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brain research

TCEA ANNOUNCES Brain-Based Learning Course

by Miguel Guhlin December 21, 2023

written by Miguel Guhlin

TCEA offers a new course that demystifies new research regarding brain-based learning and incorporates scientists’ findings about the brain and how memories form. Let’s take a look at the benefits this course offers and how educators can participate and boost their knowledge of brain-based instruction.

The Basis of Brain-Based Learning

Research shows that the more learners take part in an activity, the more they are likely to form memories. The research supports the idea that humans connect memories to brain neuron links. The more connections are made, the more long-lasting the memory. TCEA.org provides access to a high-quality online course, Brain-Based Learning, which highlights this research.

TCEA’s courses allow for enrolled teachers to begin anytime. Moreover, they can go at their own speed to complete the course content. Teachers watch videos to get suggestions that guide them in designing research-informed lessons.

Become a Brain-Based Learning Designer

Karen Kahan, the primary course developer, designed the course with input from various sources. She included these elements in this online course:

How the brain works (includes new research)

How neurotransmitters impact learning

Using reflection to assist students

The course is a must-take for curriculum specialists, coaches, and classroom teachers.

Brain-Based Learning Course Modules

This course takes you through an introduction to the brain and the impact the brain has on learning. New brain research comes out regularly. The results of many of these research studies are highlighted in this course. Educators will gain strategies to apply what they have learned. Every action seeks to improve teachers’ classroom practices.

The course includes five modules which include the following:

Brain Basics
Chemicals in the Brain That Impact Learning
Facts and Myths About the Brain and Learning
Brain Research and Implications for Teaching
Easy Changes to Make That Embrace Brain Research

Educators can earn a digital badge and a digital certificate when they complete the course. Additionally, educators who complete the course earn 12 CPE hours upon course completion.

Course Prerequisites and Requirements

The purpose of this course is to expand teachers’ comfort zones. It also seeks to broaden knowledge of brain-based learning. There are no prerequisites, making this an introductory-level course for anyone working with students.

The course is available for $39 for individuals. For groups of 10 or more, it’s $34 per person. Contact Miguel Guhlin (mguhlin@tcea.org) for quotes for 10 or more people. Large groups can also pay with a TCEA Credit Card Authorization Form.

Explore TCEA’s Brain-Based Learning Course

December 21, 2023 0 comments

Educational Research

Brain-Based Strategies That Work

by Miguel Guhlin December 10, 2021

written by Miguel Guhlin

Wondering about the connection between brain-based research and high-effect size instructional strategies? I’ve always wondered at what point these two connect. In this blog entry, I’ll try to share my understanding of how they do.

Before We Start, A Quick Reminder

As I’ve mentioned before, there is a plethora of pop research. That is, brain research that is popular, yet inaccurate. Here’s a quick review of brain myths that are completely untrue in case you missed some of the latest updates.

brainy

Increasing Long-Term Retention and Performance

If you put brain-based learning in place, you will see increased knowledge retention; it’s simply a fact. What’s more, you will see improved academic performance (source). As we know, brain-based learning strategies affect more than the skills our children learn. They can also affect social and emotional development and improve motivation and attitude.

How might teachers be more deliberate about incorporating brain-based teaching approaches?

Brain-Based Teaching Approaches

Several ways you can engage students’ brain include the following:

Start positive and cultivate physical and emotional safety in the class.
Inject suspense into your lesson by adding suspenseful pauses.
Movement activates the brain. Incorporate movements that support learning activities relevant to content.
Chunk the learning into small, manageable pieces to scaffold comprehension and processing
The new and unusual are of high interest to the brain. Create situations or demonstrations that break students out of their learning routine.
Take advantage of Think-Pair-Share type activities.

Be aware that nutrition, sleep, and exercise also play a key role in brain health. Explore this Wakelet meta-collection on Improving Brain Function.

brainy

Blending Brain-Based Approaches and Strategies That Work

As you can see from the chart above, there are a wide variety of teaching approaches. The approaches shown run the gamut from brain-based to high-effect size strategies. The high-effect size instructional strategies address items featured in Hattie’s Visible Learning.

You can see that there are some strategies and approaches that appear on both lists. Those include some of the following. I have addressed missing strategies in other blog entries.

Teacher-Student Relationships (d=0.48). This strategy focuses on “the quality of the relationships in the classroom. The more safe and supported students feel, the better the academic outcomes (source).
Practice Testing (d=0.46). Known also as retrieval practice, this involves frequent quizzing over a period of time. It encourages students’ recall of material from memory. The more students recall material learned before, the more significant the retention (source).
Rehearsal (d=0.73). This refers to mental techniques for helping students remember information. It can include memorization, organizing data at random and then repeating it to a visual cue (source).

As you might imagine, this overlap of instructional strategies has a positive effect. It also signals exactly what strategies we can use to great effect.

“We do not want evidence – we want good evidence, evidence that we can interpret to make a difference in the school and class, and we want big picture thinking based on these interpretations of this evidence.”

Source: As cited: John Hattie, Author of Visible Learning

Overlapping Research and Experts on What Works

In The Fundamentals of Teaching, Mike Bell presents a compilation of strategies that work. Hattie’s endorsement of his book, quoted above, makes a powerful point. Several areas of research highlight specific strategies. Some of the strategies he sees of value include:

Prior knowledge
Presentation
Feedback
Repetition

In this blog entry, I’ve shared how brain-based learning research aligns to a few strategies. The ones highlighted in bold are also brain-based. As you might imagine, any solid instruction will incorporate these strategies. Mike Bell suggests teachers can improve learning by first focusing on what works and then second, ridding ourselves of time-consuming, low-effect size practices. You can listen to him present the key concepts in his video below.

I encourage you to continue to explore evidence-based strategies. You can find quite a bit on the topic here at TCEA, in blog entries and online, self-paced courses.

Study the Research

Here are a few reliable sources of research. This list is adapted from Bell’s list. For your convenience, find the links below:

What Works Clearinghouse – https://tinyurl.com/whatworksc
IRIS Center – https://tinyurl.com/irisctr
Visible Learning MetaX database – https://tinyurl.com/vlmetax
Education Endowment Foundation – https://tinyurl.com/eeftools
Marzano Center – https://tinyurl.com/mzctr

Brain-Based Strategies

Here are two strategies I rely on. What are your favorites?

#1: Inside-Outside Circle

Pair students up.
Form one circle with students facing out (Inside Circle)
Remaining students find and face their partners (Outside Circle)
Pose a question and indicate what role each partner will play. For instance, “What are three ways to engage students’ brains?”
Inside partner speaks; outside partner listens.”
Pause for think time.
Switch roles—the outside partner talks; inside partner listens.
After that, the outside circle rotates clockwise, and each student ends up with a new partner.
Repeat process with a new question:
“What is one way YOU start positive with your students?”

Brain-Based Strategy #2: Sage and Scribe

Develop students’ ability to explain concepts in a clear manner. Taking notes or detailing the process in writing also is a surface learning activity, great for introducing new ideas, skills.

Students work in pairs. Designate one student as the sage (speaker), the other as the scribe (silent writer).
Ask a question and allow a few moments for sages to think. For example: “Explain how concept mapping works.”
When the teacher says “Begin,” the sage explains the process to the scribe.
The scribe writes down the sage’s spoken version of the process on paper (or types it).
Once time has expired, sage and scribe switch places to respond to a new question. For example: “What is one way you can use bell ringers, or entry/exit tickets, in the classroom?

December 10, 2021 16 comments

Educational Research

Why It May Be Time to Dump Bloom’s Taxonomy

by Lori Gracey December 9, 2021

written by Lori Gracey

Over my 40-year career in education, I have come to recognize that what I was taught back in college about being an effective teacher is not necessarily true today. It’s not just because times have changed (they have), students have changed (they have), or the world has changed (it has). It’s because, over the past 30 years, more research has been done on what works best in teaching and learning than in all the years before that. And the results of all of that research are startling, to say the least. One of the most astonishing findings has to do with the value of following Bloom’s Taxonomy.

The History of Bloom’s

The taxonomy was created in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom and some of his colleagues as a way to leave behind behaviorist theories of learning that were being used at the time (memorization, rote learning) and embrace higher-order thinking skills. They incorporated aspects of cognitive, affective, and psycho-motor domains into the taxonomy to make it more all-encompassing. It was a radical change in how educators were taught to teach. Then, in 2001, Anderson and Krathwohl offered a revision to Bloom’s, indicating that “in the cognitive domain, creation appears as a higher-order process as compared to evaluation.”

Bloom’s Taxonomy is easy to implement. We are all familiar with the “verb chart” that lets us select the level of thinking we want our students to work at. We pick a content standard, decide what level it is best learned at, find a verb at that level in the chart, create the learning activity, and we’re done. But is this approach still valid today?

Bloom's

Why Bloom’s May Not Be the Best Approach

The first reason to reconsider using Bloom’s Taxonomy in the classroom has to do with how the brain works. Thinking does not operate within hierarchies (as outlined in the taxonomy). All of these “levels” happen simultaneously in a variety of places in the brain.

The second reason to stop relying on Bloom’s is that it was created before rigorous research into its effectiveness was put in place. At more than 60 years old, the taxonomy is simply not supported by any empirical research on learning. The only piece of this hierarchical approach that is validated today is the existence of factual-conceptual knowledge, often called prior knowledge. But there is no clear research on its basic assumption that there are lower- and higher-order thinking skills. The brain doesn’t look at a problem to be solved and decide that it only needs a lower-order process.

The third reason Bloom’s may not be the approach you want to follow in your classroom has to do with new research on the social relation of persons in the creation of knowledge. The taxonomy does not consider the learner and the differences that each learner brings to the table. Motivation, their intellectual values, their past experiences with the content, their differences in cognitive processing: none of these are considered. The approach is based on the belief that all learners are at the same place in their learning, which is inherently false. In short, Bloom’s Taxonomy focuses on abstract cognitive domains and not on the individual learner. It is teacher-centered and not student-centered.

Conclusions to Take Away and Next Steps

I realize that this blog may shock some educators. And for that, I’m sorry. But we want to put our time, effort, and focus into instructional strategies and approaches that we know will work best for our students. And I believe that we must stay current with what the latest (and verified!) research says in order to do so.

So what might your next steps be? Make time to examine what the latest and best research says about effective teaching and learning. TCEA has a series of blogs on instructional strategies that have been proven to work, as well as several online, self-paced courses that will help you dive into how to apply the best approaches in your classroom. Be open to new ideas and new ways to help your students master the content. Question the strategies that are your “favorites” and ensure that they are based on valid, current research. And talk with your colleagues and administrators about getting more professional learning on the most effective teaching methods.

Research and Supporting Articles

Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.
Bandura, A. (2001). Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective. Annual Review Of Psychology, 52(1), 1
Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a Psychology of Human Agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science, (2). 164.
Barney, Jason (2021). Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science.
Berger, Ron (2018). Here’s What’s Wrong with Bloom’s Taxonomy: A Deeper Learning Perspective.
Bloom, B. S.; Engelhart, M. D.; Furst, E. J.; Hill, W. H.; Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay Company.
Briñol, P., & DeMarree, K. G. (2012). Social metacognition. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Case, Roland (2013). The Unfortunate Consequences of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2012). Motivation, personality, and development within embedded social contexts: An overview of self-determination theory. In R. M. Ryan (Ed.), Oxford handbook of human motivation (pp. 85-107). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Efklides, A. (2006). Metacognition and affect: What can metacognitive experiences tell us about the learning process? Educational Research Review, 13-14.
Kim, Y. R., Park, M. S., Moore, T. J., & Varma, S. (2013). Multiple levels of metacognition and their elicitation through complex problem-solving tasks. The Journal Of Mathematical Behavior, 32(3), 377-396.
Schraw, G., & Moshman, D. (1995). Metacognitive Theories. Educational Psychology Review, (4). 351.
Schraw, G., Crippen, K. J., & Hartley, K. (2006). Promoting Self-Regulation in Science Education: Metacognition as Part of a Broader Perspective on Learning. Research In Science Education, 36(1-2), 111-139.

December 9, 2021 9 comments

Educational Research Professional Learning

Putting a Growth Mindset into Practice

by Lori Gracey March 5, 2021

written by Lori Gracey

Our knowledge about the brain and how it learns has dramatically increased over the past 30 years, with many beliefs that we used to hold about learning now being shown as false. Let’s take a look at some of the latest research and what it means for you as a professional educator.

Some Brain Basics

There are several basic facts about the brain and learning that we need to understand first:

Learning arises from changes in the connections between brain cells, not the addition of new brain cells. It was found that rats raised in a laboratory with an environment that was enriched with stimuli to encourage learning developed 25% more synapses than control rats did. “With practice, neural networks grow new connections, strengthen existing ones, and build insulation that speeds the transmission of impulses” (source). This effect occurs whether a more stimulating environment is experienced immediately following birth or during maturity. In other words, connections can continue to be formed throughout our lives, so we should never stop learning new things.
Learning involves changing the brain. That seems like a simple statement, but let it sink in for a minute. In order for real learning to take place, physical changes must occur in the brain itself. That implies that some effort is required.
Adequate sleep, nutrition, and exercise encourage robust learning. If we are lacking in any of these areas, our brains cannot learn as effectively.
Moderate stress is beneficial for learning, while mild or extreme stress are detrimental. This seems really key to me. Often times, as teachers, we try to make the learning as easy as possible for our students. But the research shows that we need to be under some stress in order for our brains to “step up” and fully tackle new information. Too much stress, however, and learning stops.

Where Does a Growth Mindset Fit In?

30 years ago, Carol Dweck and her colleagues began studying student attitudes about failure. After some research, they defined two different views that students had about the work they were doing: either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. A growth mindset is defined as the underlying belief that we can get smarter and that effort on our part makes us stronger. That belief leads to learners putting in extra time and effort, which leads to higher achievement.

growth mindset

So a growth mindset actually changes behavior, which then grows the connections in our brains to further cement new learning. And, if someone has a fixed mindset (“there is nothing I can do to be smarter”), that belief can be changed to a growth mindset with intervention and practice so that greater learning can occur.

Putting Brain Research and a Growth Mindset into Practice

As educators, it’s important for us to model what we want our students to do. And that’s equally true for having a growth mindset. So what have you done lately to increase the connections in your brain? What new learning have you engaged in? What are you doing to be smarter?

If you haven’t been learning as much as you should, and if the learning you have been doing is not causing moderate stress, then I would recommend you consider taking one (or several) of TCEA’s online, self-paced courses. Based on the latest research on learning, each course is designed to engage you, motivate you, and challenge you, all while providing practice, examples, and resources on important educational topics. Whether you want to up your tech skills with a course in Google or Canvas, robotics or iPads, Microsoft or Seesaw, there is a course for you.

And TCEA’s courses are not just about technology. We also provide online courses that can be completed within a few days on John Hattie’s research on effective teaching and learning strategies, digital tools to help students master critical mathematics concepts, social/emotional learning in the classroom, using library resources to better cover content, and ensuring student engagement and empowerment with self-reported grades.

About the Courses

Each course provides at least 12 hours of CPE credit for professional growth, a digital certificate, and a digital badge. In addition, the courses are constantly updated with new information, the latest research, and additional resources. And they are priced for educators at between $29 and $49 dollars a course with discounts available to campuses and districts for multiple purchases.