Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers, or No More PD Root Canals

Sometimes, I scroll the tweets referencing the term "inservice" and wish we'd gone with a different blog name. "Sitting in really dumb inservice," "booored in inservice," and "two more hours of inservice and then freedom!" are pretty common sentiments.

David Sousa's "Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers" in the free, online June issue of Educational Leadership takes these critiques to heart, er, head, and asks:

As teachers participate in learning activities, how do their brains determine what—if anything—to take away? And how can we use insights into the brain's workings to improve learning activities for teachers?

If you're involved in planning or providing professional development, you'll want to read Sousa's guidelines for aligning PD with how emotions, feedback, past experiences, and meaning affect learning in the adult brain.

Comments

[Randee Deich]

Is it the term "inservice" that grinds your gears or the content of the inservice. If the professional development was quality one might hear "Sitting in really engaging inservice," "enjoying my time in inservice," and "two more hours of inservice and then implementation!"

[Haskins]

As an educator it is important to constantly use up to date and relevant research based curriculum, instruction, and assessment tools in my classroom. I spend a great deal of time on research and reflection in order to be the best teacher for my students. I find it insulting when I have to sit through a professional development that has clearly been haphazardly thrown together at the last minute just to have something to do. Good professional development is exactly like a good lesson, it has to be interesting and relevant, there must be follow through and feedback over a extended period of time, and it must be planned with the purpose of providing effective tools for teachers to increase student learning in a collaborative manner. Teachers are more than willing to participate and contribute to professional development that is focused, planned, and well implemented by districts and school administration.

[Angela Driggers]

Working in K-2nd grade for many years, I have tried to present learning in such a way to spark interest. I now find myself in a leadership role where I present information to teachers. I found this article very interesting. Brain research in regards to children has always been interesting but I never really thought about applying brain research in a professional development way. Thanks for the info.

[Raymond Williamson]

It was refreshing to see that teachers' brains are also being considered when planning professional development. Most articles focus on the student brain and how we can tap into what research has discovered. I can't wait to share this article with the administration that plans our district's professional development activities. Thank you for thinking of our brains too.

[D Cerna]

The use of the CFG (Critical Friends Group) model in my previous school utilized the brain-compatible approaches stated in Sousa's article. Our high school used this program to implement useful professional development which could be applied immediately to our teaching. It addressed the emotions of the educators in each group through providing them with opportunities to bring specific concerns or questions to the table to be actively addressed by the rest of the group. It also provided immediate and useful feedback which could be applied directly to the situation or concern presented by the teacher in an effective, positive and specific manner. The concern with past experiences and meaning stated in the article was addressed through the actual essence of the program. I'd like to know of any other programs or approaches other schools have used that were effective for professional development.

[Cheryl Joyner]

The more I study brain-based learning the more insight I have into teaching. I am a better teacher now that I plan lessons to meet every learning style and not just my own; which was my previous fall-back method.

[Abby Jermstad]

I was reading an article on brain research by a cognitive scientist named Daniel Willingham called "Learning Styles Theory is Bunk" posted on The Answer Sheet section of the Washington Post. In this article he went on to say that categorizing students based on learning styles does not work. What I think he is forgetting is that when you teach to different learning styles, all students are gaining the benefit of learning through different modalities. Brain based research supports teaching to different learning styles because with all people, "learning takes place on multiple dimensions and levels. The more diffrent modalities that you can engage in a student's experience, the more liely that some facet of the lesson is going to stick" (Kottler, Zehm, Kottler, 2005). As Sousa's article shows, this is true whether the student is a sixth grader or a sixth year teacher.

Kottler, J. A., Zehm, S. J., & Kottler, E. (2005). On being a teacher: The human dimension (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Willingham, D. (2009, September 14). Student "Learning Styles" Theory is Bunk. The Washington Post. Retrieved October 6, 2009 from http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/the-big-idea-behind-learning.html