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When we talk of healthy brains we automatically think of things like exercise and nutrition that I have covered at times here. But the thing we put into the brain most is oxygen. So, let’s have a quick look at how the air we breathe impacts brain performance . . .
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Reading time: about 4 minutes
Creating the “aha effect” – that effect of “the penny dropping” sounds intuitively to be a really good thing in teaching and when training. But hold your horses – looking into the brain and how the brain builds connections, we can see that a slower effect starting out with confusion and leading to a self-initiated understanding may be even more powerful.
When I first started teaching there was nothing more that I enjoyed more than seeing my students (adults in my case, mostly) light up as they “clicked” and got something. Similarly, when I do public speaking it is great to see the audience clearly getting it and the lights going on their heads. This can be called different things at different times but mostly the ”aha” effect, when the penny drops, that feeling of understanding.
And so it was, as a teacher I was always, initially, at least, on a constant search to enable this aha effect. Sometimes this was easier, sometimes it remained elusive. Similarly, as I progressed and moved into delivering corporate workshops and public speaking, I looked to create those aha moments. Sometimes we are aiming to create a deeper awareness something that resonates with the soul, so to speak. But more often than not it is still the search for those aha moments.
And this is something that all corporations expect and demand when I am requested to speak or give workshops, trainings, or webinars – to give some “clear takeaways”. People have to be able to get it, to understand, and have a few strategies to be able to implement the learnings. This all sounds reasonable and logical. Unless, that is, we look at the brain – we can then see that, maybe, we are not doing the brain, the person, and the concept of learning any favours. In fact, by giving clear takeaways, clear learning goals, we may even be inhibiting learning! You won’t be convinced at this stage – this is not the ramblings of a middle-aged man – let me explain just why we may be doing the audience, students, a disservice.
This first came to the forefront in 2012 when researchers at the University of Notre Dame in the US showed that confusion can be beneficial for learning. Why would that be the case? This is because certainty and the aha moments effectively shut down the brain. The brain no longer has to try to resolve the problem. If you are in a state of confusion your brain will consciously and unconsciously try to resolve this and therefore work harder to resolve this confusion. The brain doesn’t like this state which is why it remains active. Therefore confusion, preferably carefully induced, or not too severe, can be beneficial to learning.
The second point is that because the brain has to work harder for longer to resolve the confusion the learning is likely to be deeper and more solidly learnt. The brain has to engage more resources and therefore this could also benefit other areas of learning. Simply put, making it harder, increases the benefits.
The third point is speculative on my part – but would make sense. My assumption is that by the process of resolving confusion we are engaging in implicit “confusion resolution mechanisms” and this can benefit learning in multiple other contexts. We are training cognitive skills that have diffuse but wide-reaching consequences and benefits.
A fourth point is that this may be the process the brain goes along all the time. For example, some creativity research (into that aha moment or flash of insight when solving a problem) shows that the process of making progress toward a solution is mostly an unconscious process, but the progress is nevertheless important. If I am trying to solve a problem, I may move from step one to step six out of a hypothetical ten (with ten being the solution or flash of insight). I have made progress but may not be aware of this progress, however, my brain is six steps closer to resolving the problem. When I hit ten, I have that flash of insight and think “aha”, it is resolved – but the process of moving through stages one to nine have been critical to this – I may, however, only remember step nine to ten.
The final point is that these processes are self-processed, and self-initiated and we know from the research that self-initiated processes are more powerful for learning and retention. What’s more this can build confidence and pride much more strongly than simply remembering what was told or that quick aha moment which was guided by a third person.
So, to really activate the brain and learning we should be aiming, at times, to induce confusion and allowing self-initiated resolution of this. Leaving students and learners in a state of confusion can be incredibly beneficial to learning – there is a negative feeling associated with this and this may need to be managed (for example, encouraging learners to sit with the problem, to avoid negative emotions, to trust one’s brain, etc.). A word of warning – this confusion should not be persistent. Indeed, the type of confusion and ensuing support is also critical according to further research – just confusing the hell out of course participants, an audience, and students is a bad approach – sorry no free card here. Carefully inducing confusing aspects, paradoxes, and then helping and guiding learners to resolve this is the approach that boosts the impact of learning.
“Confusion interventions are best for higher-level learners who want to be challenged with difficult tasks, are willing to risk failure, and who manage negative emotions when they occur.”
Lodge et al. in a 2018 review give a model of optimal confusion (below). This highlights that optimal confusion which enables resolution is best but high levels of confusion can cause frustration and disengagement.
Model of optimal confusion by Lodge et al. (2018)
Let’s summarise
So, confusion is a powerful tool for enhancing learning and this is why some aspects of training and teaching could be approached differently. Enabling self-discovery and self-initiated discovery and going through these cognitive processes are not only beneficial for learning but have wide-reaching applications in real life by enabling general cognitive strategies to resolve complexities in the real world – the world is generally a complex place. But in the training or teaching contexts this must be carefully managed to enable resolution of confusion and the learning impact. And this is why I say that slightly confused is a good place to be●
Confusion
D’Mello, S., Lehman, B., Pekrun, R., and Graesser, A. (2012). Confusion can be beneficial for learning. Learn. Instr. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2012.05.003.
Lehman, B., D’Mello, S., and Graesser, A. (2012). Confusion and complex learning during interactions with computer learning environments. Internet High. Educ. 15. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2012.01.002.
Lehman, B., D’Mello, S., Strain, A., Mills, C., Gross, M., Dobbins, A., et al. (2013). Inducing and Tracking Confusion with Contradictions during Complex Learning. in International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education doi:10.3233/JAI-130025.
Lodge, J. M., Kennedy, G., Lockyer, L., Arguel, A., and Pachman, M. (2018). Understanding Difficulties and Resulting Confusion in Learning: An Integrative Review. Front. Educ. 3. doi:10.3389/feduc.2018.00049.
Zhang, Y., Bosch, N., Paquette, L., Munshi, A., Baker, R. S., Biswas, G., et al. (2020). The relationship between confusion and metacognitive strategies in Betty’s Brain. in ACM International Conference Proceeding Series doi:10.1145/3375462.3375518.
Flash of insight
Sawyer, K. (2011). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Creativity: A Critical Review. Creat. Res. J. 23, 137–154. doi:10.1080/10400419.2011.571191.
Sawyer, R. K. (2007). Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH INST, INC.
Zenasni, F., Besancon, M., and Lubart, T. (2008). Creativity and Tolerance of Ambiguity : An Empirical Study. J. Creat. Behav. 42, 61–73.
Self-Efficacy and Learning
Agustiani, H., Cahyad, S., and Musa, M. (2016). Self-efficacy and Self-Regulated Learning as Predictors of Students Academic Performance. Open Psychol. J. 9. doi:10.2174/1874350101609010001.
Komarraju, M., and Dial, C. (2014). Academic identity, self-efficacy, and self-esteem predict self-determined motivation and goals. Learn. Individ. Differ. 32, 1–8. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2014.02.004.
Kustyarini, K. (2020). Self efficacy and emotional quotient in mediating active learning effect on students’ learning outcome. Int. J. Instr. 13. doi:10.29333/iji.2020.13245a.
Zimmerman, B. (2000). Self-Efficacy: An Essential Motive to Learn. Contemp. Educ. Psychol. 25, 82–91. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10620383.
Reading time: about 9 minutes
Different lockdowns in different countries have led to different forms of home-schooling and disruption in children’s education and even critical exams. Some claim, dramatically, we will have a lost generation. But the concern is how will kids catch up on all the learning they have missed – fret not the brain will pick this up – but there are some genuine causes for concern when we look to the brain and disrupted learning over the last year or so.
There is a worry in many societies and educational authorities of how to enable kids to catch up on their curriculums through disrupted schooling and loss of classroom hours during the pandemic. In the UK there have been proposals of shortening the summer holidays, for example.
So, do kids need to catch up on learning?
Stupid question, I say (I am being a bit provocative, but just a bit).
Why is it a stupid question? Well, it confuses the concept of learning vs. knowledge and particularly curriculum-based knowledge and shows complete ignorance of how the brain actually works. Admittedly educational authorities want to get kids through exams with high grades – it is their measure of success. So, let’s review some of the concepts of how the brain learns and whether catching up on curriculum-based matter, matters, or if it can be done quicker than many may assume.
Brain Development
Let’s do what we always do and look to the brain. There are well-documented periods of brain development. For example, the concept of theory of mind. Theory of mind is the ability to appreciate how other people think. For example, children under the age of 4 may not understand that a stranger doesn’t know the name of their teacher. They know the name of the teacher, so they assume everybody else does. Around about 4-5 kids start to understand this and apply this to ever more situations: this is therefore a natural development of the brain and the growing prefrontal cortices. Similarly, before the age of eight children playing games tend to be very selfish and around eight this shifts to understanding better concepts of fairness and applying this in games with other children. Parents may like to think it is their constant appeals to be fairer, but this development will happen irrespective of parents (parent’s input does have some influence, but probably more on the genetic side).
These developments are not hard cut off points but change gradually over time, a little bit earlier and a little bit later in different children, and also moderated or attenuated by certain personality traits. The big point here is that brain development happens irrespective of what environment we’re in and not because of school. Childrens’ brains will mature and develop whatever environment they’re in (if not abusive – but that’s another story – I am assuming a healthy family and social environment – which sadly is not always the case).
The next issue is that of learning – and here I refer to learning skills such as reading and writing particularly with a view to younger children. Parents in some countries and educational authorities may worry about having a disrupted year. But consider this: in England, and the US, I believe, children start formal schooling at 4 years old but in countries like Switzerland and Finland this is normally 6 or even 7. So, starting formal schooling and literacy training 2-3 years later than in England. And yet this has no negative impacts on literacy, or contrastingly it may have positive impacts, with many countries with later schooling ranking better than the UK on literacy rates (there are many factors at play here). Also consider that Finland scores admirably on the standardised testing the (in)famous PISA scores compared to many other countries in the world but with much less schooling time (they have very long holidays to boot).
Why would that be the case? Well back to brain development, languages require considerable cognitive resources and many of these develop with age so developing, or rather trying to develop, certain skills earlier may not really have a benefit in the long run. So, with that in mind it is difficult to see how a disrupted year in schooling is likely to inhibit these younger children (those below the age of 10).
What about older kids?
However, a more genuine concern has been with older children, particularly those coming up to critical exams, those for example, between 14 and 16, or 16 and 18. Again, these ages differ in different countries. Here we do have to differentiate between learning and knowledge. How much do you adults reading this remember from your schooling? Probably not much – I certainly have difficulty doing my daughter’s mathematics. How much do you even remember from university if you attended? Most of us have forgotten 90%. This raises a big issue in society of what is the point of trying to stuff kids full of knowledge if this is quickly forgotten? Another topic for another day – but back to the brain. In the brain learning takes place when we have built new connections and in behavioural learning this is when a new behaviour has been acquired and can successfully and automatically be implemented – think hitting a tennis ball or being polite in a shop. We spoke about the cerebellum in an earlier article and how this is involved in behavioural and cognitive learning and particularly feed-forward mechanism of predicting the future.
The point is learning, and knowledge, are different things with some similarities. Another point is that knowledge is easy to come across, access, and memorise – learning a list of history dates requires effort but can be done by most brains pretty easily. Obviously, context and engagement in a lesson helps this consolidation, or “learning”. But most of us adults know you can get quick access to plenty of knowledge by reading a book on “xxx for dummies” or a quick google search. What’s more, sometimes this is more time efficient then going through a whole series of lessons on it – remember that lessons are also spread over a year (with only a few hours a week) and then broken up by holidays so there may be a lot of learning, but there is also a lot of unlearning. But simply sitting down and getting stuck into a topic in enriched condensed form can be a pretty easy way to access knowledge and do this more than effectively. Remember most educational systems test knowledge – i.e. memory and mostly relatively short-term memory of what the kids have been able to pack into their heads pre exam.
So, from this perspective, for knowledge-based learning there is some concern, but this can be brought up to speed pretty quickly. Therfore, in some areas there will need to be some catching up. However, this may depend on the subject – some subjects build on top of each other or are interconnected – these are the subject that may need to play some catch up – but teachers may find that an “executive summary” does wonders.
So far so good – with the caveat that not all kids will respond the same to this but broadly I see little need for any major concern here. But I do see concern in other areas.
What do we really learn at school?
What do we actually learn at school? Within school there are a lot of other things that happen, friendships are built, kids play together, have random ideas, dangerous ideas, try to break the rules, not get caught, find strategies to learn with the least effort, how to get through exams with the least effort, and so on and so forth.
This is normally considered the secondary impacts of schooling. I say from the brains’ perspective this is the primary learning experience in schools. All the above-mentioned tasks require extremely complex and strategic and social decision-making and are what helps us develop important skills, such as strategizing, building and managing relationships, and also helps reduce stress and build circuits that really make effective brains.
Some have said they miss being with friends and I stress it is not just missing friend, it is the whole process of friendships and how to engage that is missing. So, there is concern in those countries where children have been at home schooling for long periods of time and not because of what educational authorities consider learning, but because of the critical social learning aspects which help build healthy functional brains. What’s more the physical activity that we spoke about in this article last month (though targeted at you the adult reader) is just as true for children. The simple process of being active – walking between classrooms, carrying books, messing about during recess has hugely beneficial effects on the brain and health.
That being said I think the impacts are very varied – my daughter at the age of 14 loved lockdown – social media be thanked – she and her friends seem to be just as engaged, talkative, and creative on a group chat on social media, as us adults around a drink at a local bar. So, some of these negative impacts will be moderated by these digital kids.
Key Development phases
The one aspect I see of genuine concern is that all children go through key brain development phases broadly around 4, 8, and in adolescence. These are times of great reorganising in the brain and hence very susceptible to environmental influences, for example in adolescence the concept of building a self-identity is critical and how has this been influenced by home-schooling or lockdown? I am not sure. It is likely very contextual but a genuine cause of concern.
Let’s summarise
I stress to close that the other aspects of school are just as, or more important, than the schooling themselves when it comes to cognitive development. And yes, kids should get back to school as soon as is feasibly possible (Switzerland adopted pragmatic approach to this only closing schools through the first lockdown period but not thereafter).
Children do have plastic brains, but these do need to develop – some of this happens with school, during school, and … in spite of school●
Brain Development
Blakemore, S. J. (2012). Imaging brain development: The adolescent brain. Neuroimage. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.11.080.
Blakemore, S. J., Burnett, S., and Dahl, R. E. (2010). The role of puberty in the developing adolescent brain. Hum. Brain Mapp. doi:10.1002/hbm.21052.
Blakemore, S. J. (2012). Development of the social brain in adolescence. J. R. Soc. Med. doi:10.1258/jrsm.2011.110221.
Choudhury, S., Blakemore, S. J., and Charman, T. (2006). Social cognitive development during adolescence. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. doi:10.1093/scan/nsl024.
Fuhrmann, D., Knoll, L. J., and Blakemore, S. J. (2015). Adolescence as a Sensitive Period of Brain Development. Trends Cogn. Sci. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2015.07.008.
Kilford, E. J., Garrett, E., and Blakemore, S. J. (2016). The development of social cognition in adolescence: An integrated perspective. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.08.016.
Knudsen, E. I. (2004). Sensitive periods in the development of the brain and behavior. J. Cogn. Neurosci. doi:10.1162/0898929042304796.
Power, J. D., Fair, D. A., Schlaggar, B. L., and Petersen, S. E. (2010). The Development of Human Functional Brain Networks. Neuron. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2010.08.017.
Sebastian, C., Burnett, S., and Blakemore, S. J. (2008). Development of the self-concept during adolescence. Trends Cogn. Sci. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.07.008.
Stiles, J., and Jernigan, T. L. (2010). The basics of brain development. Neuropsychol. Rev. doi:10.1007/s11065-010-9148-4.
Education
Blakemore, S. J., and Frith, U. (2005). The learning brain: Lessons for education: a précis. Dev. Sci. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.00434.x.
Dorothy Bishop, Colin Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Brian Butterworth, U. G. (2013). Neuroscience: implications for education and lifelong learning.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., and Cocking, R. R. (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. doi:10.1016/0885-2014(91)90049-J.
de Freitas, S., and Liarokapis, F. (2011). “Serious Games: A New Paradigm for Education?,” in Serious Games and Edutainment Applications doi:10.1007/978-1-4471-2161-9_2.
Harasim, L. (2000). Shift happens: Online education as a new paradigm in learning. Internet High. Educ. doi:10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00032-4.
Immordino-Yang, M. H., and Damasio, A. (2007). We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education. Mind, Brain, Educ. doi:10.1111/j.1751-228x.2007.00004.x.
Understanding the brain: The birth of a learning science (2007). doi:10.1787/9789264029132-en.
Play and the brain
Bateman, C., and Nacke, L. E. (2010). The neurobiology of play. in Future Play 2010: Research, Play, Share – International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology doi:10.1145/1920778.1920780.
Pellis, S. M., Pellis, V. C., and Bell, H. C. (2010). The function of play in the development of the social brain. Am. J. Play.
Montgomery, S. H. (2014). The relationship between play, brain growth and behavioural flexibility in primates. Anim. Behav. 90, 281–286.
Siviy, S. M. (2016). A brain motivated to play: insights into the neurobiology of playfulness. Behaviour 153. doi:10.1163/1568539X-00003349.
Smith, P. K. (2009). Children and Play. doi:10.1002/9781444311006.
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