How can neuroscience inform teaching? What should students learn to best prepare them for the future? How do we recruit, train, and support teachers who will succeed in new learning and teaching environments? Attendees tackled these questions and more at the NAIS Science of Learning and 21st Century Schools Summit at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education last week.
How Can Neuroscience Inform Learning and Teaching?
Learning “hooks into” our basic survival systems, and emotions are critical to learning, noted presenter Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, associate professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Southern California.
“There is no learning without emotion,” she said, adding that we’ve compensated for bad educational processes by slapping emotions on the outside. We use grades and the fear of not getting into college to compensate for lack of emotional interest. “We’re wasting emotion on things that aren’t relevant for understanding the subject matter.”
Kawai Lai shares her notes at the NAIS summit.
When it comes to the neuroscience of reading development, learning disabilities, and intervention, teachers want to know how to help students compensate, said Joanna Christodoulou, assistant professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. In her research, she found that struggling readers who did the best were those who recruited different parts of their brains as compensatory systems. “They used the brains they had,” she said, urging educators to “harness who [students] are.”
Attendees noted some of the obstacles to helping children learn, including that parents fear having a child diagnosed with learning differences because it might mean that he or she is not meant for the current school community. One independent school leader said that “our relationship with rigor works against us with kids.” Another school head added: “Our relationship with rigor is driven by fear.”
Participants also questioned whether the current structure of the school day, with discrete blocks of time devoted to specific subjects, is hindering their efforts to incorporate neuroscience findings into the classroom. “There is no sense bringing neuroscience in if the school is still based on the factory model,” Denny Blodget said.
What Should Students Learn?
Participants discussed that a mix of content mastery and skills is necessary for students’ future success, with varying degrees of focus on each aspect in the curriculum.
Integrating 21st century skills such as content mastery, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, creativity/ innovation, global competence, self-direction, and financial literacy into education is at the heart of the mission of EdLeader21, said CEO Ken Kay. (Read his recent blog post.)
There are benefits beyond merely knowing facts, asserted Charles Fadel, founder and chairman of the Center for Curriculum Redesign. He asked attendees to consider the degree to which students need to learn languages, music, or math when computers in our pockets can answer almost any question we pose. “One has to take a scalpel, not a chainsaw [to the curriculum]. Rethink the mix of subjects and topics… and the depth of understanding,” Fadel said. (Read his recent blog post.)
How Do We Grow and Support Teachers?
Attendees described that new knowledge about how children learn and the skills necessary for success in the 21st century are changing the teaching profession.
“How do we invite teachers in as co-creators… not simply as people who are executing a vision that has worked passably well so far?” asked Rick Hess, author of The Cage-Busting Teacher.
It’s vital to recognize that the paradigm is changing for teachers, said Joel Rose from New Classrooms Innovation Partners. He showcased his organization’s Teach to One initiative, which provides blended math curricula that teachers can customize for each student. “There have to be better modalities than teacher-led instruction every hour of every day,” he said.
Teachers need the tools to teach a variety of students and the support from a broader group of peers to develop as professionals.
For example, many teachers go years without teaching a student with learning disabilities, noted Carolyn Strom, visiting assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU. “Would you want a doctor who said, ‘I was a great brain surgeon seven years ago, but I haven’t seen any patients in that long’?” she asked. “We need to give teachers the tools to help students.” She described the clinic in which she diagnoses learning disabilities and helps teachers address learning challenges. The clinic follows the model employed by medical diagnosticians, where practitioners discuss a case from many angles, leveraging one another’s experience and knowledge.
Jill Gough shares her notes at the NAIS summit.
The insularity of teachers’ networks is a problem as well. We need more experienced teachers to mentor new teachers, and we need to reach out across sectors to learn from each other, said Jal Mehta, associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
In that vein, Vanderbilt faculty member Marcy Singer-Gabella addressed creating teaching teams of early-, mid-, and late-career teachers to improve practice. Jen de Forest of the Blue Oak School (California) described the Progressive Education Lab, a teacher training program started by four independent schools, and Ruth Fletcher discussed a program at Punahou School (Hawaii) that nurtures beginning teachers.
The summit wrapped up by exploring the questions “What does the picture of a cutting-edge school look like?” and “How does technology fit into this picture?”
John Katzman, founder and CEO of Noodle, an education website that helps connect students with schools and colleges, noted that independent schools don’t all have to offer every course in person. With online courses, it’s possible to offer “fewer courses that are better.” (Read his recent blog post.)
Innovating based on evidence is the gateway to progress, said Russ Whitehurst from the Brookings Institution. “If you start with knowledge that’s well-validated, rather than just inspirational you’re more likely to be successful.”
To learn more about this summit, see #NAISDeepDive on Twitter, and read a teacher’s perspective of the summit on Stacey Roshan’s blog.
We also encourage you to comment here or in the Idea Exchange community in NAIS Connect with questions or issues you’d like to see us address, and to share your stories of innovative programs on NAIS Inspiration Lab.