Teaching With the Brain in Mind

Teaching with the Brain in Mind
amount of energy is invested in getting kids “to be
good.” The stakes are high, and the tools include
promises, rewards, noisemakers, threats, raised
voices, and gimmicks. Nearly every experienced
teacher has surefire ways to get attention. For
years, new teachers eagerly modeled these “topgun”
teacher methods. They, too, wanted to get
student attention and keep it. But is that really
good teaching?
For much of the 20th century, attention was
the domain of psychology. But in the last decade,
several strands of research have mounted a powerful
case about the role biological factors play in
attention and learning. We now know the purpose
of attention seems to be (1) to promote survival
and (2) to extend pleasurable states. For example,
research has revealed:
Attentional systems are located throughout
the brain.
The contrasts of movement, sounds, and
emotions (like threat) consume most of our
attention.
Chemicals play the most significant role in
attention.
Genes also may be involved in attention.
When we are awake, we have an important
decision to make every single moment: where to
turn our attention. A normal person makes this
decision about 100,000 times a day. The brain is
always paying attention to something; its survival
depends on it. In general, when we talk about
“paying attention” in an educational context, we
are referring to external, focused attention. That
means the student is looking at the teacher and
thinking only of the material presented.
However, the brain’s attentional systems have
countless other possibilities. Attention can be
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external or internal, focused or diffused, relaxed or
vigilant. We ask students to be able to identify
appropriate objects of attention (often it’s a
teacher); to sustain that attention until instructed
otherwise (even if it’s a lecture that lasts for an
hour); and to ignore other, often more interesting,
stimuli in the environment. This request is entirely
reasonable when the learning is relevant, engaging,
and chosen by the learner. When those conditions
are not met, classroom attention is a statistical
improbability.
We now know that the two primary determinates
of our attention are the sensory input (such
as a threat or an appealing opportunity) and the
brain’s chemical “flavor of the moment.” One is
focused like a laser beam, the other is scattered,
more like a set of Christmas tree lights. Both are
constantly regulating our attention, so let’s explore
each of them.
The Pathways of Attention
The attention process consists of alarm, orientation,
identification, and decision. This sequential,
laser beam process is akin to, “Whoops, something’s
happening,” then, “Where?” and finally
“What is it?” The answer to the final question will
usually tell us how long we ought to attend to it.
Attention is expressed in a student when there’s
greater flow of information in the specific target
area of the brain’s pathways relative to the surrounding
pathways. In short, when specialized
brain activity is up, attention is up. Figure 5.1
illustrates the various areas of the brain involved in
getting and keeping attention.
How does your brain know what specifically to
pay attention to in the moment? The secret is that
our visual system (which sends more than 80 per-