Engage the Brain

How to Design for Learning That Taps into the Power of Emotion

Allison Posey

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781416626312
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

Research on the brain has shown that emotion plays a key role in learning, but how can educators apply that research in their day-to-day interactions with students? What are some teaching strategies that take advantage of what we know about the brain?

Engage the Brain answers these questions with easy-to-understand explanations of the brain's emotion networks and how they affect learning, paired with specific suggestions for classroom strategies that can make a real difference in how and what students learn. Readers will discover how to design an environment for learning that

• Makes material relevant, relatable, and engaging.
• Accommodates tremendous variability in students' brains by giving them multiple options for how to approach their learning.
• Incorporates Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and guidelines.
• Uses process-oriented feedback and other techniques to spark students' intrinsic motivation.

Author Allison Posey explains how schools can use the same "emotional brain" concepts to create work environments that reduce professional stress and the all-too-common condition of teacher burnout.

Real-world classroom examples, along with reflection and discussion questions, add to the usefulness of Engage the Brain as a practical, informative guide for understanding how to capture the brain's incredible power and achieve better results at all grade levels, in all content areas.

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Chapter 1

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Activate Learning

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Emotions are not just messy toddlers in a china shop, running around breaking and obscuring delicate cognitive glassware. Instead, they are more like the shelves underlying the glassware; without them cognition has less support.

—Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Antonio Damasio, We Feel, Therefore We Learn

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Brain Research

• The brain actively predicts how to budget energy based on previous experiences.
• Brain networks related to emotion are widespread and diffuse, activating the body's physiological and cognitive processes.
• Learning needs sufficient activation.

Design Strategies

• Clarify the intended goal for each part of a lesson.
• Ensure learning goals are relevant and meaningful for students.
• Design the context in a flexible way, with resources and options for active learning that align with the intended goal.

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Educator Dilemma: Drew was in my neuroscience elective, a three-week, intensive class for "gifted and talented" high school students. His motivation to learn the content was insatiable; in fact, we had to make rules for mandatory study breaks so that he would eat, exercise, and socialize. After the first week of class, Drew had read the entire college-level textbook, and it was evident he understood many of the topics from the rich conversations he initiated. He was curious about long-term potentiation and understanding neural changes that occurred during classical conditioning. However, when I collected his first test, it was completely blank. He had not answered a single question. I wondered what had happened. How could he have learned so much information but been unable to share any of it on an assessment? I asked myself, "Why is his test blank? He knows the content, so is this a problem of engagement?" In what ways does this educator dilemma resonate with you?

Emotion: The Activator of Physiology

In every moment of every day, your brain and body are subconsciously working to appraise your current situation. Are you basically OK in this moment? How much energy does your nervous system need to expend to handle the demands of the situation? Consider what is happening in your current surroundings: Is it loud or dark? Is there someone to interact with? Is there food to eat? Do you need to run away? Do you need to learn something? Now reflect on your body's internal state: Are you hot or cold? Do you need to shift your weight to relieve pressure on your back? Is your heart rate sufficient for the oxygen levels in your blood? Are you digesting food? Thankfully you don't need to actively monitor many of these states, but your nervous system does in every moment of every day.

In classic neuroscience, this appraisal of the body has been described as being like a loop. Incoming sensory information from the external environment (and internal body systems) was sent to, processed, and evaluated by the brain, which led to an appropriate motor output response. For example, if there was a buzzing mosquito near your arm, the sensory input was perceived and processed by your brain, which coordinated a response to shoo it away. This process maintains the body in a state of balance, or homeostasis.

Current understanding of the brain shows a much more dynamic process in play than this simple loop. It turns out that your brain is a phenomenal prediction machine. Instead of just waiting for incoming sensory information, it is actively appraising each moment to anticipate what you may need. For example, when I go out into the backyard in the summer, my brain is already predicting that the outdoor environment may include a lot of mosquitos, and it is evaluating the energy that will be required to maintain homeostasis within this context. It may begin to release glucose to my muscles, preparing for a lot of swatting. I may perceive the presence of a mosquito and shoo at it, only to find that there is not one there. My brain directs attention to pertinent stimuli from the environment to help achieve my goals, and it ignores unnecessary information, such as the sound of my neighbor's leaf blower or cars driving by. My nervous system predicts and budgets energy appropriately for that situation based on previous experiences and the goals of the situation.

Shifting to a school context, imagine you enter a classroom and are told, "Today we are going to research and deliver an oral report on spiders." How do you appraise this situation? Based on prior experiences, your brain begins to make predictions. It may evaluate this situation positively: "I have a pet spider and I love talking in front of the class." Others may appraise this situation negatively: "I dislike spiders. I hate talking in this class because kids tease me and this teacher does not like me." Your appraisal is based on your past experiences as well as experiences in this particular context. It is aligned to the targeted goal or task at hand. The appraisal occurs at both a conscious and a subconscious level, and you may identify the emotion in different ways, perhaps as being "excited and ready to go" or "slightly agitated and negative." Your brain predicts the energy demands it may require for this task in this context, and this prediction influences what you pay attention to, how you execute the tasks, and ultimately how you engage and learn in that moment.

Reflect and Discuss

Pause for a moment and reflect on a single moment in your learning environment.

• Describe the context (environment). What are your students doing?
• What previous experiences have students had in this context that may influence how their brains are making predictions about the energy they need to expend to achieve the intended learning goal?

Ultimately, at the core of these appraisals are emotions. Emotion networks are widespread throughout the brain and intricately connect to the body's physiological systems as well as to higher-order cognitive networks. Emotion networks connect with survival centers that influence heart rate, breath rate, and blood pressure. If you are nervous about presenting the spider report in front of peers, you may perceive an increase in activity in these systems and describe the situation by noting, "My palms are sweaty and I feel nervous." The physiological arousal that accompanies emotion also activates attention systems and motivates the body to take action. It recruits motor systems that move muscles and direct actions. Brain networks involved in memory formation, goal setting, planning, reasoning, and problem solving are recruited. These lead to observable behaviors. At the center of this abundance of activity is the emotional appraisal.

Each learner in a classroom will appraise and feel each situation differently based on the goals, the context, and the individual's previous experiences. Each will have unique brain activation and physiological responses, even if behaviors appear consistent. For example, some students may start in on the task and seem to be working in a fairly consistent way, even though their appraisals, internal processes, and predictions vary in a multitude of ways: one student may have just had a fight with a friend and may not be paying any attention to the lesson, another may have never done an oral report before and be overwhelmed, and another may be an experienced actor who is completely comfortable in front of an audience and cannot wait to give the report. For an educator, this variability can be a challenge and seem overwhelming to address in the classroom. How can you possibly be aware of all of the different appraisals and subsequent emotions of each learner in each situation? How can we design to address this range?

Designing for Emotion

Every learning event in our classrooms is appraised in this conscious and unconscious "is this good or bad for me" way. The appraisal causes a shift in physiology—perhaps heart rate and blood pressure increase, pupils dilate, and palms sweat. Individuals may consciously recognize these shifts ("I feel nervous"), or the shifts may be subconscious and manifest in an upset stomach. In addition, higher-order brain systems are activated, such as memory and planning centers. ("Remember that last oral presentation when I used index cards and practiced in front of the mirror? That worked great!" or "Last time I stuttered and no one could hear me. What options can help me this time?") As each learner progresses through the day, the brain predicts and appraises every situation as it relates to previous experiences and the current context. In this way, the brain budgets the body's energy resources to drive perception and prepare for action.

The first step in designing learning experiences for this range of emotional appraisal is to clarify the intended learning goal. For example, the focus of this learning experience may primarily be to deliver an oral report, with less emphasis on learning facts about spiders or learning to compile information into a report. Those other skills may be of focus in other lessons and may actually be a barrier for some to achieve the oral component. Once the target goal is clarified, focus on it! Identify the subskills required to effectively deliver an oral report and share those expectations with students. What does it mean to deliver a superb oral report? What do "expert" presenters do? Clarify the expectations so students know what they are going for. When you zero in on the goal, the brain knows what to focus on and how to predict and direct energy for attention, planning, and action.

Once you have clarified the goal for the task, reflect on the relevancy of the goal. Why does it matter? What is the purpose? Is there a meaningful connection you can make so that students will care? Because emotions are at the core of the brain's appraisals, connecting the goals to authentic and relevant experiences will help students activate their physiology and appraise the situation positively. It will invite curiosity, so they might take notice or want to explore more.

Finally, it is important to offer a few choices related to the identified goal. Because each learner brings unique experiences and backgrounds to each situation, offering even two options can help the nervous system appraise the situation in a more positive way. For example, if the goal is to deliver an effective oral report and meaningful connections are made to how this skill is relevant, then consider how you can offer a few options for students to select as they work to achieve that goal. For example, there may be the option to deliver the presentation to the class or to make a video of their presentation, like a news report. Another option might be to allow them to select any topic for the oral report. You might offer the option to use a graphic organizer and to preview the rubric that will be used to assess the oral delivery. Whatever the options are, the focus of the materials and methods should align with the intended goal, so learners are supported to get to high-level skills and can more positively appraise the context as one that is encouraging them to engage in the learning.

The Physiology of Emotion

When you feel an emotion—any emotion, such as disgust, excitement, or anger—your body goes through a range of physiological changes associated with the sympathetic nervous system, including changes in heart rate, galvanized sweat response, pupil dilation, blood pressure, digestion, and breath rate. Glucose, or sugar, can be triggered to be released from storage to deliver the energy needed for your muscles to move your body, whether it is to avert the oral report and talk with friends or to practice the presentation. A number of chemicals help prepare the body for action. Adrenaline mobilizes the body, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, and enlarging blood vessels—a combination that gives the skin a "blushing," reddish hue. It helps "tag" events for memory, so years later you might recall this spider presentation. Cortisol, a stress hormone, releases blood sugar that mobilizes muscles and helps with metabolism and immune function. It travels throughout the brain and body and therefore has a broad impact. Note that in prolonged amounts, cortisol is the chemical that can be actually become toxic to the hippocampus, the region of the brain fundamental to learning.

This physiology of emotional activation has remained fundamentally the same over thousands of years of evolution: the system that helped us survive on the savannah is the same system that is active today in our classrooms. However, today, instead of responding to an approaching tiger, students respond to events such as taking tests, reading, public speaking, researching, or choosing where to sit for lunch. The physiology of a student in a classroom can be as intense as it would be if he were escaping a tiger. In fact, physiological measures from a group of elementary school students reading a passage aloud to their peers were found to be as extreme as someone running from a tiger: stress hormones were high, galvanized skin responses peaked, and heart rate soared. The teacher, reflecting on this research, was understandably surprised and said, "I never thought of asking students to read aloud to the class as being like tigers in the room for some students."

Similarly, a teacher's physiology will be activated differently throughout the course of a school day, making predictions tied to previous experiences with different students, job responsibilities, or interactions with parents and colleagues. Both real and imagined stimuli spark changes in physiology, initiating changes that prepare the body to achieve the goals. Worrying about the upcoming spider presentation or parent-teacher conference can have similar effects on the physiology as the actual event. We learn to describe these changes in brain and body physiology in these different contexts as emotions, and we engage in the situations accordingly.

Recap, Reflect, and Discuss

In any moment, our nervous system prepares our body to take action based on the current goal, the context, and previous experiences. The emotions associated with that appraisal affect our engagement, attention, and actions.

With this in mind, consider the following questions for reflection and discussion:

1. In what ways do you clarify goals, make them relevant, and offer a few options to support those goals?
2. What events might be "like tigers" for your learners during your lessons or in your context?

An Activation Model

A little activation of physiology is good for learning—in fact, it is necessary to kick-start the body to attention and action. However, as in the so-called Goldilocks syndrome, too little activation can result in apathy and boredom, whereas too much activation can lead to stress and anxiety. Returning to the example of the oral report on spiders, one student may appraise the task as incredibly boring. That student's heart rate and breath rate might be low, and cognitive networks such as attention and memory would be minimally active. Without enough activation, undesired behaviors may result, such as an incomplete draft of the speech, a dearth of research, or a poor delivery.

By contrast, another student's appraisal of this assignment may result in stress. He might be uncomfortable thinking about spiders and is nervous at the thought of presenting in front of the class. His heart rate and sweat level may increase; cognitive centers may not function as efficiently as they normally would. Too much activation of physiology diminishes cognitive processes such as attention and memory. This state leads to less conceptual flexibility or creativity; emotions overrule cognition. It may also result in undesirable actions, such as standing speechless during the presentation, or having shaking muscles and a cracking voice, or delivering the speech poorly. Notice that sometimes the observed behavior—in this case, poor delivery—may be similar for the two students, even though their emotional appraisals differ. Most students will fall on a continuum somewhere between these extremes, and the challenge for educators is that each student's activation system will be different in response to events in the classroom.

A "one-size-fits-all" lesson is unlikely to address the range of emotional appraisal and subsequent physiological activation of the students in the class. When we have students do the same task in the same way and at the same time, we are not designing for the range of students we know we have. To overcome this challenge, educators should follow the suggestions mentioned earlier: offer a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Epigraph
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Activate Learning
• Chapter 2. Design for Variability
• Chapter 3. Foster the Development of Brain Networks
• Chapter 4. Captivate Attention
• Chapter 5. Scaffold Memory
• Chapter 6. Intrinsically Motivate
• Chapter 7. Support the Emotion of Teaching
• Conclusion. Emotion Ties the Knot for Learning
• Appendix. Additional Information About the UDL Framework
• Bibliography
• Study Guide
• Related ASCD Resources
• About the Authors
• Copyright