Brain Changer

Brain Changer

How neuroscience is changing the way we think about teaching and learning at Pomfret.

BY GARRY DOW

Think about it.

Right now, as you read this line, eighty-six billion neurons are firing inside your brain. Nobody knows how many synapses connect them. The number is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.15 quadrillion, or 150,000,000,000,000.

When you’re awake, this tangled forest of nerve cells generates enough electricity to power a small light bulb. What’s more, these neural pathways — a delicate latticework of branchlike dendrites and trunklike axons — are malleable. The pathways that go unused are pruned away. The rest grow faster, stronger, more tangled, as the brain develops.

Neurons are responsible for everything you think, see, and do. They are what make it possible for you to pick up a fork or wiggle your toe. They are what make it possible to read the words on this page and understand what they mean. They are what make it possible to remember the past and anticipate the future. To feel anger and joy. To learn and grow. To imagine and dream. To love. They are what make it possible for you to be, well, you.

Thinking about Thinking

For almost as long as people have had brains, they have been using them to understand how the brain works. Aristotle famously described the brain as an “organ where spirits come together,” the sensus communis. His insight lives on today in our use of the phrase common sense. By the first century AD, Alexandrian anatomists had more or less figured out the basic parts of the brain, but it would take until the Renaissance, another 1,400 years later, for a man named Andreas Vesalius to publish a text called “De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (Seven Books on the Fabric of the Human Body),” arguably the most famous book in the history of human anatomy. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century anatomists contributed a great deal to the physical description of the brain (this is when terms such as cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla first came into use), but they understood next to nothing about how the brain actually works.

The seeds of modern learning theory can be traced back to the research of famed Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, proposed a radical new vision for how the mind absorbs and retains information.

According to Piaget, learning takes place when the individual recognizes that there is something they want to know or do, which they are currently not capable of knowing or doing. He called his idea “constructivism,” arguing that people construct knowledge through experience, not memorization.

“Learning sticks in your brain a lot better if you can give it meaning by attaching it to something that was already there,” says Gwyneth Connell, director of the Grauer Family Institute for Excellence and Innovation in Education, who is leading the charge on brain science at Pomfret. “That something can be very different for each learner.”

Central to constructivist theory are the twin concepts of assimilation and accommodation. When a young child encounters a horse for the first time, they might call it a dog — that’s assimilation. When the child finally realizes that different fourlegged animals have different names, and that some of those animals are called horses — that’s accommodation.

Assimilation says, “This will fit nicely into the existing framework.” Accommodation says, “It’s time to change the framework.” People use these twin processes simultaneously and alternately throughout their lives. It is the healthy tension between the two, the push and pull, that creates knowledge.

“No two kids assimilate or accommodate information in exactly the same way, but when we create opportunities for them to reflect on their unique approach — what we call metacognition, or thinking about thinking — we help them harness their strengths and take charge of their learning in really empowering ways,” says Connell.

Constructivist classrooms, including the classrooms at Pomfret, can often feel very different from traditional classrooms. Sometimes described as “inside-out,” they are highly collaborative learning environments anchored by small groups where students and teachers share knowledge and authority.

“At Pomfret,” says Connell, “we spend as much time talking about learning as we do about teaching. That’s an important distinction.”

Neuroteach

“Scientists have understood how the brain learns for decades,” says author Glenn Whitman, “and yet, aspiring educators are not required to take a single course on the brain.” Whitman, who directs the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning near Washington DC, visited Pomfret earlier this year to discuss his 2016 book “Neuroteach: Brain Science and the Future of Education.”

In the book, he and co-author Ian Kelleher argue that teachers are brainchangers. Unfortunately, according to Whitman and Kelleher, most teachers don’t understand how the brain receives, filters, consolidates, and applies learning.

“‘Neuroteach’ was written to help bring a growing body of educational research into the everyday design of schools and classrooms,” they say. “It is our hope that this book will help

ensure that one day, every student — regardless of zip code or school type — will learn and develop with the guidance of a teacher who knows the research behind how his or her brain works and learns.”

Brain science also has the power to transform classrooms in another important way. In her landmark book, “Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain,” author and teacher Zaretta Hammond examines the relationship between culture and cognition.

“Cultural values and learning practices transmitted from our parents and community guide how the brain wires itself to process information and handle relationships, but there isn't much guidance out there to help teachers,” Hammond says.

In the book, she offers up a treasure trove of strategies and practices that educators can use to harness the power of culture in teaching and learning. “Neural pathways are over-developed around one’s cultural ways of learning. Culturally responsive teachers know this and piggyback on these well-developed neural pathways with similar types of instruction.”

She says when teachers are able to build trusting relationships with kids who feel marginalized or misunderstood, student engagement increases. Referencing the African philosophy of ubuntu, Hammond sums it up this way: “I am because we are.”