How to train a student's brain

This piece is all about understanding the human brain better and helping students to deal with the learning process.

Survival mechanism

Although the mind cannot sense danger per se, it does interpret what it sees or hears as being dangerous. This is key to understanding how we all think in certain situations that we face during the learning process. ?The prefrontal cortex contains teams of brain cells which assist us in terms of freezing or running away. Genetically speaking, we have been wired up this way ever since we were cavemen/ cavewomen when clear and present danger was a lot more life threatening than what we have to face today, i.e. having to deal with wild animals. Extraordinarily, this model is just as relevant to how the student brain perceives inherent dangers, i.e. criticism of any kind. Only recently, a learner admitted that she ’thought it would be better’ in relation to how good her first writing assignment would be. Though, the writing itself was not bad, and there were grammatical, sentence structure and L1 interference errors that had mostly not been dealt with yet in the lessons. The first line of defence when you see that something you have done is wrong and that has been signalled to you is to feel threatened; this feels confrontational and perhaps unsettles some learners. The same can be said for the infamous red pen that teachers often use. One teacher was recommended to ‘go easy on the red pen’ as it is often dreaded by students. Subconsciously, the feeling that they are being attacked doesn’t go down well with some. For others, they may be able to see beyond this.

Train the brain

While our brains have evolved in certain ways and get used to things over time, they can adapt re the manner in which they do things, they are capable of overcoming hurdles such as those outlined in the previous paragraph. Awareness is vital in allowing the person to realise why they are thinking something irrationally and this is half the battle. Then, they only need to focus on the positives and practice doing so. In another example, in some cultures it is common to look at how many mistakes students have made in their tests, for example. This is a bad idea, as by doing this, they will always look at the negative and think about what they didn’t do right. When the shoe is on the other foot and they realise that they got 8 right rather than 2 wrong, they should see improvements over time. This kind of conditioning that took place during schooling may take some time to unravel, but it can be fixed. Just as with positive feedback. A coordinator at a university made it crystal clear to teachers that during peer feedback for presentations the students should share 2 things they liked about the presentation they had just watched and give one suggestion for improvement. In the same school system, left unchecked the students would start by giving negative feedback, i.e. I think this could have been better. Even when peer feedback is given in a positive way, the human brain once again is likely to focus on the criticism rather than the plus points as it’s a survival instinct to protect us from danger. However, some people can take constructive feedback without beating themselves up. It’s worth considering that helping students to be aware of what their brain does when they feel unsafe can have an impact on how they process and manage feedback from teachers or even peers. They should also know that there is no such think as perfection. Students are in the same boat as one another and making mistakes helps the learning process. If possible, they should try not to be so hard on themselves, and acknowledge that they are learning after all, and, with the right attitude, hard work and determination, they can improve no end.