By Martha S. Burns, Ph.D.
http://www.scilearn.com/blog/martha-burns-ph.d/
How does the brain learn? Why do some children find
learning so challenging? What can educators do to help those children? These
are questions that neuroscientists have been grappling with over the past 10
years. By and large, they are beginning to find answers.
Neuroscience is rapidly uncovering more and more
about how the brain functions in the learning process. Neuroscientists like
Stanislas Dehaene, for example, provide evidence that specific brain structures
in the temporal lobe are required so that learning to read happens easily and
effortlessly. We know too from neuroscience research that those brain
structures--and the neural pathways that connect them to other language
comprehension, memory, and verbal fluency regions of the brain--need to be
adequately mature when children enter school for the student to learn to read.
Research is helping us understand the reasons why that brain architecture may
not be strong enough to support the learning process--for example, a home
environment where there is not a great deal of oral language experience may
have negative impact on brain architecture.
These are all neuroscience findings that most
educators are familiar with. What educators may not know, however, is that
those undeveloped learning pathways are mutable. The brain's capacity to learn,
it turns out, is not set by our genes or predetermined in any way--not even by
early learning disadvantages.
The human brain, in fact, is quite malleable--even
into adulthood. Neuroscientists call this malleability "plasticity."
Neural plasticity is what allows teachers to educate a classroom of children
who range in background, environmental experiences, or learning behaviors.
Adults experience this plasticity themselves when they study a new language or
take up a musical instrument well into adulthood--their brains can get in shape
for the task.
The exciting results of this decade of brain
research are, first, that we have learned which brain structures are necessary
to learn to read or to master other learning tasks. We also know more about how
the learning process itself changes the brain. In addition, research has shown
there are now neuroscientific methods available that can identify children, as
young as 3 months, who may have weaknesses in these structures or the pathways
that connect them.
Finally, and perhaps most exciting for educators,
neuroscientists have developed technological interventions that have been shown
to target and build these specific brain structures in struggling learners.
Neuroscience has demonstrated that through brain-based learning practices, all
children who have IQs within normal limits, even those diagnosed with severe
learning disabilities like dyslexia, have the capacity to learn to read and
successfully master all subject areas.
