Dewey Knew: How Cognitive Science Corroborates John Dewey's Observations About Learning Especially Those Middle Years

 From Dewey at the turn of the century to modern neuroscience, understanding how the brain learns seems to me as the most fundamental information every teacher should know.  What Dewey hypothesized based on observations, modern neuroscience has confirmed. How interesting that the two most important theorists on learning are 100 years apart, and to me, equally relevant.   

Dewey

Based on observations in his lab school, Dewey explained that a learner must be an active participant in the learning process and people (not just children) need experiences to learn.  This contrasts ideas both before and after his work where it was believed that information could be more passively transmitted into the learner without the learner’s active involvement.

According to Dewey, “Desirable learning experiences had to meet certain stringent criteria.  They had to be democratic and humane, they had to be growth enhancing, they had to arouse curiosity and strengthen initiative, and they had to enable the individual to create meaning.”

Understanding what learning is must be fundamental to curriculum work.  To foster and encourage students to be active participants, to create meaningful learning experiences, this takes time.  It would be easier and faster to simply “pour” the information into the learners’ brains, but since that is not an option, experiences must be created and presented with enough time for students to construct new knowledge.  Therefore, items to be taught must be carefully considered since there is limited amount of time.

Cognitive Science

Today, with the help of neuroscience, educators can access neuroscience to understand how the brain learns.  Prior to Patricia Wolf’s book, Brain Matters, David Souza brought us a book called, “How the Brain Learns”: one of my teaching bibles.  By unlocking the secrets of cognitive science, it allows teachers to be strategic in creating the activities and experiences from which children can learn.  Eric Jensen is another educator and science junkie who has helped translate the current findings into effective instructional strategies. 

“The best educators will be able to integrate the current findings in neuroscience, education, and psychology to inform their instruction.” 

The middle and high school learner’s brains:

Brain development is still in process until approximately age 25.  Understanding the unique aspects of the adolescent brain is critical for educators who work with adolescents and teenagers.  As a result, curriculum and instructional strategies must take into consideration the distinctions as units of study are planned. 

It is well-noted that middle school standardized test scores seem flat as there appears to be a dip in learning.  For decades, it was believed that the brain was dormant during the tumultuous pre-teen and teen-age years.  What we have discovered is this simply is not true.  In fact, the brain is going through such a transformation, so much is actively occurring, it’s almost an overwhelming phenomenon.  Any parent of a middle school child will attest to learning, how the conversations at home have changed, how their child applies the new knowledge from their science class for example, the questions they ask, and of course, the debates they like to engage in.

This means that the adolescents in our classrooms may not have the brain maturity we assume they do.  Between immature pre-frontal cortex (part of brain responsible for planning), the synaptic pruning, the addition of hormones and the impact on emotionality and sleep, as well as other brain changes, it’s critical for curriculum developers to understand how these factors impact the learning process of adolescents.