GIVING WINGS TO NEW IDEAS
Wingspread Journal, Summer 1996

MAKING CONNECTIONS
What Brain Research Tells Us About Learning

New theories on how the brain operates offer profound insights into how people learn ... and how they don't. How do we translate this theory into practice?

At the heart of much of the so-called new thought in education is attention to the workings of the human brain-new knowledge about how people learn. The implications of this knowledge are staggering: for the ways teaching takes place, the ways schools are organized, and the ways in which communities relate to the learning processes of children and adults.

Renate and Geoffrey Caine are among the leading synthesizers of current brain research, with a focus on how teaching practice can promote real learning-brain-based learning. As a participant in the 21st Century Learning Initiative, Geoffrey Caine brings important insights to discussions at Wingspread.

One insight is the idea of connections: tapping into the brains infinite capacity to make connections between what is being learned, current experiences, past knowledge, and future behavior. The Caines write that people can and need to grasp the larger patterns. The part is always embedded in a whole, the fact is always embedded in multiple contexts, and a subject is always related to many other issues and subjects. The capacity of schools and society to optimize learning and realize the potential of the human brain depends on their capacity to deal with this interconnectedness.

But how real world is all this talk about brain research and learning? It is as real as schools such as Dry Creek Elementary in Rio Linda, Calif., and Parkview Middle School in Yucalpa, Calif., both of which have been working with the Caines for several years. It is as real as the Connected School, a charter school being formed by teachers and parents in Oconomowoc, Wis. Each of these schools supports students becoming actively engaged in their own education and community.

The Caines believe that it is possible to relate brain research to developments in many other fields, ranging from creativity and stress management to linguistics and sports psychology. They have translated much of their research into a basic set of principles about the human learner and learning. The following Principles for Brain-Based Learning with updates can also be found in the Caines book: Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain, 1991.

"One of the most important lessons to derive from the brain research is that, in a very important sense, all learning is experiential. What we learn depends on the global experience, not just the manner of presentation." --Renate and Geoffrey Caine

Middle- and high-school students at the Minnesota New Country School in LeSueur, Minn., learn by making connections with their world and community. They recently assisted scientists from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in photographing, measuring, and describing deformed frogs in nearby wetlands. They then testified before the Minnesota Legislative Committee of Environment and Natural Resources on wetland and water quality. The frog project, as their activities became known, is a reflection of the charter schools philosophy which measures student learning by engagement, involves families and the community as resources, and encourages students to plan and develop their own learning. The Minnesota New Country School believes that school and community merge and use each other for learning.

MIND/BRAIN PRINCIPLES DEVELOPED BY RENATE AND GEOFFREY CAINE

Principle 1: The mind/brain is a complex adaptive system. Although it is appropriate to separate body, mind, and brain for some purposes, there is a level at which they work together as a dynamic unity. Thoughts, emotions, imagination, and predispositions operate concurrently and interactively as the entire system interacts with and exchanges information with its environment. Learning is the result of the mind/brain's self-organization of the flow of information around deeply held purposes, beliefs, meanings, and values. Education must come to terms with this complex, self-organizing capacity of the mind/brain.

Principle 2: Learning engages the entire physiology. The brain functions according to physiological rules. Learning is as natural as breathing, and it is possible to either inhibit or facilitate it. In fact, the actual wiring of the brain is affected by our life and educational experiences. In a broad sense there is a direct relationship between our physiological functioning and our capacity to learn.

Principle 3: The search for meaning is innate. The search for meaning (making sense of our experiences) is survival-oriented and basic to the human brain. The brain needs and automatically registers the familiar, while simultaneously searching for and responding to novel stimuli. Hence both familiarity and novelty must be combined in a learning environment.

Principle 4: The search for meaning occurs through patterning. In a way the brain is both scientist and artist, attempting to discern and understand patterns as they occur and giving expression to unique and creative patterns of its own. The brain resists having meaninglessness imposed on it. By meaninglessness we mean isolated pieces of information unrelated to what makes sense to a particular learner. Really effective education must give learners an opportunity to formulate their own patterns of understanding. That means they need an opportunity to put skills and ideas together in their own way.

Principle 5: Emotions are critical to patterning. What we learn is influenced and organized by emotions and mind-sets involving expectancy, personal biases and prejudices, self-esteem, and the need for social interaction. Emotions and thoughts literally shape each other and cannot be separated. Moreover, the emotional impact of any lesson or life experience may continue to reverberate long after the specific event that triggers it. Hence an appropriate emotional climate is indispensable to sound education.

Principle 6: Every mind/brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts and wholes. Although there is some truth to the left-brain/right-brain distinction, that is not the whole story. In a healthy person, both hemispheres interact in every activity, from art and computing to sales and accounting. The two-brain doctrine is most useful for reminding us that the brain reduces information into parts and perceives holistically at the same time. Good training and education recognize this, for instance, and require a dance between global projects and specifics and details.

Principle 7: Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception. The brain absorbs information of which it is directly aware, but it also directly absorbs information that lies beyond the immediate focus of attention. In fact, it responds to the entire sensory context in which teaching and communication occur. These peripheral signals are extremely potent. Even the unconscious signals that reveal our own inner attitudes and beliefs have a powerful impact on students. Educators, therefore, can and should pay extensive attention to all facets of the educational environment.

Principle 8: Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes. Much of our learning is the result of unconscious processing. Moreover, it is the entire experience that is processed. That means that much understanding may not occur during a class, but may occur hours, weeks, or months later. It also means that educators must organize what they do so as to facilitate that subsequent unconscious processing of experience by students. In practice this includes proper design of the context, the incorporation of reflection and metacognitive (thinking about thinking) activities, and ways to help learners creatively elaborate on the content or a source.

Principle 9: The mind/brain organizes memory in at least two different ways. We have both a spatial/autobiographical memory system and a set of systems for rote learning. We have a natural spatial memory which allows for instant memory of experiences. This is the system that registers the details of your meal last night. It is always engaged, is inexhaustible, and is motivated by novelty. We also have a set of systems for recalling relatively unrelated information. They are motivated by reward and punishment. Thus meaningful and meaningless information are organized and stored differently. The implications for learning are as follows:

1. Facts, skills, and procedures are best learned when embedded in and linked to rich complex experience.

2. As the systems interact, dynamic maps are created in the mind/brain. These maps are perceptual in nature and serve as a basis for interpreting experience and organizing further learning.

Principle 10: Learning is development. Development occurs in several ways. In part, the brain is plastic. That means that much of its hard wiring is shaped by the experiences that people have. In part, there are predetermined sequences of development and windows of opportunity for learning. And finally, in many respects there is no limit to growth and to the capacities of humans to learn.

Principle 11: Learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat. The brain learns it makes maximum connections optimally when appropriately challenged but downshifts under perceived threat. It becomes less flexible, and reverts to primitive attitudes and procedures. That is why we must create and maintain an atmosphere of relaxed alertness, involving low threat and high challenge. Moreover, that needs to be the state of mind of the instructor as well. However, low threat is not synonymous with simply feeling good. The essential element of a perceived threat is a feeling of helplessness. Occasional stress and anxiety are inevitable and are to be expected in genuine learning. The reason is that deep-level changes lead to a reorganization of the self and that can be intrinsically stressful, irrespective of the skill of, and support offered by, a teacher. What learners need to acquire, above all, is a belief in their capacity to change and learn.

Principle 12: Every mind/brain is unique. We all have the same set of systems, and yet are different. There are different learning styles, talents, and types of intelligence. That is why choice, variety, and multi-sensory processes are essential.

Many of us are familiar with some of these principles but have primarily dealt with them as separate and discrete factors that can affect learning. We may not have seen them as operating together. Yet all of these principles are operating simultaneously in every learner. When that complexity is properly understood, we are looking at a very different way to approach the teaching/learning process.

Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain by Renate and Geoffrey Caine is published by Innovative Learning Publications, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1991.