Willingham: 3 brain facts every educator should know
By Daniel Willingham
Here are three facts about the brain that every educator ought to know.
Fact 1: The brain is always changing.
Sometimes an education nostrum is supported by the claim that "it actually changes the brain.” (Less often it's offered as a warning against some alleged danger, e.g., video games.)
The phrase is meant to convey that the object under discussion has a powerful impact, but a change in the brain is no evidence of impact at all. The brain is always changing. Every experience you have, however trivial, leads to some change in the brain.
Brain changes would be a meaningful measure of impact if we knew how they relate to behavioral changes, which brings us to fact number two.
Fact 2: The connection between the brain and behavior is not obvious.
We can readily measure certain aspects of brain anatomy and physiology, and the confidence with which we can interpret what those data mean for behavior varies; but usually we're not all that confident.
This fact sounds self-evident, but it's regularly forgotten or ignored. For example, much has been made of new data showing that myelination (the process by which some neural pathways become insulated) is not complete in humans until they reach their mid-20's.
The last brain area to be myelinated is the prefrontal cortex, a region thought to play a role in inhibiting unwanted behaviors. These facts have been offered as a reason that teenagers have difficulty controlling impulses. They can't help it—their brains are not fully developed.
But this interpretation has unsupported assumptions embedded in it. First, it assumes that we know what the prefrontal cortex does. It does appear to play some role in impulse control, but it does lots of things; it's a large area, which seems to contribute to many higher cognitive functions.
Second, it assumes we know the behavioral consequences of the absence of myelin. The brain is a complex system, and the consequences of changing one component of a complex system are usually not straightforward.
Fact 3: Deriving useful information for teachers from neuroscience is slow, painstaking work.
This fact is a corollary of Fact 2. Teaching is a behavioral business. We describe the desired outcomes for students in behavioral terms—that is, what students can do. We discuss teaching in behavioral terms.
When we bring the brain into the picture, we need to be able to get back to that behavioral description. When I say “the brain works this way,” that's fun and interesting, but for it to do any useful work for me, I need to know what the consequences are at the behavioral level.
Because we're defining educational goals in terms of behavior, I need to be able to move readily from neuroscience to behavior. A bridge between the two must be built. It was to that bridge that John Bruer referred in an influential article from 1997 titled “A Bridge Too Far.” Bruer argued that the ties between neuroscience and behavior were too tenuous to be of much use in education.
Neuroscience can contribute to education—it has already done so, especially in our understanding of reading and why some students have difficulty learning to read. Pick up a copy of the journal Mind, Brain, and Education and you'll see more examples. (I'm an associate editor of that journal.)
But most of what you see advertised as educational advice rooted in neuroscience is bunkum.
How can you tell the difference between bonafide research and schlock? That's an ongoing problem and for the moment, the best advice may be that suggested by David Daniel, a researcher at James Madison University: “If you see the words 'brain-based,' run.”
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| December 27, 2010; 11:00 AM ET
Categories: Daniel Willingham, Guest Bloggers, Learning, Science | Tags: brain-based classrooms, brain-based education, brain-based teaching, daniel willingham, myelination, neuroscience and education, prefrontal cortex and teens, teaching and neuroscience, the brain and education
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