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.
Although we can identify the parts of the brain, and are gaining greater understanding about the particular function of those parts, like anything organic, it’s more appropriate to understand the brain as more “whole” than “parts.”
For instance, the amygdala has a great deal to do with emotions and the hippocampus with memory; although each part or region has its own function, the brain still operates as a purposeful whole and dynamic entity, with memory and emotion influencing each other.
The brain shares some characteristics with many organic systems:
- The brain (as a system) seeks to survive and protect itself (in fact, “Job 1” for the brain is its own survival)
- The brain grows and adapts to its environment within the constraints of its potentiality
- Small incidents can have vast and unexpected ramifications some of which can lead to consequences that last forever.
- The brain is immensely resilient and plastic, it can absorb relatively large inputs from the environment without noticeable consequence and it is more multifaceted than people tend to appreciate.
- Stress can weaken the brain and relaxation and laughter can strengthen it (as with the immune system).
The concept that the brain is a “whole” means that integration is the key to the brain’s functioning. It seems that the brain tries to integrate everything: children who learn to play the piano or sing in a choir improve their spatial reasoning; learning to read enhances student’s ability to think in abstractions. Everything that happens to us has both a direct and indirect effect due to the nature of the interconnectedness of the brain. Which is partly why I like reminding students about the importance of being selective in one’s reading: “Smart books make you smart. Stupid books make you stupid.”
Implications for teaching and learning: avoid overfocusing on individual “learning styles,” thereby robbing the brain of challenge for integration. The brain is more resilient and plastic than we tend to give it credit for. If the brain feels threatened, it cannot learn.
