Brain Research Into Classroom Practice
David A. Sousa

Educators are well aware that neuroscientists are making some fascinating discoveries about how the human brain works. Brain imaging devices can now give researchers a look inside the brain and determine which areas are involved as it carries out certain tasks. Some of these discoveries are valuable for diagnosing medical problems, while others have implications for what educators do in schools and classrooms.

In this article, I will outline the topics I hope to cover at the LDA of Michigan Conference on October 22, 2007. My purpose here is to reveal just enough to persuade you come to the conference to get more of this intriguing information.

What Teachers Face Today

Teachers and students get up every school-day morning hoping to succeed. That hope is not always realized because many factors exist that affect the degree of success or failure in a teaching and learning situation. Some of these factors are well beyond the control of the teacher and the school staff. What teachers do control, of course, are the decisions they make about what to teach and about how to present the lesson so that student learning is most likely to occur. In making these decisions, teachers draw on their knowledge base and experience to design activities, ask questions, and respond to the efforts of their students.

Educators are finding themselves searching for new strategies and techniques to meet the needs of an ethnically, culturally, and socially diverse student population. Some tried-and-true strategies do not seem to be as successful as they were in the past, and more students seem to be having difficulty acquiring just the basic skills of reading, writing, and computation. The number of public school students being diagnosed with specific learning disabilities is growing.

This situation is generating frustration in different parts of the educational community. As a result, educators are searching for new approaches, parents are seeking alternative schooling formats (charter schools and vouchers), and state legislators are demanding higher standards and testing. Added to this mix are the demands and sanctions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act’s focus on responsiveness to intervention. All these activities are in full swing, but it remains to be seen whether these efforts will result in more effective services to students with special needs.

Meanwhile, more students diagnosed with learning disabilities are being included in regular classrooms and teachers continue to search for new ways to help these struggling students achieve. As more students with learning difficulties enter regular classes, general education teachers are finding that they need help adjusting to the added responsibility of meeting the varied needs of these students. Consequently, special education teachers will need to collaborate more than ever with their general education colleagues on ways to differentiate instruction in the inclusive classroom.

Can Brain Research Help Students With Special Needs?

For the purposes of my presentation, the term “special needs” refers to students who are:
• Diagnosed and classified as having specific learning problems, including speech, reading, writing, mathematics, and emotional and behavioral disorders
• Enrolled in supplemental instruction programs for basic skills, such as those receiving federal funding until Title 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
• Not classified for special education nor assigned to Title I programs, but still struggling with problems affecting their learning

Teachers may face significant challenges when meeting the needs of children who have learning problems. Trying to figure out what is happening in the brains of these children can be frustrating and exhausting. Until recently, science could tell us little about the causes of learning disorders and even less about ways to address them successfully.

The nature of the difficulties facing students with learning problems vary from maintaining focus, acquiring language, learning to read and write, and solving mathematical problems, to remembering important information. Thanks to the development of imaging and other technologies, neuroscientists can now look inside the live brain and gain new knowledge about its structure and functions. Some of this research is already revealing clues to help guide the decisions and practices of educators working with students who have special needs.

Because of the efforts of scientists over the years to cure brain disorders, we know more about troubled brains than we do about healthy ones. Early ventures into the brain involved extensive risks which were justified by the potential for curing or improving the patient’s condition. But now, essentially risk-free imaging technologies (such as functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI) are giving us greater knowledge about how the normal brain works. In just one project, scientists compiled a database of brain scans of about 500 children without apparent health problems aged 7 days to 18 years. This information will help researchers study different stages of brain growth and expand our understanding of what is normal brain development.

Students with learning problems comprise such a heterogeneous group that no one strategy, technique, or intervention can address all their needs. Today, more than ever, neuroscientists, psychologists, computer experts, and educators are working together in a common crusade to improve our understanding of the learning process. Comparing the functions of brains without deficits to the functions of brains with deficits is revealing some remarkable new insights about learning and behavioral disorders. Some of the findings are challenging long-held beliefs about the cause, progress, and treatment of specific learning disorders. Educators in both general and special education should be aware of this research so that they can decide what implications the findings have for their practice.

What I Plan to Discuss at the Conference

My plan is to discuss research information about common learning disabilities so that teachers and administrators can consider alternative instructional approaches. Time permitting, the presentation will help answer such questions as:

• How different are the brains of today’s students?
• What kinds of strategies are particularly effective for students with learning disabilities?
• What progress is research making in discovering the causes of different learning disorders?
• Will brain research help us make more accurate diagnoses of learning problems?
• Can schools inadvertently promote ADHD-like behavior in students?
• How does the brain learn to read?
• Can young brains with developmental reading problems be “rewired” to improve reading?
• How can we address the emotional needs of students in the classroom?

Obviously, with such limited time, I will not be able to address all the types of barriers that can affect learning. Rather, as you can see from these questions, I will focus on the more common difficulties that any teacher is likely to encounter in the general or special education classroom.

As we gain a greater understanding of the workings of the human brain, we may discover that some students currently designated as “learning disabled” may be merely “schooling disabled.” Sometimes, these students are struggling to learn in an environment that is designed inadvertently to frustrate their efforts. Just changing our instructional approach may be enough to move these students to the ranks of successful learners. My hope is that my presentation in October will encourage all school professionals to learn more about how the brain learns so that they can work together for the benefit of all students.
 
Dr. David A. Sousa is an international educational consultant and author of How the Brain Learns, Second Edition (published by Corwin Press). He has conducted workshops in hundreds of school districts on brain research, brain based learning, instructional skills, supervision, and science education at the elementary secondary, and university levels. He has made presentations at national conventions of educational organizations and has served as a consultant to regional and local school districts across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

Dr. Sousa has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Massachusetts State College at Bridgewater, a Master of Arts in Teaching degree in science from Harvard University, and a doctorate from Rutgers University. His teaching experience covers all levels. He has taught junior and senior high school science, served as a K-12 director of science, and as Supervisor of Instruction for the West Orange, NJ, schools. He then became superintendent of the New Providence, NJ, public schools. He has been an adjunct professor of education at Seton Hall University and a visiting lecturer at Rutgers University.

Dr. Sousa has edited science books and published dozens of articles in leading journals on staff development, science education, and educational research. His popular book for educators - How the Brain Learns, is now in its second edition. This updated and expanded edition explains the latest research on learning and translates it into practical and effective classroom strategies.

Dr. Sousa was president of the National Staff Development Council in 1992. He is listed in Who's Who in the East and Who's Who in American Education and has received awards from professional associations and school districts for his commitment to research, staff development and science education. In 1996 and 1998, Dr. Sousa was awarded the prestigious Expert-in-Residence grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to present his ideas to educators in the Battle Creek, Michigan, area schools. In May 1997, he was invited on a 10-day trip to the Ukraine as part of an international team that presented educational research, and he worked with master teachers from some of the former Soviet republics.