I’ve noticed that many of my students ignore my considered advice to study and apply themselves to their lessons. What?! This is news?
Why would they do such a foolish thing? After all, I’ve taught hundreds of kids and I’ve lived many years. I know things that they don’t. Maybe they don’t believe me. Or maybe they don’t believe there’s any payoff for their effort.
Stephen Downes and Christian Long recently wrote about the value of teaching kids about their own brains, referencing an article by Milton Chen, who explored the educational implications of helping students develop a “growth model” of intelligence, as opposed to a “fixed mindset” in which they view intelligence as a static quality.
This topic linked back to an NPR story about research psychologist Carol Dweck, who recognized that some students have a mindset about intelligence as a fixed commodity, whereas other children believe that intelligence is something that they can develop. She noted that the “growth mindset” students had steadily increasing math grades, whereas the “fixed mindset” kids did progressively worse.
Dweck wondered if teaching students about their own brains would prompt them to develop a growth mindset that would help them improve their grades. Very simply, she chose 100 students who were doing poorly in math and assigned them to one of two workshops. Students in one workshop learned study skills, whereas students in the other group were given a “mini-neuroscience course on how the brain works.” The students who learned that the brain can grow smarter had better math grades at the end of the semester. Dweck thinks that these students were more motivated to work harder on challenging tasks.
More information about Dweck’s research, and an upcoming book can be found at Stanford News, with a link to a video in which she discusses the influences that our self-theories have on motivation.
My interest in this subject came out of comments from Michaele and Sarah on my previous post, musing about unique the challenges and opportunities there are in teaching sixth graders. I remembered reading some research about adolescent brain development the last time I taught sixth grade. People like to say that in adolescence, “the hormones kick in,” but new research suggests that it is more likely rapid brain development that accounts for some of what we commonly view as adolescent attitude.
Jay Geidd, the neuroscientist who conducted this research, notes that
In the frontal part of the brain, the part of the brain involved in judgment, organization, planning, strategizing — those very skills that teens get better and better at — this process of thickening of the gray matter peaks at about age 11 in girls and age 12 in boys, roughly about the same time as puberty.
I do think that metacognition is a powerful habit of mind that can make a difference in how we learn. We know that older students are more capable of thinking about thinking, and the brain research details how that might profit them, not only cognitively, but motivationally.
We have the kindergarten buddies all lined up for next year. And that age kids, in my experience, are indeed very loyal. Like german shepherds.
Bonus links:
The Whole Brain Atlas;
How Stuff Works: How Your Brain Works (with an annoying animated gif);
7 Comments
Doug – I posted about this too – I plan on trying it out when I get back from spring break. I shared the Edutopia article with my principal and she made copies for the whole staff and mentioned it during our staff meeting. Maybe I could get back some of my dead brain cells if I chant something about my brain growing? … probably not.
Did I mention I taught French twenty minutes every AM from tapes, staged three plays including Dickens Christmas Carol and they made Fandango puppets of the Greek Gods and had a Larry King interview them? It was a crack up, “So Hera how did it feel when Zeus liked the little cow?” And this we dumped down on the web…oh it was great fun.You will love it, I think it caused me to experience rapid brain growth. Wonderful information, i really did not know these things. Thank you. I’m seriously thinking of what I want to do next year. Older children are in a time of such vibrancy at 6th.Electric.
Sarah
That fixed brain piece was very interesting.
On a semi-related tangent…we had an NCLB consultant, that on the whole was not worth the price, BUT she said something interesting that I stored away that, “low achieving students think that students who do well and have good grades are just ‘lucky’ and don’t see the need to work/learn/improve or what connection it has to learning/grades.” About 3 months after that, I heard one of my “low” students make a statement to the effect that a student who got a correct answer was “lucky”, and it clicked. The lottery school of learning is how I think of it now.
Sorry that would be fixed intelligence, not fixed brain
the value of teaching kids about their own brains I got inspired to do the same after reading Thinking About Teaching and Learning by Robert Leamson , and again after reading The Einstein Factor by Win Wenger. I have no data that shows changes in performance either way, tho.
This may be the reason I enjoy teaching middle school…
Interesting that you may actually be able to motivate students to learn more by helping them understand the plasticity of their own brains.
The role of metacognition and learning a second language has been written about, but not many teachers have taken to it. Personally, to understand how one thinks, and how that thinking applies to learning is most valuable. At my previous school, a group of students participated in a seminar-style course based on Dr. Mel Levine’s research. The experience totally transformed the way those students approached their learning.
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