What is "Brain-Based Learning"?
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by Lisa Chipongian
The Organ of Learning
To many, the term "brain-based learning" sounds redundant. Isn't all
learning and teaching brain-based? Advocates of brain-based teaching
insist that there is a difference between "brain-compatible"
education, and "brain-antagonistic" teaching practices and methods
which can actually prevent learning.
In his book, Human Brain and Human Learning (1983), Leslie Hart argues
that teaching without an awareness of how the brain learns is like
designing a glove with no sense of what a hand looks like-its shape,
how it moves. Hart pushes this analogy even further in order to drive
home his primary point: if classrooms are to be places of learning,
then "the organ of learning," the brain, must be understood and
accommodated:
All around us are hand-compatible tools and machines and keyboards,
designed to fit the hand. We are not apt to think of them in that
light, because it does not occur to us that anyone would bring out
some device to be used by human hands without being sure that the
nature of hands was considered. A keyboard machine or musical
instrument that called for eight fingers on each hand would draw
instant ridicule. Yet we force millions of children into schools that
have never seriously studied the nature and shape of the human brain,
and which not surprisingly prove actively brain-antagonistic. (Hart
1983)
Granted, the brain is infinitely more complex than the hand. Although
Hart does not deny the brain's vast intricacy, and he admits to his
own deliberate simplifications regarding the brain's design, he argues
that some knowledge, even if it is partial and simplified, can still
be applied "to design brain-fitting, brain-compatible instructional
settings and procedures." Such settings and procedures would emphasize
"real-world" exposure. The school, in Hart's words, would become an
"exciting center where there is constant encounter with the richness
and variety of the real world" as opposed to a "dreary egg crate of
classrooms...almost empty of anything real one might learn from."
Twelve Brain/Mind Learning Principles
Among the many supporters of Hart's approach to educating with the
brain's functions and design in mind are Renate Nummela Caine and
Geoffrey Caine, authors of Making Connections: Teaching and the Human
Brain (1991), Unleashing the Power of Perceptual Change: The Potential
of Brain-Based Teaching (1997), and Education on the Edge of
Possibility (1997). They build on the idea of brain-compatible
learning with a list of twelve "brain/mind learning principles." These
principles, according to Caine and Caine, synthesize research related
to the brain and learning from many disciplines and present it in a
form that is useful to educators. The twelve principles, they
continue, can function as a theoretical foundation for brain-based
learning, and offer guidelines and a framework for teaching and
learning.
Their explicitly cautious approach to bridging neuroscience and
teaching practices reveals a fundamental and important dilemma: how to
achieve a balance between taking advantage of new research findings
that have important implications for education, and avoiding grand
(and potentially irresponsible) conclusions with tenuous scientific
basis. In Making Connections, where Caine and Caine's approach to
brain-based education is formalized, they state the need to refrain
from prematurely over-concluding, given the dynamic nature of current
brain research: "Both in the neurosciences and in education, we will
no doubt learn more in the years to come. Though we make strong
recommendations and suggestions, the book has an open-ended quality."
Like Hart, Caine and Caine choose to interpret brain research
holistically. And the "12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles," though the
name may lead you to believe otherwise, are not based solely on the
findings of neuroscience. Instead, these principles and the ideas
generated from them come from a wide range of additional disciplines,
including cognitive psychology, sociology, philosophy, education,
technology, sports psychology, creativity research, and physics. As
Caine and Caine explain, all of the principles are "the result of a
cross-disciplinary search."
These principles are not, the authors are the first to admit,
definitive or closed to revision; as more is discovered about the
brain, how we learn and remember, educators will need to update their
knowledge:
These principles are not meant to represent the final word on
learning. Collectively, they do, however, result in a fundamentally
new, integrated view of the learning process and the learner. They
move us away from seeing the learner as a blank slate and toward an
appreciation of the fact that body, brain, and mind are a dynamic
unity.
Where Did the "12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles" Come From?
Principle 11--"Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited
by threat"-illustrates how each principle is derived from a mixture of
disciplines. In Education on the Edge of Possibility, Caine and Caine
illustrate the origins of Principle 11, a principle that many brain-
based learning advocates discuss, but the cross-disciplinary origins
of which few actually reveal. The effects of perceived threat, or
distress, on cognitive functioning led Caine and Caine to identify the
optimal state of mind for learning, "relaxed alertness," one of three
central elements accompanying complex learning. To translate into
practical terms, no one who has experienced the "fight or flight" fear
response would identify this state as optimal for learning. "Brain-
based learning" theory is a combination of common sense and brain
science-in this case, the brain's physiological reaction to stress-
making neuroscience a useful partner for improving education.
The research areas that contributed to principle 11 include: "Stress
Theory; Anxiety Research; Self-Efficacy; Neurosciences; Sports
Psychology; and Creativity."
Practical Use of Brain/Mind Principles
Caine and Caine do not use the principles to prescribe any single
teaching method. Instead, the principles are intended to provide a
framework for "selecting the methodologies that will maximize learning
and make teaching more effective and fulfilling." They may open doors
for educators, increase teaching options, or serve as a guidepost to
educators already working to implement brain-compatible teaching
practices. Following is the complete list of the twelve brain/mind
learning principles, as defined by Caine and Caine:
The brain is a complex adaptive system.
The brain is a social brain.
The search for meaning is innate.
The search for meaning occurs through patterning.
Emotions are critical to patterning.
Every brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts and wholes.
Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral attention.
Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes.
We have at least two ways of organizing memory.
Learning is developmental.
Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat.
Every brain is uniquely organized. (Caine and Caine 1997)
Three Conditions for Learning
Caine and Caine conclude that "Optimizing the use of the human brain
means using the brain's infinite capacity to make connections-and
understanding what conditions maximize this process." They identify
three interactive and mutually supportive elements that should be
present in order for complex learning to occur: "relaxed alertness,"
"orchestrated immersion," and "active processing."
An optimal state of mind that we call relaxed alertness, consisting of
low threat and high challenge.
The orchestrated immersion of the learner in multiple, complex,
authentic experience.
The regular, active processing of experience as the basis for making
meaning.
(Caine and Caine 1997)
Real-life Examples
Rather than offering a list of "how to's," Caine and Caine provide
many illustrations of how these three elements may manifest themselves
in real-life learning situations. They analyze, for instance, the
success of famous math teacher Jaime Escalante, whose students from
the Los Angeles barrio passed the calculus advanced placement exam in
astounding numbers. They claim that Escalante, whose teaching career
was portrayed in the movie "Stand and Deliver," was using brain-based
practices: "Although we question his textbook approach to the content
of the subject, he understands his students and the world students
live in. In his classes, calculus becomes a way of life, is a source
of pride, and is linked to deeper understanding of how mathematics
opens doors to further study and the individual student's future."
As the term "orchestrated immersion" implies, the teacher becomes the
orchestrator, or the architect, designing experiences that will lead
students to make meaningful connections. A second grade teacher's
successful efforts to teach punctuation, specifically commas, periods,
and exclamation points, serves as a good example of how a teacher may
use what students already know to teach what is abstract and
unfamiliar. After giving her students verbal explanations of what each
of these punctuation marks means (the comma, "slow down"; the period,
"stop"; and the exclamation mark, "emphasis"), the teacher had her
students read out loud. But the verbal explanations she had given them
did not affect the way they read.
Finally, exasperated, she had them put on their coats and follow her
outside. She told them, "I am going to read to you and I want you to
walk around in a circle. When I say 'comma' I want you to slooow down,
whenever I say 'period' I want you to stop dead in your tracks, and
when I say 'exclamation mark' I want you to jump up and down...." She
tried this for five minutes with perfect success. When they went back
inside and read, all of them slowed down at the commas, paused at
periods, and used emphasis at exclamations points.
Teaching and the Organ of Learning
Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain includes many
wonderful real-life examples of how the three elements of relaxed
alertness, orchestrated immersion, and active processing occur in
successful teaching situations at all levels, from elementary school
to college and beyond, and with a variety of methods. Current
neuroscience research does not yet fully and accurately explain why
such real-life examples are effective. Nevertheless, teaching, and a
need for understanding how "the organ of learning" works, are now
linked as never before.
Neuroscience is currently so dynamic that this connection, although
secure, will inevitably grow and change and strengthen. The educator's
role will increasingly take on an added and "brain-based" dimension --
that of remaining open to and curious about a growing field of
information. Interpreting information in a way that leads to
appropriate and responsible classroom practices is a crucial, and
often overlooked, link in building this bridge between education and
research on, in Hart's words, "the most complex apparatus we know of
in the universe," the human brain.
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Lisa Chipongian
is a writer and editor who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and works as
an Associate Research Specialist in the Psychology Department of the
University of Wisconsin - Madison.