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Welcome to EAF435 Stages of Mind

Why Mind, Brain and Education?  Why Now?
Hello EAF Leaders!

I am using this digital format of a blog to provide additional forms of communication and content sharing.  Here I will provide you with links to talks and resources, as well as a bit of content that is not available in our books.  Much of what I share here, and in the class is my personal perspective, developed over many years of research and practice.  Class goes quickly and I do not expect you to recall everything we cover on a first exposure.  I think of much of what I present in the class as "priming" the brain.  When you prime something, you prepare it to run.  First exposures to these concepts and new content is a way to create the questions that will lead to self-directed learning.

I have a deep-seated belief that all learning is self-motivated!  From a neuroscience perspective this is related to a basic principle of how the nervous system works.  We may ask ourselves: "What does the brain care about?"  The answer is: "It cares about survival of the organism, or even more abstractly the survival of the self."  Learning is designed to support survival of the "self", including the social-self especially as we are social animals.

The course you are about to embark upon may challenge your thoughts about teaching and learning.  We are currently, and have been now for some time, in an era of standards, rubrics, and teacher selected content based curriculum. Today we are a part of a national curriculum that demands a lock-step approach.  This had led to pacing guides and scripted curriculum.  What does neuroscience have to say about this trend?  

During this class, I will not ask you to believe anything I say, or what you hear.  What I will ask you to do is to look at your own beliefs and start to understand what is important to you.  I will ask you to stretch your own experience into new, perhaps uncharted, territories.  

There is quite a bit of content in this course, and if you are unfamiliar with the brain, it can seem overwhelming.  This is another reason for this additional resource. I hope to use this to provide you with an overview of the neuroanatomy that is tailored to what I find most relevant for teachers and educators. 

For our first class I would like you to have read two articles.  "Why Mind, Brain, and Education? Why Now?"  by Kurt Fischer and colleagues, and "Education and the Brain: A Bridge Too Far" by John Bruer.  These are both seminal articles in the emerging field of Educational Neuroscience and Mind, Brain and Education.  I would also like you to watch a video by Todd Rose, who is a participant in this field at Harvard, and has an interesting, and not that uncommon, life narrative reflecting the inadequacy of our traditional educational models in meeting the needs of all students.

As we celebrate the beautiful, unique, individual ways of thinking and knowing in this course, I hope to encourage you to come to see your own unique gifts and passions, and to support you in taking those first steps towards forging ahead into the arenas where you feel meant to lead.


I look forward to meeting each of you.

Sincerely,

Abigail Larrison, EdD, PhD


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