The Art of Changing the Brain

Clive Shepherd's summary of The Art of Changing the Brain, by James E Zull:

Main premise: "Learning is change. It is change in ourselves because it is change in the brain. Thus the art of teaching must be the art of changing the brain" Or, more accurately, "creating conditions that lead to change in a learner's brain."

Relevance is fundamental: "If people believe it is important to their lives, they will learn. It just happens." And, therefore, "if we want people to learn, we must help them see how it matters in their lives."

About rewards and motivation: "When we try to help someone learn by offering an extrinsic reward, the chances are that learning will actually be reduced." Why? "The first thing our controlling brain sees in a reward or punishment is a loss of control." So, "we devise all sorts of ways to get the reward without carrying out the learning." On the other hand, "extrinsic rewards can get a learner started on something. Often people do not actually know what they are going to enjoy." And, "Extrinsic rewards can also sustain a learner at times of pressure and difficulty."

About memory: "If we don't use or repeat things, our memory grows dim. And yet, if something made sense to us or engaged us emotionally, we can also recall amazing amounts of detail."

About prior knowledge: "All learners, even newborn babies, have some prior knowledge. Prior knowledge is persistent - the connections in these physical networks of neurons are strong. They do not vanish with a dismissive comment by a teacher." Also, "prior knowledge is the beginning of new knowledge. It is where all learners start. They have no choice." And once more for emphasis: "No one can understand anything if it isn't connected in some way to something they already know."

About the order in which we teach: "A teacher's best chance is to begin with concrete examples." Unfortunately, "teachers do not necessarily start with the concrete. Our deeper understanding of our fields can lead us to start with principles rather than examples. WE start where we are, not where they are."

About the importance of practice: "Synapses get stronger with use. The more they fire, the more they send out new branches looking for more, new and more useful connections."

About experts and novices: "Whether we are an expert or a novice, our brains basically sense the same things. The difference is that the expert knows which part of his sensory data is important and which part isn't."

On visualisation: "Vision is central to any concrete experience that we have. In many ways our brain is a 'seeing'' brain. Images are by far the easiest things for the human brain to remember." However, these images do not have to be specially constructed by a teacher: "The experience itself provides by far the richest images. These are undiluted and direct, rather than transported or filtered through text, film, TV or lecture." Nevertheless, "if we can convert an idea into an image, we should do so." By the way, the origin of the word teacher is an old English word, techen, which means to show.

On sound: "We cannot focus on a particular sound to the exclusion of all others for long. The brain expects movement in sound. Eventually we begin to ignore it; we literally do not hear it ... This is called habituation ... Nothing demonstrates habituation more than a lecture. Unless we break up the sound every few minutes, we are almost certain to induce habituation."

On reflection: "Our task as teachers is to give assignments that require reflection and that induce learners to reflect on the right things." Why? "Even the quickest learner needs time for reflection. She must let her integrative cortex do its thing. If she doesn't, her ideas and memories will be disconnected and shallow. They may be adequate for the moment (to pass a test, for example) but still transitory and ultimately unfulfilling." How? "When we reflect, we seem to do better if we shut out sensory experience. That way our brain is not distracted by receiving new information at the same time it is working with old information."

On overload: "We should be careful not to overload working memory. A classic error of college teachers is to keep shoving information in one end of working memory, not realising that they are shoving other data out the other end." Breaking things down into simple components is not dumbing down: "When we are new at something, we are all basically in kindergarten. We can only start with what we have, so if our students already have prior knowledge about the subject, they can easily attach new things to those old networks. But if they are asked to hold new things in isolation, then working memory is engaged, and working memory does not expand with maturity or experience."

On testing out our ideas: "Testing our ideas through action is how we find out we are on the right track. The only pathway that seems unproductive for learning is the pathway that excludes testing of ideas."

About stories: "Stories engage all parts of the brain. They come from our experiences, our memories, our ideas, our actions and our feelings. They allow us to package events and knowledge in complex neuronal nets, any part of which can trigger all the others."