Peaceful learning.

The neuroscientific research about learning has revealed the negative impact of stress and anxiety and the qualitative improvement of the brain circuitry involved in memory and executive function that accompanies positive motivation and engagement. With brain-based teaching strategies that reduce classroom anxiety and increase student connection to their lessons, educators can help students learn more effectively. This brain research demonstrates that superior learning takes place when classroom experiences are relevant to students' lives, interests, and experiences. Lessons can be stimulating and challenging without being intimidating, and the increasing curriculum requirements can be achieved without stress, anxiety, boredom, and alienation. Positive motivation impacts brain metabolism, conduction of nerve impulses through the memory areas, and the release of neurotransmitters that increase executive function and attention. Relevant lessons help students feel that they are partners in their education, and they are engaged and motivated. We live in a stressful world and troubled times; when teachers use strategies to reduce stress and build a positive emotional environment, students gain emotional resilience and learn more efficiently and at higher levels of cognition. Studies of electrical and metabolic activity show the synchronization of brain activity as information passes from the sensory input processing areas of the somatosensory system to the reticular activating and limbic systems. This data gives us a way to see which techniques and strategies stimulate or impede communication between the parts of the brain when information is processed and stored. In other words, if properly applied, we can identify and remove barriers to student understanding. The amygdala is part of limbic system in the temporal lobe. When the amygdala senses threat, it becomes over-activated with feelings of helplessness and anxiety: in this state of stress-induced over-activation, new sensory information cannot pass through it to access the memory and association circuits. The “affective filter” describes an emotional state of stress in students during which they are not responsive to learning and storing new information. What is now evident on brain scans during times of stress is objective physical evidence of this “affective filter”: if students are stressed out, the information cannot get in. This “affective state” occurs when students feel alienated from their academic experience and anxious about their lack of understanding. Additional neuroimaging studies of the amygdala, hippocampus, and the rest of the limbic system, along with measurement of dopamine and other brain chemical transmitters during the learning process, reveal that students' comfort level has critical impact on information transmission and storage in the brain. The factors that have been found to affect this comfort level such as self-confidence, trust and positive feelings for teachers, and supportive classroom and school communities are directly related to the state of mind compatible with the most successful learning, remembering, and higher-order thinking. The highest-level executive thinking, making connections, and "aha" moments of insight and creative innovation are more likely to occur in an atmosphere where students of all ages retain that enthusiasm of embracing each day with the joy of learning the “exuberant discovery”.  With current research and data in the field of neuroscience, we see growing opportunities to coordinate the design of curriculum, instruction, and assessment in ways that will reflect these incredible discoveries. I am convinced that teaching and learning must always be an exciting and enjoyable amusement.

Shouldn't it be time to design new teaching-learning methods?