Today’s brain and learning concept: the brain learns through conscious and unconscious processes. A great deal of the insights we acquire and the patterns that we grasp are a consequence of ongoing unconscious processing, perhaps more than we realize or care to admit. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux (1996) wrote that he processes of the “cognitive unconscious span many levels of mental complexity, all the way from the routine analysis of the physical features of stimuli by our sensory systems to remembrance of past events to speaking grammatically to imagining things that are not present, to decision making, and beyond.”

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Today’s brain and learning concept: the brain perceives and creates parts and wholes. The brain has two separate but simultaneous tendencies for organizing information. One is to reduce information to parts. The other is to perceive and work with information as a whole or series of wholes. These simultaneous tendencies spring from the brain’s organization and have important implications for teaching and learning.

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Today’s brain and learning concept: emotions are critical to learning. Generally, educational enterprises tend to separating emotion from thinking. Though the importance of emotions to learning has been acknowledged the connection between emotion and cognition remains, by and large, unaddressed. In recent years, more and more researchers are seeing emotions as important to higher order thinking and meaningful learning.

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Today’s brain and learning concept: the brain makes meaning through patterning. The human brain is not a formal logic machine. It makes sense of life experience by finding patterns and order, largely through making connections. At the heart of patterning is categorization finding similarities and differences and comparing and isolating features.

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Today’s brain and learning concept: the brain is social. Bowen systems theory and developmental psychologists stress that individuals must always be seen as integral parts of larger social systems. Part of our identity depends on establishing community and finding ways to belong. We begin to be shaped as the immensely receptive brain interacts with our early environment and interpersonal relationships.

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I’ll be teaching my Introduction to Teaching course during the May term. It’s a misnomer as the course actually focuses on one narrow area of teaching, namely, instruction. Two frameworks inform the approach to the course: (1) research on effective teacher behavior in classroom instruction, and (2) research on the brain and learning. In the next several blog entries I’ll share some insights from the course on the brain and learning. Today’s entry: the brain functions as a whole.

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This is the season I enter my period of Lenten Literary Purgatory. Specifically, this is the time when doctoral dissertations start coming in requiring hours of reading academic writing by anxiously ambitious graduate students. Academia has its perks, but this isn’t one of them.

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We’ve just added a link to the School of Christian Ministry at BTSR on our Organizational links listing. The School of Christian ministry provides quality continuing education courses, programs, and events for clergy and lay church leaders. Many convenient online learning opportunities here! Check out their offerings, there’s probably one you need. You can register online.

I recently attended a panel on continuing education. One of the questions at the center of conversation had to do with effective models for continuing education programs. Some sound ideas were shared, but many missed the mark, educationally speaking. Whether we design a program for continuing education or any other educational event we will do well to keep certain principles of learning in mind. The following are principles and practices for effective learning experiences.

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I’ve been reviewing video presentations for a project. Primarily I screen them for delivery rather than content. It’s amazing how many basic rules of good communication presenters break—consistently—even professional speakers and celebrated “master teachers.” The other side of the equation that puzzles me is the level of tolerance audiences seem to have for poor presentations. I wonder sometimes if we’ve seen so few well-delivered presentations that we’ve lowered our expectations, and therefore, demand so little of presenters. Most of the presentations I see are entertaining but not educational, even when they portend to be.

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