Throughout most of my high school career I believed that I would go on to college to study neurobiology and psychology. I have always been fascinated by the brain and its power. I ended up with a degree in Biochemistry and prepared to teach high school science.
Recently my excitement for the brain has grown again as “brain-based” learning theories and strategies grow in the educational community. We have always known that the brain and the learning process have been linked but with the surge in research and technology we now have a plethora of applications. As a teacher I would like to begin to apply some of these applications in my classroom.
On the New Horizons website (www.newhorizons.org) there is an article by Renate Nummela Caine, one of the author’s of 12 Mind/Brain Learning Principals in Action. In the article Caine speaks about her journey from student to new educator to experienced educator, all the while focused on her interest and passion in the brain and the learning process. From this journey she and her co-authors have come up with 12 mind/brain learning principals that I believe I would like to learn more about and eventually associate into my own teaching practice.
BRAIN-MIND LEARNING PRINCIPLES
1. All learning is physiological.
2. The Brain-Mind is social.
3. The search for meaning is innate.
4. The search for meaning occurs through patterning.
5. Emotions are critical to patterning.
6. The Brain-Mind processes parts and wholes simultaneously.
7. Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception.
8. Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes.
9. There are at least two approaches to memory: archiving individual facts or skills or making sense of experience.
10. Learning is developmental.
11. Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat associated with helplessness.
12. Each brain is uniquely organized
1. All learning is physiological.
2. The Brain-Mind is social.
3. The search for meaning is innate.
4. The search for meaning occurs through patterning.
5. Emotions are critical to patterning.
6. The Brain-Mind processes parts and wholes simultaneously.
7. Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception.
8. Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes.
9. There are at least two approaches to memory: archiving individual facts or skills or making sense of experience.
10. Learning is developmental.
11. Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat associated with helplessness.
12. Each brain is uniquely organized
As a biochemist I have found very little recent biochemical research on learning and the learning process. I believe that we are still on the cutting edge of understanding where learning takes place in the brain and all the different factors that contribute to the learning process. I am sure that in the next few years there will be more research on specific proteins, RNA, genes and biochemical process that are related to learning.
My journey continues in this new world of Instructional Design and I am very excited from the look of the path.
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