Neuroscience: offering ‘fresh impetus’ to old ideas
Co/founders of The NeuroAspire Institute, Dr Perry Walters and Dr Dave Bainton recently carried out Bristol University funded research at a comprehensive school in Bristol. The research project, entitled ‘Courage in the Classroom’, centred upon exploring, with teaching staff, new understanding from educational neuroscience around the adolescent brain. Working with a small group of self-selected staff we explored how developmental understandings of the brain and mind might offer new understanding of adolescent motivation, engagement and learning - and how adolescence is unfolding as a time of ‘natural’ courage, with heightened inclinations to take risks, experiment and push boundaries. We used our ASPIRE framework© (autonomy, self, purpose, inquiry, relationships, emotion) as a method to translate the science of the adolescent brain into a practical lens to view this unique stage of development.
Although staff appeared genuinely interested in the model and could see the potential value, they also recognised a possible tension between providing the conditions that the ASPIRE framework© advocates, ones that might help foster student ‘courage in the classroom’, (agency, risk-taking, self-belief, creativity, collaboration, curiosity, exploration) and the perceived teaching expectations within the school - strict zero-tolerance behaviour policies, and an individualistic and performative culture (‘Ready to Learn’ behaviour policy - R2L). Despite this, within the three month intervention, teachers did attempt ‘to do things differently’, such as collaborative group discussions in English; experimenting with student-led activities in Design and Technology; and encouraging risk-taking and innovative practice in Physical Education.
Revisiting ‘traditional’ education
Previous educational thinking informed the theoretical lens through which we approached the project. The R2L policy and its related strict behavioural rules and sanctions might be interpreted as providing a ‘traditional’ pedagogical approach (Dewey). Such teaching strategies can be compared with a ‘Banking’ model of education (Freire), where information is deposited by teachers in, mainly, passive students. The suggestion is that the teachers’ role is to ‘fill’ the pupils with knowledge which the ‘pupil meekly accepts’. Ultimately, this type of instruction, suggests Freire, stifles creativity and agency in the learner and thwarts capacities for judgement and self-directed thinking. This argument also resonates with John Dewey’s concept of ‘Jug and Mug’ theory of education, where similarly, the passive student is filled with ‘static’ knowledge (often disconnected from pupil’s life experience) by the teacher. The student’s role, ‘on the whole, is one of docility, receptivity and obedience’. Again, Dewey suggests that deeper learning is only possible through experiential, 'hands on’ learning and, that traditional ‘drill teaching’ limits pupil’s judgement and ability to act intelligently in new situations. It reduces a student’s own capacity to develop decision-making - precisely at the time the brain is ‘on the look-out’, ‘ripe and ready’ to practice and refine these skills (Dahl).
This argument also links with the American psychologist Carl Roger’s educational thinking, where he proposes that the ‘Jug and Mug’ way of teaching negatively impacts learners’ own judgements and that a teacher dominated, fearful climate, stifles the child’s natural curiosity. Rather he advocates a student-centred approach where teachers act in facilitative roles creating the conditions for pupils to grow and flourish through self-direction. In each of these pedagogical theories, there is a critique of the ‘traditional appraoch’ - where the student is passive and denied the opportunity for inquiry or experiential learning. Natural drives toward curiosity and initiative are thwarted as the student becomes adept at receiving, filing, and reporting information. Conversely Freire suggests that it is only through inquiry, through acting upon the world, that real learning takes place; that ‘inquiry is essential to being fully human’. Similarly, Rogers states that ‘the only learning that significantly influences behaviour (and education) is self-discovered’.
Fresh Impetus
New scientific thinking is, perhaps, offering fresh impetus for this longstanding ‘progressive’ perspective; offering further critique of the ‘traditional’ model of education (Dewey). Recent neuroscience findings suggest, for example, that inactive learning should be rejected as ‘a passive organism learns very little’, and that it is only through action upon the world, forming hypothesis and testing them, that lasting learning takes hold (Dahaene). When learners grapple with new information, form meanings or act upon the world, this initiates the prefrontal cortex and produces deeper learning (Dubinsky). Dahaene argues that curiosity is a natural driver, ‘similar to hunger and thirst’ and should be piqued in learning environments. So, new scientific understandings might be interpreted to offer addition evidence in support of a ‘progressive’ teaching approach - one that has fell out of favour in recent years.
Educating with the adolescent brain in mind
Developmental neuroscience further suggests that the adolescent brain is uniquely motivated towards novelty, surprise, and excitement, and youth are propelled to experiment and inquire in their world - ‘lean into uncertainty’ in ways that get lost in adulthood. New information is more rewarding (in terms of activation of reward circuits in the brain) for adolescents than for children or adults (Casey, Galvan)). These unique drives and emerging capacities to learn through trial-and-error engagements with the environment, suggest learning conditions that promote experimentation, problem solving and curiosity. Where the adolescent brain is ‘ripe and ready’ to explore independent decision making and learn through making and learning from mistakes. Indeed the National Academy of Sciences has recently stated that the current education system is outdated - was designed for early 20th century ideas about learning and for that specific job market.
The challenge of the school environment
In relation to our school-based study, we found that the current school environment made it difficult for teachers to capitalise on the adolescent-specific needs, wants and emerging capacities advocated in the ASPIRE framework©. From conversations with staff and classroom observations, there appeared a ‘performative’ culture within the school. Performativity has been described as a ‘technology, a culture and mode of regulation that employs judgements, comparisons, and displays as means of incentive, control, attrition and change’ (Ball).
Recent research suggests that where a performative culture exists, this can act as a barrier for teachers to reflect upon the theoretical basis of their practice and develop a rationale for their work. Rather, a performative approach focuses on more measurable outputs; of ‘what works’ and how to ‘look like a teacher’, rather than a focus on underlying learning processes. However, when science of learning concepts, including those from mind and brain, are included in professional development courses, this can assist teachers in reflecting more on their theories for practice and has been linked to improved student outcomes (Howard-Jones).
From neuroscience to practice
It appears that this might have been the case in this Courage in the classroom project, where exposure to concepts around the adolescent brain and learning, seemed to impact teachers’ pedagogical thinking. In particular, the ‘ASPIRE' framework© appears to have influenced teachers’ reflexivity around their pedagogical theory and practice. In turn, teachers reported that ‘ASPIRE lessons’ created the conditions where students ‘behaved differently’. Across a number of lessons and subjects these included instances of student collaboration and problem-solving; moments of peer to peer teaching; increases in student agency, independent decision-making and risk-taking. Obviously, this was a very short intervention and it’s unwise to make bold claims or inferences. However, it did suggest that when teachers explore new ideas informed by developmental neuroscience and are given licence to try them out (the school Principal was supported of the project) - then this can impact thinking and practice.
Overall, the project found that, there were, indeed, pockets of willingness to engage with new understandings from developmental science around adolescent motivation, engagement and learning. However, the current performative system and teaching climate might pose a potential barrier to the type of environments and conditions advocated by the ASPIRE approach. The findings from Courage in the Classroom do not suggest that neuroscience provides a simple prescription for teaching (‘brain scans don’t easily translate to lesson plans’, Blakemore), nor that traditional approaches should simply be discarded. Rather, they point towards a potentially productive synthesis between emerging understandings of adolescent development and longstanding educational theories.