Brain Based 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. People often say that everyone can learn. Yet
the reality is that everyone does learn. Brain-Based Education is the
purposeful engagement of strategies that apply to how our brain works in the
context of education. Brain-based learning has been called a combination of
brain science and common sense. “Brain-based” learning activities engage
both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously, resulting in stronger, more
meaningful learning experiences and permanent brain connections.
 PRINCIPLES OF BRAIN-

BASED LEARNING

Principle 1: The brain is a parallel processor.

Thoughts, intuitions, pre-dispositions, and emotions
operate simultaneously and interact with other modes of
information. Good teaching takes this into consideration.
That's why we talk about the teacher as an orchestrator of
learning.

Principle 2: Learning engages the entire

physiology.
This means that the physical health of the child -- the
amount of sleep, the nutrition -- affects the brain. So do
moods. We are physiologically programmed, and we have
cycles that have to be honored. An adolescent who does not
get enough sleep one night will not absorb much new
information the next day. Fatigue will affect the brain's
memory.
Principle 3: The search for meaning is
innate.
This means that we are naturally programmed to
search for meaning. This principle is survival
oriented. The brain needs and automatically
registers the familiar while simultaneously
searching for and responding to additional
stimuli. What does this mean for education? It
means that the learning environment needs to
provide stability and familiarity. Provision must
be made to satisfy the hunger for novelty,
discovery, and challenge. At the same time
lessons need to be exciting and meaningful and
offer students an abundance of choices.

We want to know what things mean to us. In

education one of the things we have to allow for
is for children to have rich experiences and then give them time and opportunities to make sense of their
experiences. They have to have a chance to reflect, to see how things relate. One of the richest sources of
learning from the point of view of the brain is the learning that is available to us in these experiences.

Principle 4: The search for meaning

occurs through "patterning."
Patterning refers to the organization and
categorization of information. The brain resists
having meaningless patterns imposed upon it. By
"meaningless" we mean isolated and unrelated
pieces of information. When the brain's natural
capacity to integrate information is evoked in
teaching, vast amounts of seemingly unrelated or
random information and activities can be
presented and assimilated. The brain tries to
make sense of the information by reducing it to
familiar patterns.

Patterning is everywhere. We want to impose our

patterns on what we see, and breaking patterns is
very difficult. It's as if we spend the first few years as an open system taking in information and
experiences and drawing conclusions, and then the rest of our lives we go around proving that what we
learned is in fact so.

The ideal process in learning is to present information in a way that allows the brain to extract patterns
rather than attempt to impose them. The brain is capable of taking in enormous amounts of information
when that information is related in a way so the brain can pattern appropriately.

The ideas behind thematic teaching and integrated curriculum are based on this principle of looking for
patterns and seeing interrelated patterns. One topic can be related to all kinds of different topics, and
when we do this, the brain tends to remember many more things. This is a way to teach science, literature
and social studies -- to bring them together and teach them meaningfully. Patterning is behind that.
 Principle Five: Emotions are critical to patterning.
One of the things I would like to erase is this notion of the
affective domain, the cognitive domain, and the psychomotor
domain. We have been taught that for years even though the
evidence from the brain research indicates that this is not the
case. In the brain you can't separate out emotion from
cognition. It is an interacting web of factors. Everything has
some emotion to it. In fact, many brain researchers now believe
there is no memory without emotion. Emotions are what
motivate us to learn, to create. They are in our moods. They are
our passion. They are a part of who we are as human beings.
We need to understand more about them and accept them.

One of the problems I have with cognitive psychology is that it

tries to explain the role of emotions while adhering to a very
traditional scientific model: take it apart, look at the pieces and
they will tell you what the whole is about. Try to do that with
concepts like love or compassion.

The other thing that is important in terms of the

emotions is that we support each other. We are
social creatures. We need each other, and we
need social activities. When students in the class
are more interested in what Johnny is doing
tonight or what Mary is wearing, they are acting
out of their social nature. The notion of a
community of learners and communities in
schools working with each other and learning
about communication is very critical. The notion
of cooperative learning fits here. We should
become skilled at these things because they are
innate drives in us. But we need to manage them
better.

Principle 6: Every brain simultaneously

perceives and creates parts and wholes.
We have visited several neuroscientists across the
country to discuss our twelve principles with
them. One of the things we found was that they
were very hesitant to speak with educators
because they were frightened of what we would
do with the information. Educators had gone
wild with the left brain/right brain research.
They had based entire consulting firms on it. But
to these neuroscientists we had greatly
oversimplified it. So as we went back over the
research, we said, "Yes, there is something to the
hemispheric theory." However, the real message
for us as educators is that we need to engage both sides, which in real life we do anyway. As educators, we
want learners to use both the left and right hemispheres; we want whole brain strategies. So the left
brain/right brain doctrine has some meaning, but it is most useful as a metaphor for the fact that the
brain processes parts and wholes simultaneously.

Principle 7: Learning involves both focused

attention and peripheral perception.
Think about this room. What are the peripheral messages
inherent in a room such as this one? What are the messages
about how you behave? The peripherals play an important
role. Children learn from everything. Everything goes into
the brain. In the early years they literally become their
experiences. Therefore the environment is very important,
and if they learn something in the classroom and never use
it outside the classroom, then that learning, those
connections, stop there. In other societies, children are
immersed in learning in the school, in the home, in the
community. Their knowledge is used and is expanded upon. They interact with each other in this rich
learning environment.

Principle 8: Learning always involves conscious and

unconscious processes.
We learn much more than we ever consciously understand. Most
of the signals that are peripherally perceived enter the brain
without our awareness and interact on unconscious levels. This is
why we say that learners become their experience and remember
what they experience, not just what they are told.

What we call "active processing" allows students to review how

and what they've absorbed so they begin to take charge of their
learning and of the development of personal meaning. Meaning is
not always available on the surface. Meaning often happens
intuitively in ways that we don't understand. So that, when we
learn, we use both conscious and unconscious processes. In
teaching, you may not reach a student immediately,
but two years later he may be in another class and say,
"I get it now." You are a part of that, but you are no
longer present.

Principle 9: We have at least two types of

memory -- a spatial memory system and a set of
systems for rote learning.
The spatial memory system (or autobiographical
system) does not need rehearsal and allows for instant
memory of experiences. It is very important for
educators to understand these two systems and how
they work. In the taxon memory system, things are
learned by rote. We memorize information, but that doesn't mean we can use the information. The taxon
system has nothing to do with imagination or creativity. It conforms very readily to the information
processing model of memory. With this system, students are motivated by reward and punishment; many
trials are usually needed; and the brain is easily fatigued since there is stress on a limited number of brain
cells. This is the model schools are based on. We have limited education to "programming" these taxon
systems and "teaching to the test." Can you see why people would say that our educational system is based
on teaching to the test (and forgetting it afterwards) is not very successful?.

The locale memory system is very global. It doesn't stress one particular area. When you experience
something deeply meaningful, you're creating those new connections. Things go in all at once. The locale
memory experiences register automatically. It is motivated by novelty, and it's always operating. You can't
stop this system and turn on the taxon system by saying, "stop that and memorize this." Memorization is
memorization, not learning.

Learning means that information is related and connected to the learner. If it's not, you have
memorization, but you don't have learning. There are still things we have to memorize, things that need to
be repeated. Multiplication tables are very useful, but we want to make sure that children understand the
concept of multiplication.

The locale memory system puts it all together as a picture.

You're not just seeing one piece at a time and adding it
together like a mathematical formula and coming up with
a whole. That's a big message of brain research: parts are
contained in a whole, and the whole has parts. It sounds
very simple, but it's not when you start developing
lessons.

Principle 10: The brain understands and

remembers best when facts and skills are
embedded in natural spatial memory.
The solution is to embed taxon learning by immersing
learners in well-orchestrated, life-like, low-threat, high-
challenge learning environments. We need to take the
information off the blackboard, to make it come alive in
the minds of learners, and to help them to make
connections.

Principle 11: Learning is enhanced by

challenge and inhibited by threat.
In the classroom, "downshifting" is seen as
threat related to a sense of helplessness. It has
implications for testing and for grading, for the
notion of the teacher as the controller, for
empowerment, for performance objectives. The
learner must be engaged in learning. Not that
we throw performance objectives or tests out,
but we need to understand what we are doing to
the human brain under these conditions.

I am doing some research on how certain conditions affect learners, and if you wonder about dropouts, I
can give you a formula that will produce some dropouts: the teacher is in control; there are predetermined
outcomes; the student is graded with little regard to feedback; and there are timelines on the activity. This
will produce some students who will downshift, will dislike
learning, and will be totally demotivated. On the other side,
students who "ace" this process become test-taking experts.

The hippocampus, which is located just above your nose and

above your ears in the center where they intersect, is part of
the limbic system. It has proportionally more receptors for
stress hormones than any other portion of the brain. It is also
critical in forming new memories and is linked to the indexing
function of the brain. It allows us to make connections, to link
new knowledge with what is already in the brain. It is like a
camera lens, and, under threat related to helplessness, it closes
off. We then move back into well-entrenched behaviors. It
opens up when we are challenged and are in a state of "relaxed
alertness." When the learner is empowered and challenged,
you begin to get the maximum possibility for connections.
That is why the brain needs stability as well as challenge. If
short term stability is lost, then long-term stability must be
substituted.

Relaxation techniques are the only thing we know that will

reverse the stress hormones in the body which result from
stress related to threat and accumulate over time. We
need to stop the incredible treadmill that we are on. Rest
is the basis of activity. Notice how fresh you feel after a
vacation. We need to teach our children that learning
takes time. And children need to understand their natural
rhythms. We need an orderly environment. We need to
understand ourselves and our own needs better. We need
to acknowledge our need for ritual, for orderliness. Our
own rhythms are very fundamental to who we are, and we
need to work with them.

Principle 12: Each brain is unique.

This looks at learning styles and unique ways of
patterning. We have many things in common, but we also
are very, very different. We need to understand how we
learn and how we perceive the world and to know that
men and women see the world differently.
BRAIN-BASED LEARNING STRATEGIES