The art of changing the brain

I've been dipping into The art of changing the brain
by James E Zull (Stylus, 2002) for some time now. The subtitle of the
book, 'Enriching the practice of teaching by exploring the biology of
learning,' pretty well sums it up - this is neuroscience for teachers,
written by a Professor of Biology and Director of the University Center
for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve
University.

If you want to explore and validate the
neuroscience, then you'll have to read the book I'm afraid. However, if
you just want to know what the main recommendations are, then here's a
summary of the notes I took:

Main premise:
"Learning is change. It is change in ourselves because it is change in
the brain. Thus the art of teaching must be the art of changing the
brain" Or, more accurately, "creating conditions that lead to change in
a learner's brain."

Perhaps surprisingly for a book based on
neuroscience, Kroll structures the book around David Kolb's 1984
experiential learning model - a cycle of sensory experience,
reflection, generating new ideas and then testing these ideas out:
"Little true learning takes place from experience alone. The must be a
conscious effort to build understanding from the experience, which
requires reflection, abstraction and testing the abstractions."

Zull
recommends a balanced approach. We can over-do the play in learning:
"We can find ourselves stressing action and creativity at the expense
of scholarship and information. We can make the classroom into a
playroom but lose track of the intense concentration needed for true
accomplishment. We risk trivialising learning."

Learning is
essential for survival and therefore the body rewards it: "We enjoy
real learning and we want to learn. In order to survive we had to want to learn."

On
the other hand, "Because (learning) is so serious, no outside influence
or force can cause a brain to learn. It will decide on its own. Thus,
one important rule for helping people learn is to help the learner feel
she is in control."

Relevance is fundamental:
"If people believe it is important to their lives, they will learn. It
just happens." And, therefore, "if we want people to learn, we must
help them see how it matters in their lives."

About rewards and motivation:
"When we try to help someone learn by offering an extrinsic reward, the
chances are that learning will actually be reduced." Why? "The first
thing our controlling brain sees in a reward or punishment is a loss of
control." So, "we devise all sorts of ways to get the reward without
carrying out the learning." On the other hand, "extrinsic rewards can
get a learner started on something. Often people do not actually know
what they are going to enjoy." And, "Extrinsic rewards can also sustain
a learner at times of pressure and difficulty."

About memory:
"If we don't use or repeat things, our memory grows dim. And yet, if
something made sense to us or engaged us emotionally, we can also
recall amazing amounts of detail."

About prior knowledge:
"All learners, even newborn babies, have some prior knowledge. Prior
knowledge is persistent - the connections in these physical networks of
neurons are strong. They do not vanish with a dismissive comment by a
teacher." Also, "prior knowledge is the beginning of new knowledge. It
is where all learners start. They have no choice." And once more for
emphasis: "No one can understand anything if it isn't connected in some
way to something they already know."

About the order in which we teach:
"A teacher's best chance is to begin with concrete examples."
Unfortunately, "teachers do not necessarily start with the concrete.
Our deeper understanding of our fields can lead us to start with
principles rather than examples. WE start where we are, not where they
are."

About the importance of practice:
"Synapses get stronger with use. The more they fire, the more they send
out new branches looking for more, new and more useful connections."

About experts and novices:
"Whether we are an expert or a novice, our brains basically sense the
same things. The difference is that the expert knows which part of his
sensory data is important and which part isn't."

On visualisation:
"Vision is central to any concrete experience that we have. In many
ways our brain is a 'seeing'' brain. Images are by far the easiest
things for the human brain to remember." However, these images do not
have to be specially constructed by a teacher: "The experience itself
provides by far the richest images. These are undiluted and direct,
rather than transported or filtered through text, film, TV or lecture."
Nevertheless, "if we can convert an idea into an image, we should do
so." By the way, the origin of the word teacher is an old English word,
techen, which means to show.

On sound:
"We cannot focus on a particular sound to the exclusion of all others
for long. The brain expects movement in sound. Eventually we begin to
ignore it; we literally do not hear it ... This is called habituation
... Nothing demonstrates habituation more than a lecture. Unless we
break up the sound every few minutes, we are almost certain to induce
habituation."

On reflection: "Our task as
teachers is to give assignments that require reflection and that induce
learners to reflect on the right things." Why? "Even the quickest
learner needs time for reflection. She must let her integrative cortex
do its thing. If she doesn't, her ideas and memories will be
disconnected and shallow. They may be adequate for the moment (to pass
a test, for example) but still transitory and ultimately unfulfilling."
How? "When we reflect, we seem to do better if we shut out sensory
experience. That way our brain is not distracted by receiving new
information at the same time it is working with old information."

On overload:
"We should be careful not to overload working memory. A classic error
of college teachers is to keep shoving information in one end of
working memory, not realising that they are shoving other data out the
other end." Breaking things down into simple components is not dumbing
down: "When we are new at something, we are all basically in
kindergarten. We can only start with what we have, so if our students
already have prior knowledge about the subject, they can easily attach
new things to those old networks. But if they are asked to hold new
things in isolation, then working memory is engaged, and working memory
does not expand with maturity or experience."

On testing out our ideas:
"Testing our ideas through action is how we find out we are on the
right track. The only pathway that seems unproductive for learning is
the pathway that excludes testing of ideas."

About stories:
"Stories engage all parts of the brain. They come from our experiences,
our memories, our ideas, our actions and our feelings. They allow us to
package events and knowledge in complex neuronal nets, any part of
which can trigger all the others."

I think I'll stop there,
because I'm in danger of copying out the whole book. As you can see,
there's lots of good stuff here and in the book it is backed up by
concrete examples and the evidence. I'd recommend you take a look.