While we can describe brain based learning using the technical language of neuroscience, lets consider it in every day terms. We work hard to make a muscle stronger, faster, to work longer and more efficiently. Push ups, a tennis serve, juggling, powerlifting all require my muscles to function in particular way and we choose exercises or drills to change that function. Similarly, if I want to think differently I need to exercise my brain in a particular way. In time with lots of exercise my brain will adapt and I will become better at it.
When I first try to ride a bike I am not very confident and it requires extra concentration. In time though the exercise becomes almost automatic. So too the brain will learn to function in particular ways with ease.
Traditional education teaches the brain to store knowledge and then retrieve it on demand. We consider someone intelligent if they can demonstrate fast and extensive storage and communication of information. Modern education values knowledge but we want children to apply, manipulate and analyze information. This requires functions far more complex and it requires different experiences to train these actions. Collaboration with others, activities that require children to find both the similarities and the differences and tasks that require prediction and tests of assumptions require high levels of brain function.
Put simply, brain based learning ensures that tasks are designed to exercise the brain in ways that develop higher order functions. We learn to search in different ways and places for different knowledge and we think critically and creatively on demand. Just as riding a bike becomes natural, so too does the functions of critical thinking. Critical thinking and the processes to achieve it become an automatic step, rather than an awkward one not previously travelled.
At Kingsgate International School “Brain Based Learning” is a high priority. We know that best practice early learning programs maximize learning through child centered learning environments.
