*Brain-based+Learning

Brain-Based Learning

What is it? This learning theory is based on the structure and function of the brain. As long as the brain is not prohibited from fulfilling its normal processes, learning will occur.  Brain-based learning has hatched a new discipline now entitled by some as educational neuroscience, or by others as mind, brain, and education science (Sousa, 2011). Whatever we call this "not really new discipline," it is a comprehensive approach to instruction using current research from neuroscience. Brain-based education (aka educational neuroscience) emphasizes how the brain learns naturally and is based on what we currently know about the actual structure and function of the human brain at varying developmental stages. 

Principles Twelve Brain/Mind Learning Principles  The twelve brain/mind learning principles, as defined by Caine and Caine:
 * 1) The brain is a complex adaptive system.
 * 2) The brain is a social brain.
 * 3) The search for meaning is innate.
 * 4) The search for meaning occurs through patterning.
 * 5) Emotions are critical to patterning.
 * 6) Every brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts and wholes.
 * 7) Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral attention.
 * 8) Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes.
 * 9) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We have at least two ways of organizing memory.
 * 10) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Learning is developmental.
 * 11) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat.
 * 12) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Every brain is uniquely organized. (Caine and Caine 1997)

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> 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: > <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">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.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Teaching Ideas

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What Brain-Based Learning Suggests
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">How the brain works has a significant impact on what kinds of learning activities are most effective. Educators need to help students have appropriate experiences and capitalize on those experiences. As Renate Caine illustrates on p. 113 of her book Making Connections, three interactive elements are essential to this process: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A few other tenets of brain-based learning include: > <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Feedback is best when it comes from reality, rather than from an authority figure. > <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">People learn best when solving realistic problems. > <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The big picture can’t be separated from the details. > <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Because every brain is different, educators should allow learners to customize their own environments. > <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The best problem solvers are those that laugh!
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Teachers must immerse learners in complex, interactive experiences that are both rich and real. One excellent example is immersing students in a foreign culture to teach them a second language. Educators must take advantage of the brain’s ability to parallel process.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Students must have a personally meaningful challenge. Such challenges stimulate a student’s mind to the desired state of alertness.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In order for a student to gain insight about a problem, there must be intensive analysis of the different ways to approach it, and about learning in general. This is what’s known as the “active processing of experience.”

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Using the latest neural research, educational techniques that are brain friendly provide a biologically driven framework for creating effective instruction. This theory also helps explain recurring learning behaviors, and is a meta-concept that includes an eclectic mix of techniques. Currently, related techniques stress allowing teachers to connect learning to students' real lives and emotional experiences, as well as their personal histories and experiences.

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