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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I grew up among pietists, evangelicals and biblical literalists to one extent or another. I must confess that a lot of the cognition in those traditions of faith never really took hold with me. Perhaps I was too critical for my own spiritual benefit even as a child. Issues about biblical inerrancy never interested me. During junior high school I learned that there are no extant original biblical manuscripts, the basis upon which the claims for biblical inerrancy are built (“There are no errors in the original manuscripts.”). That being the case it became apparent to me that it was a question of choice to believe in inerrant manuscripts—a belief that made no contribution to the quality of one’s Christian life or to one’s obedience to the message of the Bible, from what I could observe.

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I met up with some old friends recently, who’d brought along some of their friends I appreciated meeting. It didn’t take long to get to that awkward point in the conversation that follows the “What do you do for a living?” Well, maybe not awkward for most jobs, but typically for the ones I’ve held (funeral home manager, local church clergy, and now seminary professor). At least people clean up their language.

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On occasion I find myself startled at hearing a persistent wrong notion that just won’t go away. These notions are sometimes overheard in informal conversation, but sometimes they are offered in lectures or presentations. I don’t doubt that the people who express these notions believe them—even if they are just plain wrong.

Here are five notions related to leadership, three of which I heard recently in one form or another:

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Mark Henderson revisits the question about nurture vs. nurture in The Times (March 28, 2009). The piece is titled “Nature v nurture? Please don’t ask.” He claims to have an answer. Here’s an excerpt:

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Bad ideas are like bad pennies. Despite my promise to self to have put the issue of postmodernism (pomo) to bed with “Galindo’s Last Postmodern Rant” the concept remains one of those “ideas people fall in love with.” Here’s a piece by Andre Gucksmann on pomo and the current financial crisis from City Journal, titled “The Postmodern Financial Crisis.” Here’s an excerpt:

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Here’s another interesting article on the brain-God connection question. The article is by Michael Brooks and it appears in New Scientist (Feb. 4, 2009). Here’s an excerpt:

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