Brain-based Learning

The contemporary observation that students further learn from what they already know is one that can be traced back to the alleged expressed insight of Socrates: "Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel." Plato's gifting of the Socratic paradox is another version of this complex entanglement between knowledge, identity, and the substance of belief - "all that I know is that I know nothing."

Jo Boaler (2014) provides the educational community with a post-modernist currency on this seemingly ageless adage with the expression that educators ought to promote a "growth mindset," that is, knowledge is a social construction that proceeds from trial and error practices, making mistakes, and experimentation, thus inciting the need for problem-solving, reasoning and proof, and similar other meta-cognitive strategies. Boaler further outlines that these higher-order thinking processes only emerge after deliberation in the art of persistence, stamina, and grit. Learning proceeds through experience but it also excites a mental framework that reflects a fundamental idiosyncrasy of the human mind: expansion does not mean relinquishment. There are limits to what can be known, as Socrates and his protege, Plato, would aptly remind us.

But what exactly are these presumed limits to knowledge? Many educational researchers and theorists have longed to make such insight palatable. Bruno (2015) crystallizes the findings of current cognitive science research into a thematic analysis for purposes of pedagogical transference for classroom educators. Essentially, students need to feel their persona is acknowledged and taken into account; they need to draw upon their goals and interests for learning; and be perceived as capable, critical problem-solvers. Knowledge is built on these fundamental principles of classroom management. The benefits of cultivating a growth mindset takes us to consider the need for effective classroom management: building inclusion, celebrating diversity, and exercising multiple languages (e.g., language of problem-solving; negotiation; dialogue; presentations; journal writing; music; mathematics; health; and so on). The Ontario College of Teachers' Ethical Standards (2018) as articulated through the four cardinal virtues - Trust, Care, Respect, and Integrity - are paramount in this context. The challenges to giving service to these principles for the benefit of Brain-Based Learning include the need for individualized instruction for each student, complex assessment practice across the school year, and ongoing critical and timely feedback. This means that as an educator of mathematics learning, I am deeply invested in the practice of what constitutes good teaching, which leads me to consider, reflectively, how I may improve students' experience of their learning. This consideration is one that relates to both a benefit and a challenge of brain-based learning: How do I seek out ways to further elicit deep, rich, and timely data of student learning? Addressing this question then informs my teaching practice, as it is a reciprocal relationship embedded in Trust, Care, Respect, and Integrity.