dress in bell-bottoms, circulate around the room, use colored chalk, bring flowers
into the room, or add the scent of lemon. Incorporate all the senses into the
learning adventure” (Feinstein 20). Educators might also consider using novel
formative assessments that are fun for teens while giving the teacher an idea of
their development. Tailoring a game of Jeopardy to the current unit would be a
good example.
Another effective way to engage students, related to novelty, is by
promoting creativity. According to Mariele Hardiman, “expanding instruction so
that students are given the opportunity to think creatively by applying skills and
content in meaningful, active, real-world problem-solving tasks…allows students
to see how instructional goals relate to their own lives in real-world problem
solving; this connection helps make the learning experience more meaningful
and fun” (127). Much of students’ time in school is spent on convergent thinking,
finding the “right” answer, but creativity is concerned with divergent thinking,
finding many solutions to a problem, and repeated use builds and reinforces
those synapses. Also, doing creative projects helps students master content,
skills and concepts in because actively producing something with what they are
taught leads to better consolidation of information within the long-term memory
(Hardiman 119). Creative engagement helps students to become active
participants in their education while gaining a valuable skill, thinking critically and
solving problems creatively, for future success.
Young learners, still developing their frontal lobes, are far more reliant on
emotion, the processes controlled by the amygdala, than adults. “Despite
observations to the contrary, teenagers are passionate beings,” as evidenced by
their interest in friends, technology, sports and music (Feinstein 143). Knowing
these passions exist, educators should incorporate technology (video, digital
stories, the internet, etc), music (for example, listening to protest songs from the
1960’s and from the 2000’s and comparing them), group work (which promote
various kinds of socializing) and games (which are generally fun and involve a
competitive element) into their lessons. As Sheryl Feinstein explains:
Relevance is the key to gaining student attention and prompting motivation.
Relating content to real life is imperative for learning to occur. It’s difficult for
students to find meaning and purpose from worksheets. (143)
It’s important to keep things interesting for students or they, or their brain, may
decide this class is not relevant to their lives. Learning through pleasurable
experiences, ones that appeal to students’ natural interests, is a great way to
engage students and make content “real” for them.
Emotion is something of a double-edged sword when it comes to
adolescents. While appeals to emotion can be effective in capturing the attention
of young learners, their still-developing brains and bodies leave them more prone
to outbursts of anger or bouts with depression (Feinstein 104). And though
positive emotion can stimulate a teen’s ability to engage and learn, negative
emotion causes stress which causes cortisol to be released into the body,
shutting down interest and making it much more difficult for them to process and
retain information (Hardiman 36-37). Teenagers face a wide range of stressinducers during their adolescent years, from sleep deprivation to issues at home
to a greater self-awareness or problems with a significant other or even
something as simple as an exam for your class (Feinstein 90-91). If teachers
understand “the effects of stress on learning…they will be better able to avoid
such stress-inducing practices” and help students meet their needs to become
actively engaged learners (Hardiman 41).
Keeping students engaged and sheltered from the many stresses in their
life, or at least enough so that they can learn effectively, begins with establishing
a positive emotional climate in the classroom (Hardiman 41). An educator’s
classroom, in order to best serve the needs of the students, should be inclusive
and give “children a sense of belonging and…group cohesiveness” (Hardiman
43). Helpful practices to promote such an environment include behavior-specific
praise, praise for effort (rather than intelligence), creating predictable rituals or
routines, acknowledging and redirecting emotional students, and taking the
emotional temperature of the room are a few examples (Hardiman 42-45). But
perhaps the best, most transcendent, practice a teacher should adopt also
happens to be the simplest: caring. The nurturing of an adult can have a
tremendous impact on a young learner, reducing cortisol levels and creating a
feeling of connectedness to the school (Hardiman 46). And aside from helping
with the learning process, students “who reported a feeling of connectedness
through the presence of a caring adult in school were less likely to be involved in
every risk behavior studied, including drug use, cigarette smoking, early sex,
violence, and suicidal thoughts” (Hardiman 46).
There are also some simple practices teachers can adopt in order to keep
students focused, especially those with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD) - a fairly common disorder among adolescents, and generally make their
path an easier one to tread. Educators can do their best to reduce distractions.
They can break down objectives and directions to simple, one step at a time
instructions. Another good idea would be to introduce good organizational
practices like keeping a binder with all necessary documents for class. It is also
important for teachers to expect behavioral issues (which is not the same as
accepting them) and remain calm in the face of explosive behavior and not
engage in arguments with out of control students. (Feinstein 23)
Neuroscience holds a great deal of promise for the world of secondary
education. This paper has only barely scratched the surface of the potential to
be found when we, as educators, look to the adolescent brain as a guide for our
practices. With this knowledge comes responsibility. It is imperative that we
consider these insights into the adolescent brain, especially those related to
engagement and emotional health, when designing a classroom management
plan. Because adolescence is such a pivotal, and sometimes volatile, time in a
student’s life, the stakes are high. As Diane Feinstein puts it, “(e)ducators are
not innocent bystanders merely witnessing this transformation of the teenage
brain. We either promote neural growth or stunt it depending on the kind of
classrooms we set up. Our job is to figure out how to create classrooms that will
foster learning, support emotional and social growth in our students’ brains, and
ease the transition from childhood to adulthood” (Feinstein 142).
Works Cited
Feinstein, Sheryl G. Secrets of the Teenage Brain: Research-Based Strategies for
Reaching
and Teaching Today’s Adolescents. New York: Skyhorse Publishing,
2013. Print.
Hardiman, Mariale. The Brain-Targeted Teaching Model for 21st-Century Schools.
Thousand
Oaks: Corwin, 2012. Print.