The overall goal of brain-based education is to attempt to bring insights from brain research into the arena of education to enhance teaching and learning. The area of science often referred to as "brain research" typically includes neuroscience studies that probe the patterns of cellular development in various brain areas; and brain imaging techniques, with the latter including functional MRI (fMRI) scans and positron-emission tomography (PET) scans that allow scientists to examine patterns of activity in the awake, thinking, human brain. These brain imaging techniques allow scientists to examine activity within various areas of the brain as a person engages in mental actions such as attending, learning, and remembering. Proponents of brain-based education espouse a diverse group of educational practices and approaches, and they generally attempt to ground claims about effective practice in recently discovered facts about the human brain. They argue that there has been an unprecedented explosion of new findings related to the development and organization of the human brain and that the current state of this work can inform educational practice in meaningful ways. Indeed, advances in brain science led brain-based educator David A. Sousa to proclaim that "no longer is teaching just an art form, it is a science" (1998, p. 35).
Summary Principles of Brain-Based Research
Although brain-based education has no seminal source or centrally recognized leader, examples of commonly cited works include special issues of education journals and popular books such as How the Brain Learns: A Classroom Teacher's Guide, by Sousa; Teaching with the Brain and Mind, by Eric Jensen; Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain, by Renate Nummela Caine and Geoffrey Caine; A Celebration of Neurons: An Educator's Guide to the Human Brain, by Robert Sylwester; and Teaching for the Two-Sided Mind: A Guide to Right Brain/Left Brain Education, by Linda Ver Lee Williams. Such works, invariably written by education writers rather than brain researchers, claim to help teachers turn research on brain function into practical lessons and activities that will enhance student learning. A common step in many brain-based education efforts involves disseminating findings from brain science in the form of basic summary principles that are designed to be accessible to educators. For example, Caine and Caine (1994) claim to have deduced twelve principles from brain science that hold strong implications for education and that can be linked to specific educational practices:
"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."
"The brain processes parts and wholes simultaneously."
"Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception."
"Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes."
"We have at least two different types of memory: a spatial memory system and a set of systems for rote learning."
"We understand and remember best when facts and skills are embedded in natural, spatial memory."
"Learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat." (pp. 88–95)
There are three problems with such summary principles. First, they are not necessarily endorsed by brain scientists as appropriate summaries of the research. Second, they are exceedingly global statements that could potentially encompass a wide variety of educational practices that are not necessarily compatible with one another. Third, few of the practices that are deemed "brain based" have been evaluated for their relative effectiveness. These problems make it difficult to evaluate the merits and usefulness of the kind of global claims offered by brain-based education writers, as exemplified by Caine and Caine.
Nevertheless, brain-based education proponents typically argue that a particular educational approach or practice is warranted by these kinds of basic summary principles and the related supporting evidence from brain research. Given that such links between brain research and education practice are initially speculative in nature and are often not subjected to evaluations that demonstrate their effectiveness, the label of "brain-based education" does not necessarily imply that the recommended educational approach or practice is "evidence based." The brain science evidence merely provides a rationale for speculating about potentially useful educational practices.
Often proponents of brain-based education use collections of claims (as above) to promote a rationale for doing away with traditional forms of education in favor of educational reforms based on constructivist learning principles and more active engagement in individualized learning and group problem solving. For example, Susan Kovalik, developer of the Integrated Thematic Instruction model, argued "disciplines have to go; the textbooks have to go; the worksheets have to go–because they have nothing to do with how the brain works" (Cohen, p. 1). Along these lines, brain-based education is often cited as a mandate for "orchestrated immersion," such as having children work through problems in curriculum by engaging in activities that simulate real-world problem solving or by engaging in group cooperative learning.
Are such broad claims warranted by the evidence provided by brain science? In 1996, seventy-four brain scientists and education professionals gathered at a meeting held by the Education Commission of the States and the Charles A. Dana Foundation to explore the extent to which neuroscience had uncovered facts about the brain that educators might apply in the classroom. At the conclusion of this meeting, which was called "Bridging the Gap between Neuroscience and Education," neuroscientists warned educators that many brain research findings might be too narrow and isolated to ever provide a detailed plan of action for restructuring schools. Furthermore, some scientists "cautioned educators to resist the temptation to … use neuroscience as a propaganda tool to promote a pet program" (Taher, p. 5). At this same meeting Joseph LeDoux, a prominent psychologist and neuroscientist, warned that "these ideas are very easy to sell to the public, but it's too easy to take them beyond their actual basis in science" (Taher, p. 5).
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