Brain-based Education: the secret to a successful learning

The ’90s was named as “The decade of the brain”. Numerous scientific investigations have been started with the main objective of finding a cure for dementia and how to obtain effective learning. Over the years, several discoveries about the functioning and storage of the brain have been revealed. Even though many questions remain unanswered, research related to Neuroscience and Education has attracted curiosity, mainly because it has contributed positively in carrying out tests and creating new methodologies.

What is Brain-based Education?

The human brain is an incredible organ. As educators, we always need to learn more about how it works so that we can continue to strengthen the strategies we use to help students learn effectively. We are always trying to find the best ways for students to retain and use the information they are taught. Learning about how the brain works can build a bridge where students transfer their learning and create a long-term storage mechanism. An important example is that, through research, it was found that students need to interact with information at least six times so that long-term memory can be forwarded and thus remembered for a long period of time.

Brain-based Education, now called by some professionals as Educational Neuroscience, is a comprehensive teaching approach, using current Neuroscience research, which analyzes how the brain learns. Using more recent research, this theory helps to explain recurring learning behaviors, and is a meta-concept that includes an eclectic mix of techniques. Techniques currently related to emotions, as well as personal stories and experiences.
Over the past two decades, neuroscientists have been doing research to improve teaching practices, from autopsies, MRIs, and computed tomography. The findings help to determine how human learning actually happens. In essence, these scientists work as a thorough analysis of a small “black box” in order to determine how the brain processes and retains information.

Technology in medicine opened the way for many innovations in the classroom. According to these practical suggestions, teachers have applied new teaching theories based on recent findings. Some well-known authors in this area are Marian Diamond; Howard Gardner; Renate and Geoffrey Caine; Thomas Armstrong; Candace Pert; Eric Jensen; etc.
The Caine Learning Institute uses fundamental principles and values ​​from Educational Neuroscience that maximizes learning and makes it rewarding.

:: The brain is a complex adaptive system
:: The brain is a social organ
:: The search for meaning is innate
:: The search for meaning happens through standardization
:: Emotions are fundamental for standardization
:: The brain simultaneously visualizes parts and a whole
:: Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral attention
:: Learning involves conscious and unconscious processes
:: We have at least two forms of memory organization
:: Learning is development
:: Learning is reinforced by the challenge and inhibited by the threat
:: Each brain is uniquely organized

There are many different examples of interactive teaching elements that emerge from these principles. In my own methodology I follow some of them, important for better learning of my students:

Environment: Environments must be prepared for students to immerse themselves in a learning experience. Primary teachers, for example, must build a classroom forest with stuffed animals and cardboard trees. Secondary teachers must take students to a zoo to explore and identify animals. The student consolidates and internalizes the information when he actively participates in it. The scenario must be set up in the students’ imagination by the teacher to prepare the experience.

Furniture: Meeting tables or desks grouped to stimulate social skills and group work. Have comfortable furniture and sofas available for casual discussion areas.

Enrichment: The brain is able to create new connections at any age when it is challenged by complex experiences. Memorization is best developed when learning involves music and motor skills.

Essence: To hold the student’s attention, we must engage the brain in the learning process for novelty, motivation, and emotion, making it feel in a safe place. For this technique to work, we connect learning to real-life using tools such as role-playing (simulations), debate, storytelling (storytelling), and favorite songs.

The main role of the modern educator is, increasingly, to expand a new dimension and motivate the student to remain open to seek knowledge. All of the above strategies can be seamlessly integrated into existing curriculum standards. Teaching students the mechanism behind how the brain works and the approaches that help to work it positively reinforces to develop more intelligent, creative, and powerful learning.