Education Commons^™

The Degree Of Knowledge Of Teaching Practices Based On Brain-Based Learning Among Faculty Members In The Faculty Of Education At Damascus University. درج ة المعرفة بالممارسات التدريسية القائمة على التعلم المستند إلى الدماغ لدى أعضاء الهيئة التعليمية في كلية التربية بجامعة دمشق, Zeinab Zeioud, Ameen Sheikh Mohammed

Association of Arab Universities Journal for Education and Psychology

The research aimed to identify the degree of knowledge of Faculty members in the faculty of Education at Damascus University about teaching practices based on brain-based learning using the descriptive analytical approach, that applied to a sample of Faculty members in the Faculty of Education at Damascus University. The research population consisted of (195) members in the Faculty of Education at Damascus University. The sample consisted of (60) faculty members chosen by the stratified random method from the departments of the Faculty of Education. The research instrument was a cognition test to measure the degree of knowledge of teaching practices …

Middle School Teachers' Perceptions Of Brain-Based Learning And The Implementation Of Physical Brain Breaks As A Classroom Management Strategy, Tiffany C. Neal

Doctor of Education Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to better understand educators' perspectives of physical brain breaks at middle schools located in the northwestern part of North Carolina as it relates to the brain-based learning theory. This study is important because it helps to bridge the gap between the educational and neuroscience fields by providing teachers’ perspectives about using physical brain breaks, issues implementing them, and the importance of relationships with educational stakeholders. After submitting the survey, participants were asked to share their contact information to show their willingness to participate in a focus group with their peers to answer 10 questions …

The Adolescent Brain: Leaving Childhood Behind, Lori Desautels

Lori Desautels

There isn't a more profound scene in the film Inside Out than the death of Bing Bong, Riley’s imaginary friend. As the main character approaches her 12th birthday, her brain is beginning to develop in ways that leave her imagination behind. This is the time when children between the ages of 10 and 14 begin dying to their childhoods to be born into their adolescence.

Survive And Thrive During Testing Season, Lori Desautels

Lori Desautels

Right now, students across the nation are embarking upon a series of standardized tests following intense days and weeks of test preparation accompanied by anxiety and worry from both parents and educators. Many of these test participants are English as a Second Language (ESL) learners with a wide diversity of learning potential, social and emotional challenges, strengths, cultures and interests. Among these young learners, there are many who put themselves to bed in the evening, get themselves up and ready for school, and do not have breakfast, arranged homework times or adult support to guide their school days...

Cracking The Code Of Student Emotional Pain, Lori Desautels

Lori Desautels

Every instructor wants to crack the code -- to determine just what children and adolescents need to transform feelings of defeat, cognitive and emotional exhaustion, and outright hostility into something positive. They want to connect with students whose stress response states are chronically activated. They want to help learners know that they are more than just their genetics or their history. They want to share with their most fragile students that the traumas of their past can strengthen rather than harden their minds and hearts. No one needs to live in constant conflict and pain.

Brain-Compatible Study Strategies, Lori Desautels

Lori Desautels

Driving my 15-year-old daughter home from cross country, I asked her where she learned to study. She replied, "Mom, I have never been taught how to study, we just do it because teachers have way too much to teach! They assume we know, and Cornell Notes are their idea of teaching us how to study!" I thought about this conversation and began to create a template that can hopefully assist students to organize, plan and create capacity in their working memories to learn content for the long term.

Below is a brief, simply-stated template on study skills for fifth grade …

Brain Labs: A Place To Enliven Learning, Lori Desautels

Lori Desautels

Although emotion and cognition originate in different parts of the brain, they interact and play a powerful role in learning and memory. According to neuroscientists like Eric Jensen, priming the brain for particular states of engagement -- such as curiosity, intrigue, surprise, suspense, a bit of confusion, skepticism, and the feeling of safety -- prepares the mind to learn. Furthermore, incorporating emotion into our instruction and content supports long-term memory. This might not be news to teachers, but not enough students know how to optimize their brain for learning. That's why every child should have the opportunity to explore …

Addressing Our Needs: Maslow Comes To Life For Educators And Students, Lori Desautels

Lori Desautels

In the mid-1950s, humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow created a theory of basic, psychological and self-fulfillment needs that motivate individuals to move consciously or subconsciously through levels or tiers based on our inner and outer satisfaction of those met or unmet needs. As a parent and educator, I find this theory eternally relevant for students and adults, especially in our classrooms. After studying it over the past couple of years, my graduate and undergraduate students have decided that every classroom should display a wall-sized diagram of the pyramid, as students and teachers alike place pins and post-its on the varying tiers …

Fluency: A Steady Beat In The Making, Nicole Patton

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This honors thesis explores the literacy component of fluency and its instruction in the intermediate grades through the incorporation of Brain-based learning and the arts. Because reading fluency can affect other areas of reading, such as comprehension, it is important to build fluency skills through meaningful instruction. By exploring the best practices of fluency instruction, by understanding how the brain learns, and by recognizing how the arts can meet the needs of different learners, educators can alter and create instruction that challenges students’ reading ability in a unique way. A series of fluency lessons incorporating brain-based learning and the arts …

The Adolescent Brain: Leaving Childhood Behind, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

There isn't a more profound scene in the film Inside Out than the death of Bing Bong, Riley’s imaginary friend. As the main character approaches her 12th birthday, her brain is beginning to develop in ways that leave her imagination behind. This is the time when children between the ages of 10 and 14 begin dying to their childhoods to be born into their adolescence.

Creating Core Memories In The Classroom, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

We all create core memories. When we encounter an experience with heightened emotion, our memory systems remember the experiences because of the intense emotions associated with the event. We know that memories can become diluted or distorted with time and distance. When we remember an event from our past, our brains secrete the same chemicals from the same neurotransmitters called forth when the experience happened, creating the same feelings.

Energy And Calm: Change It Up And Calm It Down!, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Unlike the sequels to movies, I hope that part two of last year's Energy and Calm post will continue to strengthen your understanding of how our brains naturally learn, think, and behave. So let's return to the calming yet energizing zone of focused attention practices and brain breaks, a place that would greatly benefit students -- and their teachers -- when revisited frequently.

Strengthening Executive Function Development For Students With Add, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

What are the root causes of Attention Deficit Disorder in our children and youth, and how do we address these challenges? According to the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 11 percent of children in the United States age 4-17 (6.4 million) have been diagnosed with ADHD as of 2011.

Dr. Russell Barkley, clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina and medical expert in ADD, shares that this disorder is primarily about emotional regulation and self-control. It is not just about inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. Emotional regulation, which is foundational to social, emotional, and …

Brain Labs: A Place To Enliven Learning, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Although emotion and cognition originate in different parts of the brain, they interact and play a powerful role in learning and memory. According to neuroscientists like Eric Jensen, priming the brain for particular states of engagement -- such as curiosity, intrigue, surprise, suspense, a bit of confusion, skepticism, and the feeling of safety -- prepares the mind to learn. Furthermore, incorporating emotion into our instruction and content supports long-term memory. This might not be news to teachers, but not enough students know how to optimize their brain for learning. That's why every child should have the opportunity to explore …

Cracking The Code Of Student Emotional Pain, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Every instructor wants to crack the code -- to determine just what children and adolescents need to transform feelings of defeat, cognitive and emotional exhaustion, and outright hostility into something positive. They want to connect with students whose stress response states are chronically activated. They want to help learners know that they are more than just their genetics or their history. They want to share with their most fragile students that the traumas of their past can strengthen rather than harden their minds and hearts. No one needs to live in constant conflict and pain.

Meta-Collaboration: Thinking With Another, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

What if we could dramatically improve our thought processes and learning strategies by tapping into the social genius of another? What if a classmate, colleague, or friend could help us recognize and claim our strengths, new habits of thought, and strategies from a perspective that we never imagined by ourselves? As human beings, our survival depends on others. Our ability to cooperate and collaborate has trumped the stress response state of competition within our species and throughout evolution. With a group affiliation to nurture these relationships, we can strengthen and reappraise our own thought processes.

Incentivizing Your Class: The Engagement-Based Classroom Management Model, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

When I think of our most struggling and distracted students, I see how social pain and rejection often hijack their ability to be academically focused and successful. Optimal school performance requires positive emotional connections with those students that we want to prosper while feeling capable and competent.

When students and teachers feel this connection, we are all responding from the higher cortical regions of the brain, and our dopamine reward centers are activated by these feelings, these positive emotions. Our interactions with students are intimately connected with our own feelings and agendas. When our efforts in the classroom meet with …

Energy And Calm: Brain Breaks And Focused-Attention Practices, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

When presented with new material, standards, and complicated topics, we need to be focused and calm as we approach our assignments. We can use brain breaks and focused-attention practices to positively impact our emotional states and learning. They refocus our neural circuitry with either stimulating or quieting practices that generate increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, where problem solving and emotional regulation occur.

Single Gender Language Arts Classes And The Impact On Achievement Of Males, Brock English

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this causal comparative research design was to analyze the relationship between Language Arts scale scores of elementary male students on the Mississippi Curriculum Test, Version 2 (MCT2) and the type of classroom, mixed-gender or single-gender. The study also analyzed the percentage of questions answered correctly on the MCT2 in the English Language Arts sub-categories of vocabulary, reading comprehension, writing, and grammar. Archival data of 222 students was used, 100 male students in single-gender classes and 122 students in mixed-gender classes. The study was conducted in an urban elementary public school with a diverse population in northeast Mississippi. …

Summer Fun With The Brain In Mind, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Summer months are typically designated as times for less structure, more pleasure, enjoying the outdoors, and free time. Sometimes, however, our brains feel discombobulated without the structure or schedules that guide us through the other ten months of the year. But whether we're in school, at home, the pool, the playground, or on vacation, we're always using our brains. The brain-compatible activities below are intended for parents to implement with children or adolescents to activate the joy of learning, decision-making, questioning, and playing with ideas during summer break and beyond.

Survive And Thrive During Testing Season, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Right now, students across the nation are embarking upon a series of standardized tests following intense days and weeks of test preparation accompanied by anxiety and worry from both parents and educators. Many of these test participants are English as a Second Language (ESL) learners with a wide diversity of learning potential, social and emotional challenges, strengths, cultures and interests. Among these young learners, there are many who put themselves to bed in the evening, get themselves up and ready for school, and do not have breakfast, arranged homework times or adult support to guide their school days...

The Trading Card Effect, Adam Epstein

Adam Epstein

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate a teaching method that I have used for the last several years and have found to be effective particularly during the challenging final weeks of the semester. I reward students with trading cards for answering questions currently during an unannounced quiz to provide positive reinforcement in an engaging way. Students ultimately form teams and receive a relevant and classic football, baseball, basketball, hockey, or other trading card that they can keep as a souvenir to the class and the course. The intent is to give something to the students directly relevant to …

Addressing Our Needs: Maslow Comes To Life For Educators And Students, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

In the mid-1950s, humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow created a theory of basic, psychological and self-fulfillment needs that motivate individuals to move consciously or subconsciously through levels or tiers based on our inner and outer satisfaction of those met or unmet needs. As a parent and educator, I find this theory eternally relevant for students and adults, especially in our classrooms. After studying it over the past couple of years, my graduate and undergraduate students have decided that every classroom should display a wall-sized diagram of the pyramid, as students and teachers alike place pins and post-its on the varying tiers …

Brain-Compatible Study Strategies, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Driving my 15-year-old daughter home from cross country, I asked her where she learned to study. She replied, "Mom, I have never been taught how to study, we just do it because teachers have way too much to teach! They assume we know, and Cornell Notes are their idea of teaching us how to study!" I thought about this conversation and began to create a template that can hopefully assist students to organize, plan and create capacity in their working memories to learn content for the long term.

Below is a brief, simply-stated template on study skills for fifth grade …

Walking The Walk: An Educator's Perspective From All Views, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

As an education professor, I recently decided it was time to walk the walk of my graduate and undergraduate students. I was ready to experience what happens when the educational neuroscience and the social and emotional disciplines meet head-on with real-life challenges and opportunities. So, while continuing with my courses at the University, I became a fifth grade co-teacher, joining an incredible group of educators from Washington Township, a large public school district in Indianapolis.

Brain-Based Learning Theory: An Online Course Design Model, Abreena Walker Tompkins

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The development of a theoretical brain-based online course design model with potential transferability across course management systems in higher education is the problem for this study. Qualitative inquiry was the emergent design and consisted of an extensive current, relevant literature review of educational literature in brain-based learning theory, online course design, and course management systems for the purpose of developing a theoretical brain-based online course design model for higher education. The model developed includes synthesized indicators from the analytical charting. The proposed model is presented in acronym form, which in and of itself aligns with brain-based learning theory. The acronym …

Enhancing Student Learning Through Brain-Based Learning Techniques: A Handbook For Educators, Cynthia Gail Mcfarland

All Graduate Projects

The significance of utilizing a brain-based approach to learning and teaching was researched. Current brain research indicates that often traditional educational methods are not conducive or are even detrimental to student learning. Several sources supported the brain-based learning, multiple intelligence, and learning styles theories. The research suggested that the brain-based learning approach has been beneficial not only to student learning but also to an increase in student motivation and self-esteem. A handbook for educators was created to compliment existing curriculum. This handbook features "brain friendly" strategies and activities that focus on rich and positive learning experiences that enable students to …