Tapping the 'aha' factor Brain research adds insight into how people learn

When you understand how the brain works, “you are right at the core of learning,” brain expert Eric Jensen told an overflow crowd of 400 people at the 1999 IPD/QuEST Conference in Green Bay.

“When someone learns, new synopses are created in the brain,” said Jensen, an author, researcher and consultant. Teachers who understand how to trigger those processes are best able to spark the development of neuro networks in the brains of their students, he said.

Jensen’s sometimes humorous, sometimes scientific presentation was made at the annual combined meeting of the WEAC Instruction and Professional Development Conference and the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers’ QuEST Conference February 27.

Jensen said research shows that as neuro networks form in the brain, “neuro fixing” takes place. In essence, that is when the new information is being absorbed by the student.

To optimize learning, he said, teachers need to allow time for neuro fixing to occur. They do this by reinforcing the information and by providing “down time” for review and thought.

“When teachers move through too much material too quickly, kids lose out because they don’t have time to make connections,” he said.

For young children, recess serves as an appropriate time for the brain to absorb knowledge. For others, listening to music, going for a walk, drawing, or even sleeping can provide time for neuro fixing to take place.

“The primary criterion for down time is there has to be no challenge to it,” Jensen said.

Jensen said the push for uniform academic standards presents a terrible dilemma because “the human brain goes on its own timetable.”

We all want high standards, he said, but the idea that all students should learn the same material at the same pace in the same way conflicts with research indicating that everyone’s brain works slightly differently.

For more information, visit Eric Jensen’s Web site at: http://jlcbrain.com/.

Principles of brain-compatible research

From Eric Jensen's presentation

• Every single brain is totally unique.
• Threats and high stress alter and impair learning and even kill brain cells.
• Emotions drive our attention, health, learning, meaning and memory.
• Information and experiences are stored in a variety of pathways.
• Movement, foods, attentional cycles, drugs and chemicals have a powerful modulating effect on learning.
• Every brain adapts to its environment based on experience.
• Intelligence is the ability to elicit and to construct useful patterns.
• Meaning is more important to the brain than information.
• We process both parts and wholes simultaneously. We are affected by a great deal of peripheral influences.
• Intelligence is valued in the context of the society we live in. The brain develops better in concert with others.
• The brain can grow new connections at any age.
• Complex, challenging experiences with feedback are best for enrichment.
• Cognitive skills develop better with music and motor skills.

Posted April 6, 1999

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