Learning and the Brain, May 2011

Learning and the Brain Conference
May 5-7, 2011
The Science of Student Success: Optimizing Achievement and Reducing Failure

 

Learning and the Brain Conference May 2011 – notes (Word doc)

  

Daniel Siegel
Director of the Mindsight institute
Clinical Psychiatry, UCLA

• The brain seeks patterns and wants to predict sequences
• Mindsight- predicting the intent of another person
• Meditation – focusing on breathing teaches mind to attend.  Take a “time in” each day

Mindsight, Dan Siegel
The Mindful Therapist, Dan Siegel (also recommended for teachers)

 

 

Judy Willis
Neurologist and former MS teacher
www.Radteach.com   (some free chapters of books)

• Teaches students how their brain works (Brain Owner’s  Manual articles on website)
• Uses mini white boards.  No one raises hand.  Every students answers questions and holds up answers to her.  Every time they answer, they are rewiring brain.
• Negative emotions reduce the flow of information to the higher brain (Prefrontal Cortex – reflective) and stays in lower brain (involuntary and reactive)
• Uses prediction and feedback.  Making a prediction creates curiosity, sustains attention, and we have to know if we were right.  Successful prediction is intelligence. 

Research-based strategies to ignite student learning, Judy Willis
Teaching the Brain to read, Judy Willis
Learning to Love Math: Teaching Strategies that Change Student Attitudes and get results, Judy Willis

 

 

Donna Walker Tileston
Strategic Teaching and Learning, Dallas, TX
www.wetsk.com  (WETSK – What Every Teacher Should Know)

• We cannot motivate students, but we can help trigger student’s natural mechanisms
• Make class a no pressure zone.  Take off the pressure to provide opportunities for success
• Rewards train the brain not to have intrinsic motivation
• Celebrations that come not as part of an “if . . . then” promote intrinsic motivation
• Give feedback often.  Video games give feedback every few seconds.  During a one hour class, students need feedback at least 7 times.  Feedback not necessarily from the teacher.

What every Teacher Should Know About Motivation,  Donna Walker Tileston
What Every Teacher Should Know About Diverse Learners, Donna Walker Tileston

 

 

Kennon Sheldon
Professor of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia

• Intrinsic motivation easily undermined by deadlines/time pressure, surveillance/evaluation, threats/coercion, promised rewards.
• motivation is a continuum, not simply extrinsic and intrinsic

Self-Determination Theory – humans have 3 basic psychological needs (like vitamins)

1. Autonomy – do what you choose, free will
2. Competence – Doing well, making progress
3. Relatedness – connecting with others

In other words – get out of the students’ way!

Designing  the Future of Positive Psychology, Kennon Sheldon

Recommends  textbook –

Understanding Motivation and Emotion, JohnMarshall Reeve

 

 

Lucy Jo Palladino
Sports Psychologist, Attention Expert, Formerly Clinical Faculty University of Arizona Medial School
www.yourfocuszone.com

• “in the zone”  is not being under-aroused or over-aroused. 
• Balance of serotonin (calm) and dopamine (stimulation) with a pinch or nor-epinephrine (fight or flight)

5 steps to teach kids to pay attention

1. Be a role model
2. Reward attention, not interruption (the quiet wheel gets the grease)
3. Give students tool to increase or decrease stimulation.  Identify distraction in a blame-free way.
4. Set limits
5. Believe in the student

Homework time – parents assume a child is under-aroused if not focusing, but they are actually over-aroused (freezing, overwhelmed).  Then we threaten and wonder why the child melts down.

Find your Focus Zone: An Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload, Lucy Jo Palladino

 

 

Sian Beilock
Professor of Psychology; Principal Investigator, Human Performance Lab, University of Chicago

Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, Sian Beilock

 

 

Daniel Coyle

Journalist, contributing Editor Outside Magazine
Studied hotbeds of talent around the world.  The hotbed leaders/teachers have 3 common traits:

• Ruthlessly eliminate all passive learning
• Celebrate struggle and repetition
• Encourage theft (getting ideas from others)

 “Reach and Repeat”

• The people with whom we surround ourselves motivate us
• Identity is ignition – connection with someone who excels “staring at a vision of your future self”
• Myelin is a material that insulates the neurons in your brain.  It makes connections faster and fire more often.
• Myelin layer growth directly correlates to time spent practicing
• It only goes on.  It does not come off.  That’s why it is tough to replace a habit.

The Talent Code:  Greatness isn’t Born.  It’s Grown.  Here’s how. Daniel Coyle

Recommends-

Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell
Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success, Matthew Syed
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, Joshua Foer

 

 

Lise Eliot
Neuroscience, Chicago Medical School

• Compiled a number of studies (meta-analysis)
• Boys and Girls brains have minimal differences.  The differences come more from how they are socialized

Pink Brain, Blue Brain, How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps – And What We can Do About It, Lise Eliot

 

 

Jennifer Mangels
Director, Dynamic Learning Lab; Professor Baruch College and City University of New York

• Writing for 10 minutes about thoughts and feelings before a big test helps offload stress and free rain resources to do your best
• Authored two articles with Carol Dweck

Reccomends-

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,  Carol Dweck

 

 

Barbara Scheider
Michigan State University

Engagement = balance between challenge and skill.  Students report focus, concentration and feeling good

To help students engage, teachers can:

• Have high expectations for student performance
• Develop strong social relationships with students – encourage to believe in themselves
• Provide more structures activities with high meaning to students lives
• Help students understand broad purpose of schooling, and individual tasks
• Ensure that demands of adolescents have a clear purpose
• Be an advisor and mentor
• Provide timely feedback
• Provide sufficient time for task
• Give freedom and autonomy to direct own efforts

Specializes in the transition from High School to College

Predictors of College success:

• Visualization – see self as a college student
• Strategic plan – use time, know who to ask for help, cost
• Realization – what is needed to get into college and what it will be like

Becoming Adult : How Teenagers Prepare for the World of Work, by: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Barbara Schneider

Reccomends Flow and other books by , Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mark Fenkse

Neuroscience and Applied Cognition, University of Guelph

• Meditation helps resilience (ability to disengage from stress – to let go)
• Exerting self-control takes more blood glucose and oxygen.  It is more strenuous to the brain.
• Chronic stress reduces our self-control. Memory, concentration
• Dark chocolate (70% cocoa) is a great brain healthy snack

The Winner’s Brain, 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success, Jeff Brown, Mark Fenske, Liz Neporent

 

 

Dolores Albarracin
Psychology, Director of the Social Action Lab, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

How language can be used to motivate

• Talk to yourself in 2^nd person “You …”
• Questions work better than statements.  Bob the Builder approach, not little engine that Could.
• High achieving students respond better to “for a grade”.  Lower achieving students respond better to “for fun”