5.4.10 Neuroscience And Learning

Neuroscience is the study of our central nervous system. If you’re interested you can click on this link to read more. Through neuroscience, many new discoveries have enlightened us on how our brain works.

It is obvious that the latest research on the brain should inform training and education in supporting families in our Focus Group.

However it is a relatively new science so the argument can be made that it may propose theories that have not really been tested in the field.  Also, those who promote it (like me) want it to work so we may influence the results of its application in different settings!

Misinterpretation of results and jumping to conclusions too early are always dangers in new sciences or discoveries – particularly in respect of crime prevention and child protection – where so many people are desperately trying to come up with solutions that work.

As against that, I am a bit biased towards these new discoveries and developments because firstly they do not promote a quick-fix and secondly they seem to fit well with ancient wisdom in respect of humanity’s struggles to understand ourselves.

During a Family Support and Crisis intervention Course in Bedford Row some years ago we asked Prof Billy O’Connor of University of Limerick Graduate Medical School if he’d evaluate the teaching and learning ongoing on the Course.

In addition to doing the evaluation, he gave us a fascinating lecture on how we learn.  He stated that one finding of neuroscience is that children learn better when they are moving around instead of sitting all day in the hard-old-bench to quote the rhyme of my youth. Reading about hunter-gatherer societies I also note that virtually all their children’s learning is done while moving around – and I remembered Billy’s words.

After his lecture and evaluation I was wondering if some people had academic brains, and some people’s brains were more experiential.  I’d say that the reason that I was wondering this is that I struggle a lot with academic (that is, linear type) learning but I learn very quickly experientially.

That is, if I experience something I get a feel for it and I know that I know it – I don’t have to go over it and over it to remember it.

For example, if a tax officer explains how I claim my credits and get some money back from the taxman or my pensions or insurance advisor explains something about what I’ll be entitled to etc. I can understand it quite well.  However, after a few weeks it’s gone out of my head and I find it difficult to recall.  I often feel that such people must wonder if I was listening at all!

When I was learning physics I could visualise all the concepts that were described in the various aspects of it very well; but I always found that I had to learn the mathematical equations that accompanied the phenomena that I was describing over and over again, because they didn’t come to me that easily. 

This is one of the reasons why I am interested in neuroscientific enquiry. It appears (from what I have read and studied – and I realise that a little knowledge is, as they say, a dangerous thing) that it leans as much towards the experiential as the academic, towards the heart as much as the head, the holistic as much as the reductionist.

This has implications for its relevance both in the nature of the support work that is suitable and the training of practitioners in respect of our Focus Group.

I first came into contact with experiential learning when I got involved in this area of work (counselling, community work etc.) I found it new, refreshing and immediate – and I also found it suited my brain.

Like Prof. Billy O’Connor proposed – described in the previous post – experiential implied movement, in particular movement of energy through our body i.e. our emotions.

Therefore I lean towards it when designing and delivering training courses.  I feel that better results are achieved than would be with academic, linear learning – and it also tends to lessen the amount of competitiveness that seems to creep unnoticed into all courses and training.

I also believe (and studies in neuroscience have shown) that people learn throughout their life stages, and those who may not have thrived in an academic environment when young can thrive in an experiential environment later in life.

I also believe that experiential learning assists cognitive development at all stages of our lives, and I read somewhere recently that learning skills that require some physical effort and activity in middle/late age is a protective factor in avoiding dementia and similar afflictions of the brain.

I referred to wisdom at the start of this Chapter, and surely growing in maturity is a function of experiential learning – learning through experience.

Perhaps it is because I am a slow learner myself that I am drawn to people who struggle or have struggled in school, who have high need, who have suffered from trauma, and who, potentially, may do harm to society, to their families and indeed ultimately themselves.

One of the most exciting developments (for me anyway) in this relatively new science of the brain (which to the best of my knowledge was not evident to traditional practitioners) was that the level of raw intelligence is not fixed at birth, and can change throughout one’s life.  Studies have shown that the brain physically changes as it learns, and those changes can increase the level of intelligence.

This phenomenon is called neuroplasticity, where the neurons (the tiny little cells that receive and process information from one part of our brain and send it to another) and the synapses (the connections through which the information passes) change and reorganise themselves on learning and practicing new skills over time.

The amount of stress in our lives, what we eat and drink, the amount of exercise we take etc. all impacts on neuroplasticity.

Of particular interest (in respect of our leaning towards the Person Centred Modality) is that if something has meaning for us we learn faster, and that our emotional states can speed up or hinder the speed at which we learn, or indeed whether we learn at all.

And while we are on the subject, it is appropriate here to describe the difference between the brain and the mind.

The brain is a physical entity located between our ears.  It can be scanned, studied, analysed and operated on. However the mind is concerned with how we process information, how we think, how we feel, what we value and what we don’t, even our conscience and our ability to be empathic.

Crucially, the mind develops in relationship (one of our root foundations) with others – it gives meaning to our lives.

And in respect of meaning, I have already described how important creativity – which is largely dependent on meaning – is to those who want to grow. 

If our aim is to include large dollops of creativity on our courses we need to get into the creative zone!

I now encourage you to try and remember teachers or mentors who used creative methods of getting you to learn something – rather than the time-honoured force-feed and regurgitate method.  Your memory might come from a formal (classroom) or an informal learning situation, in a school, a club, or even in your family. 

Whatever you learned stayed with you – if it didn’t you wouldn’t be remembering it now.  The reason that you remember it is that you experienced it.

Imagine if the majority of your education, training and instruction was filled with creative, imaginative and artistic/musical experiences and you were allowed be creative in pursuit of what you were truly interested in to the point that you (and not your parents or teachers) would be disappointed if you didn’t achieve the standard that you expected of yourself.

Imagine if the location/environment for your education was relaxed, colourful and comfortable where movement, variety, cooperation and interaction were encouraged and diversity and change was honoured, to the point that you and your classmates enjoyed your learning, collaborating rather than competing.

Maybe your education was all of the above – and you were lucky, but I’m pretty sure if it was you are part of a very small minority.

The vast majority of us have been force-fed facts under different forms of duress and then forced to regurgitate them in a pressurised environment to be assessed as to whether or not we will be successful in life.

Modern research on the brain has shown, finally, that the environment that I have just described (relaxed, colourful etc.) greatly assists not only learning itself, but also encourages pro-social behaviour, generosity and compassion. [1]

(Aaah, I hear you say, but that’s not the real world.  Yes, I agree, the real world is different – and, looking at the news every night, our world has all the signs of it).

There is probably no great chance that mainstream schools and colleges will suddenly change from the force-fed – regurgitation model to what I have described above.

But for organisations who aspire to provide training to practitioners to support families in our Focus Group we have a kind of blank canvass. That is, we have the freedom to design and deliver education and training that includes all the above elements.

And we have the freedom to explore the two-way knowledge flow paradigm in a way that will be practical, workable and yield positive results – and assessed not by some external anonymous person but by the people who do the training themselves and ultimately the recipients of the service offered by the practitioner.

[1]. Once again I refer to the book Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt (2004).