How Educators Design Brain-Based Learning

Brain-based learning is an educational approach grounded in neuroscience that informs teaching methods and curriculum design. It recognizes the uniqueness of each student's brain and seeks to create learning environments that optimize how the brain receives, processes, and stores information. By understanding the brain's natural learning mechanisms, educators can foster motivation, engagement, and long-term retention.

Understanding Brain-Based Learning

As defined by the Glossary of Education Reform, brain-based learning refers to teaching methods, lesson designs, and school programs based on the latest scientific research about how the brain learns, including such factors as cognitive development-how students learn differently as they age, grow, and mature socially, emotionally, and cognitively. A key part of brain-based learning is that educational strategies are based on findings from neuroscience research.

Rather than a concrete theory, brain-based learning is more of an educational mindset. In other words, strategies that fall under the brain-based learning umbrella include anything developed to align with the way our brains naturally learn. There’s no one set theory that encompasses brain-based learning, so the breadth of it all can feel daunting. Because new research is always coming out, it’s important to intentionally look out for new ideas in the educational world.

The Core Principles

Brain-based learning is not merely about making learning "fun." It's about presenting information in a way that aligns with how the brain naturally processes and retains it, making the content more meaningful and memorable.

Neuroplasticity: The brain's ability to change and reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. This principle underscores that learning is not fixed and that the brain can adapt and grow with experience.
Emotions and Learning: Emotions significantly impact learning. When students are engaged and emotionally connected to the material, they are more likely to pay attention, remember information, and persist with tasks.
Active Learning: Students learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process, rather than passively receiving information.
Individual Variability: Every brain is uniquely organized, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to learning.
Social Interaction: Learning is enhanced through social interaction and collaboration.

Strategies for Implementing Brain-Based Learning

Educators can implement various strategies to create brain-based learning environments. These strategies aim to engage students, promote emotional safety, and optimize how the brain processes information.

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Creating a Positive and Safe Learning Environment

Often, students must feel physically and emotionally safe in the classroom for real learning to take place. By creating a positive classroom environment where students feel supported and encouraged, you’ll open up the doors for your students to learn the best. Welcoming your students in class each day can increase student engagement, and many educators have found that setting a positive tone at the beginning of the day with classroom greetings creates a sense of community.

Encouraging Active Participation

Traditional lecture-based teaching has been proven not as effective as active learning. Active learning allows students to become a dynamic participant in the learning process. While some traditional methods of instruction expect students to passively receive information, active learning gives students the ability to engage directly with learning materials through peer discussions and completing case studies that mirror real-world problems.

When students talk about concepts they’ve learned, they’re more likely to retain the information. Implementing “turn and talk” time into your lessons can help students process what they’ve just read, discuss ideas before sharing them with the class, and clarify problems they may have had while completing homework. By letting your students discuss their ideas, you’re giving them a chance to describe what they’ve learned in their own words and helping them explain their thoughts to their classmates. Utilizing the raise hand feature in most video conferencing platforms to make this more organized if you’re teaching virtually. Teaching others is the most effective way to learn, and this applies to students as well.

Incorporating Visual Aids

Many people are visual learners who absorb and recall information best by seeing. You probably already have posters and visuals in your classroom or in your background if you are teaching remotely, but are they helping your learners? In a virtual setting, providing additional context to lessons with visual elements, such as breaking up your slides with a GIF that calls students’ attention back during a lecture or finding a quick video of the science concepts you are discussing, are simple ways to hold student interest remotely. Changing out your Zoom background to align with the theme of your lesson or wearing a silly hat or decorative necktie are other fun ways to incorporate visual elements into your teaching.

Chunking Information

Chunking, or breaking down difficult or large pieces of text into smaller pieces, has been proven to help students identify key words and phrases, paraphrase, and understand the text in their own words. Chunking also can be used to break down pieces of your instruction into smaller, manageable pieces. Work through lengthy instructions step by step with your students to help them understand each piece of what is being asked of them. To achieve this goal, educators need to break down their instruction (and their students’ learning) into smaller components.

Integrating Brain Breaks and Movement

Brain breaks are a great way to get your students up and moving, and they have been shown to increase brain activity. You’re probably already familiar with how fidgety your students can get when sitting at their desks for long periods, so incorporating some movement into the day can help. Physical activity isn’t only for the gym. When students are able to take stretch breaks, go for short walks or otherwise move their bodies during lessons, the more engaged they will be when they come back. You can even create lessons that get students moving while they learn.

Multisensory Learning

By engaging multiple senses in your lessons, like touch or sound, students may be more likely to understand and retain information. For some topics, using visual elements may be a no-brainer; but challenge yourself to activate other senses during your lessons. Can you help students “physicalize” parts of speech? Optimal brain-based learning allows students to solve problems actively and explore solutions through different sensory modalities.

Experiential Learning

This strategy encourages students to put concepts they learn in class to the test and both practice and reflect on them. Whenever possible, get your students out of the classroom to apply their learning in the real world.

Encouraging Metacognition

Brain-based learning encourages metacognition, where students develop awareness of their learning processes and actively reflect on their thinking and problem-solving strategies.

Connecting Learning to Real-Life Contexts

Academic concepts can often feel disconnected from students’ actual lives. Lessons and assignments that incorporate varied modes of delivery give students a better chance of logging information in their long term memory. Students learn effectively when they are presented with problems that are relevant to their lives. Considering the practical contexts that students adapt to and framing lessons in these terms can help aid the transfer of learning. Many practical problems involve connecting multiple steps and have many potential solutions. Activities that require students to solve these problems can boost creative thinking and executive function as students learn how to organize sub-tasks and achieve their solution.

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Promoting a Growth Mindset

Teaching students about experience-based neuroplasticity and the dynamic changes in neuronal networks during learning provides strong evidence of their natural and powerful learning capacity. Holding a growth mindset has been associated with academic success, emotional wellbeing, and motivation while reducing racial, gender, and social class achievement gaps. The notion of human potential as something dynamic resonates with the concept of the plastic brain. As students realize they can increase their ability to retain information, they may take a growth mindset toward their learning potential.

Repetition and Review

Repetition, experimentation and productive failure are all more effective than simple memorization of facts or vocabulary. One study found that visiting the same topic at structured, spaced intervals improved retention and understanding of the material. This method helps students to learn and embed concepts rather than simply memorize them. Encourage students to try to remember what they’ve learned from a lesson, even if the topic is fairly new to them. The process of remembering strengthens memory and identifies gaps that call for a refresher. Take breaks during each lesson or unit for students to talk amongst themselves and solidify their understanding of the topic. This can fall into the “review” stage mentioned above. You can also task students with explaining a new concept to a parent or someone unfamiliar with it.

Concept Mapping

Concept mapping is the act of connecting separate elements of a topic or unit into a web of comprehension.

Understanding Cognitive Load

Cognitive load refers to the amount of bandwidth the brain has to process information - that is, the capacity of working memory at any given time. In order for the participants to get the most learning possible out of the session, the facilitators need to eliminate as much extraneous cognitive load as possible. To manage cognitive load, facilitators should also know how to “chunk” content. Chunking means combining pieces into logical structures or units to aid the brain in organizing the content.

Activating Prior Knowledge

As psychologist David Ausubel said in his 1968 book Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View, “The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows”. Cueing the participants to place the new material in the context of what they already know is essential. For instance, if the professional learning is related to a new curricular resource, it would be important to highlight what the materials should replace, how they are similar to or different from what the teachers are used to, and when to use them within teachers’ existing schedules.

The Role of Curriculum and Instruction Leaders

Curriculum and instruction leaders are pivotal in integrating brain-based learning strategies into education. They ensure teachers have the means to incorporate brain-based learning strategies into their classrooms.

Benefits of Brain-Based Learning

Why put in the effort to research brain-based curriculum and use it in your classroom? The benefits are both clear and significant. On the superficial, grades-based level, using psychological or scientific theories of learning can have profound benefits. Brain-based learning can also affect social-emotional development, or a student’s ability to understand and regulate their emotions.

When educators apply these strategies, students can engage more deeply, retain knowledge longer and develop critical thinking and creativity. A study that implemented brain-based learning strategies in math education found a significant improvement in students’ intrinsic motivation to learn mathematics. They found that these strategies, including role-playing and visual storytelling, were the most effective tools for boosting motivation and engagement. Motivation is related to students’ perception of their competence, so breakthroughs in ability can create positive feedback loops in which students develop positive associations with the learning content.

Challenges and Considerations

While still evolving as a research field, educational neuroscience faces challenges, limitations, and criticism, especially concerning the ability to generalize research findings in lab conditions to classroom learning, and its validity and transferability to larger scales, such as mass education systems.

Not all brain-based learning strategies will be a good fit for your students. Since no two students’ minds are alike, some strategies may work for certain students better than others. If you read up on a research-based theory but find that it doesn’t fit your students’ needs, don’t worry!

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