Brain-Based Inclusive Teaching
How can we teach today’s digital youth in inclusive environments?
Our current digital lifestyle has dramatically altered the brain development of today’s learners. Here are four ways described by Marilee Sprenger (2010) Brain-based teaching in the digital age. ASCD.
RAS: Researchers have discovered brain changes in youth who have been raised in a high-tech world. Consider how much they are surrounded by cell phones, social media, emotionally and sensory charged movies and entertainment, web searches, and video gaming. Their reticular activating systems (RAS), designed to filters out irrelevant information so they can stay alert for dangers like saber tooth tigers, have evolved. These systems have become so accustomed to overexposure and face-paced scanning that students now tune out anything that isn’t “exciting” to their brains. They may have difficulty “paying attention” to traditional lecture and discussion methodology.
Dopamine: Dopamine is released in our brain when we feel pleasure. Youth who have grown up with instant gratification of digital stimulation and reward are less likely to feel pleasure from ingesting knowledge doled out by teachers or paper textbooks.
Frontal lobes: The last part of our brain to develop are the frontal lobes. That is the section that performs executive functions like planning, prioritizing, decision making, and higher order thinking. Youth who have spent hours playing video games – rather than school assignments that require complex thinking – have stunted frontal lobe development.
Social Skills: Because of increasing technology use, a growing number of youth find it difficult to connect to others. With fewer opportunities to directly interact, their social and emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills are less developed, and depression is in the rise.
Recommendations for teachers who are committed to meeting their learners where they are:
Provide frequent repetition of key concepts and skills, using a variety of multi-sensory approaches.
Incorporate creative ways for learners to access and practice new concepts and skills so they can be assimilated into their schema of prior learning.
Structure opportunities for interactive learning – with peers, small groups, and within the whole group. Clarify expectations for respectful ways to listen, respond, justify, and negotiate.
Vary instruction, using multi-media sources and voices of other professionals (co-teachers/ paraprofessionals) and students to restate, question, explain, and summarize.
Offer choices and problem-based learning to increase student ownership of the learning process.
