Where Do We Go From Here
Diana Mitchell
University of Portland
2013
Ian Diamond (2007) put the challenge that we all face in this
light, “Attempts to introduce neuroscience into the classroom have to date been
of mixed quality. Often they have relied too little upon research
evidence and too much on impressive-sounding but scientifically questionable
formulae.” My reflecting on this quote, throughout a period of further
research and evaluation of course readings and discussions, led to the idea to
design better staff development around classroom practices. In simple
terms, the staff development can be considered defend and refine.
This is a model wherein educators meet on a regular basis to use their
professional knowledge, along with the knowledge of their colleagues, to defend
practices they deem effective and refine practices that are ineffective.
Colleagues will be paired with educators from a different background in
order to defend, refine and jettison practices. Some examples of
pairings: more experience in the classroom with more recent university training;
cross-disciplinary pairings; early childhood-intermediate educator; resistant
to change with changes too often; among others.
This practice begins not with changing
immediately what the students do, but rather what our colleagues and ourselves
use to decide what we bring for students to do. School personnel are
reticent to let go of old practices. Worse at times, school leaders bring
in and jettison practices before they have been proven to work or not due to
popular trends in education. By implementing a defend-and-refine program,
school personnel get a chance to put their own collective knowledge into
practice by defending practices they want to add or keep while at the same time
refining practices known to be partially or completely ineffective. Through
this process, personnel can come to better understand and articulate the inner
workings of programs, strategies, instructional design and the student as
learner. Ultimately, they gain confidence and knowledge as educators to make
informed choices about their teaching.
When something works for students, it needs to
be considered as a valuable tool—but it has no value if we do not understand
how it works. This is where the defend part of the innovation around
staff development comes in. This practice would require staff development
to utilize discussion and defense of current practices in order to maintain the
practice. In schools, educators are able to take the long-term knowledge of
experienced staff and combine it with more newly acquired knowledge of younger
staff in order to ensure that practices that are being kept are truly
beneficial. Ideally, combined with the more up to date educational training of
newer educators, older practitioners will be educated through their own defense
and the defense or refute/refining of the younger educators.
Not all known
ineffective practices are truly horrific, and many partially work, but it is
important to understand why they work and don’t work in order to make
strategies the most effective for the learner. Thus, it is important to
not just defend but also be open to the refine part of the practice. When
a practice is ineffective it is important to understand what about the practice
is not working prior to throwing it out. When educators don’t learn from
their prior experience they repeat the same mistakes when utilizing new
resources. Further, the refining part of the practice allows educators to
take what they know in order to make sense and practical application of the
strategies they use.
Hook and Farah (2012) note that educators are vulnerable to
misinformation from curriculum creators. Teachers’ quest for innovative
teaching methods often leads to a susceptibility to unrealistic promises of the
potential of a certain strategy. Rather than letting profit based
business dictate what happens in the schools, educators need to rely on their
professional education and knowledge to determine what they do in their
classrooms. Often administrators, far removed from practice and current
training, are the decision makers. By removing administrators and
curriculum trainers from delivering staff development—and putting this practice
back in the hands of the trained professionals—we utilize what we know works
for learning, the synthesis of known information with unfamiliar information to
form new understanding by the educators themselves. Discussion and
sharing one’s own thinking in ones’ own words with others through defending and
refining one’s practice is what we seek for our own students; this same practice
is the starting point for ownership of best practice and implementation of what
will best help students on their own journey.
Howard-Jones (2007) notes that while many old
ideas regarding the brain in education are at odds with current neuroscience,
they are not in complete disagreement. Rather, if something is working,
the basis for that effect should be researched further to support improved
understanding and practice. Educators don’t have the research
laboratories that scientists do, but they have something even greater—actual
students and each other. The refining part of the staff development comes
from discussing what is working and determining why based in current science
and pedagogy findings. This is where the discussion with a variety of
colleagues is so important. Utilizing the training and knowledge of more
recent education graduates allows the experienced staff to build and refine
their own knowledge while imparting their experience of what works and doesn’t
work to those who have not had the chance to experiment.
Schrag (2013) equates the attempts at bringing
pure neuroscience into the classroom as similar to bringing only knowledge of
the neuromuscular system to athletic training. She argues that educations,
like athletic contests, are the makeup of more than just the physical; there
are cultural norms, equipment, rules, etc that create the whole of education
and athletics. Integrating educator knowledge of students with current
training in neuroscience and education creates a whole picture from which to
base pedagogical decisions.
Educators need to be allowed to make these
decisions through dialogue. Defending one’s practice with the thought on
improving, not arguing, is critical to educators’ own learning—and doing what is
best for their students. An openness to refining as new knowledge
integrates with prior knowledge will be critical. Dialogue needs to
happen between educators and neuroscientists in order to create educational
programs based on sound science. (Howard-Jones 2007)
Critical to sound teaching is the debunking of
neuro-myths and the understanding of what “works” means. Bruno della
Chiesa (2009) cautions that these neuromyths are often founded on
misunderstandings, bad interpretations, and distortions of research results.
Discussion, defense and refinement, by cross curricular and diversely
experienced staff, will open the door to debunking what is myth and finding
what is real only if universities continue to evolve and educate based on
current scientific findings. By requiring practitioners to defend and be
open to refinement of their work in open, neutral collegial dialogue an
atmosphere of questioning and answer seeking is created. This openness to
questioning should lessen the ability for neuromyths to take strong hold before
being refined to fit with true scientifically based methods. della Chiesa
stated that transdisciplinarians would be required to bring neuroscience to the
classroom. But just bringing in newly trained teachers will not be enough;
those teachers need to be able to share their knowledge with the other
educators in the building in a way that integrates their training into the
teaching done by others so that sound neuro-based teaching is incorporated
throughout the schools.
Willingham and Lloyd (2007) were unimpressed by
early attempts at bringing neuroscience into the schools. Their concern
was that while there were 4 distinct ways to connect neuroscientific findings
to cognitive theory, the connection to educational theory wasn’t as
straightforward. Scientists, both neuro and cognitive, need to work with
educators to create and refine best practice. The transdisciplinarians
that della Chiesa spoke of are the bridge between the two worlds. Based on
Willingham and Lloyd’s research, the initial transdisciplinarians should come
from special education departments. Certainly educators trained in
special education should be at the forefront of neuroscience research and
integration within the schools, but they should not be an island and separate
department. Rather, they should be a part of the greater dialogue and
through their defense and refinement practices be a model for others.
The specialty of Special Education within a
neuroeducation lens has great power in the lives of all students. There
are two findings within neuroscience that could have great impact on special
education but can also shed great light on instruction for all learners: first
that learning changes the brain, and second that the brain structure itself influences
learning (Masson 2013). Both these findings impact how we define learning
disabilities and can also impact how educators defend-and-refine practices that
focus on learning abilities.
Masson (2013) cautions that the first step in
any implementation is incorporating a university requirement for all educators
in the area of neuroeducation. In this plan, the same requirement would
be necessary. Without the new scientific knowledge, the dialogue around
educational practices would not be rich. As well, defense of practices
would be stuck in old thinking. The premise of this staff development
idea is that the newfound knowledge would be brought into whole school practice
through dialogue and that new practitioners would gain insight from experienced
practitioners.
Another impediment will be administrator buy in. Many school
principals cling to their power structure by having the answers and knowledge
to hand to their staff—much in the same way they expect teachers to instruct
their students. The defend-and-refine practice requires professional
trust and acceptance of a new model of instruction and learning.
Ultimately, the most difficult buy in will be the teachers who
have been practicing for a long period of time. The idea of being able to
defend one’s teaching requires an openness to disequilibrium, confusion and the
potential of needing to let go of one’s static former thinking in order to
build new dynamic thinking. This is at the heart of learning. This
practice depends on educators’ openness and desire to explore and learn
alongside their students.
Implementing this defend-and-refine practice could be as simple as
allocating staff development time to learning about what “defending” means.
Stressing that it is not a prove your technique works, but rather an open
dialogue about the reasons it works with an eye for clearly defining the
connection between just working and being able to discuss why it works.
As well, openness to refining through dialogue with colleagues who are
different than each other will need time to incorporate itself into school
culture.
In schools, we see grade level, content specialists, and other
biases in which colleagues choose to trust or mistrust. Breaking these cultural
norms will require a bit of a training period. Bolstering the courage of
newer staff to speak up and encouraging experienced staff to be open to
contemplation about their practices in light of the new information.
After this period of disequilibrium, staff will be better able to deeply
self evaluate and analyze their teaching. At this point, school
administrators will need to allot regular time to dialogue about success,
missteps and any new curriculum in order to evaluate its’ potential benefit
from a neuroscience and pedagogical experience lens.
As
universities add neuroeducation programs, and many top research universities
such as Johns Hopkins and Harvard, along with other non-research colleges such
as the University of Portland have, staffing at schools will increasingly have
updated and continued knowledge in the area of neuroeducation. Continuation of universities adding
neuroeducation courses is needed to make this a sustainable innovation in
education that evolves on its own alongside research findings. The success of
the program of defend-and-refine will be evident in not only the willingness of
staff to listen to new educators, but also when staff openly and excitedly
defends the practices they have using the language of neuroscience and the
practiced experience of having implemented the strategy.
Further, in current practice administrators defend with stoic assumption of
authority their programs and teacher practices. When a dialogue that
institutes defend-and-refine practice is fully implemented, it would be expected
that administrators encourage any inquiring mind to talk with an educator in
the building about practices. Educators should be able to defend their
own practice, and because they have constant deep dialogue, their colleagues
should be able to explain others’ practices with clarity as well.
Ultimately, the ability to describe what one does, defend it and
be able to refine as new knowledge comes to light requires truly understanding
it. This innovation requires using science-based knowledge and an openness and
active participation on the part of educators and administrative staff to
making changes. If these changes are made based on this process, it is
proof of success.
Nonlinguistic representation
della Chiesa, B. (2009) Beginning in the brain: Pioneering the
field of educational
research. Harvard Graduate School of Education. Learning and
Development. March 2009.
Diamond, Ian (2007) Neuroscience and Education Issues and
Opportunities.
Teaching and
Learning Research Programme. Economic and Social Research Council.
Hook, C. J. and Farah, M. J. (2012) Neuroscience for educators: What are they
seeking, and what are they finding? Neuroethics. Published online DOI 10.1007/s12152-012-9159-3
Howard-Jones, P. (2007) Neuroscience and Education Issues and Opportunities.
Teaching and
Learning Research Programme. Economic and Social Research Council.
Masson, S. (2013) Neuromyths are a barrier to changing
education. Canadian
Educational Association. http://www.cea-ace.ca/blog/steve-
masson/2013/11/2/neuromyths-are-barrier-changing-education
Schrag, F. (2013) Can this marriage be saved? The future of
‘neuro-education’
Journal of Philosophy of Educaiton. Vol. 47, no. 1.
Willingham, D.T. and Lloyd, J.W. How educational theories can
use
neuroscience findings. Mind, Brain
and Education. 2007. vol 1, no 3. p 140-149.
Preferred Instructional Strategy
Defend:
Refine:
Required Instructional Strategy
Defend:
Refine:
