From Brain to Mind: Using Neuroscience to Guide Change in Education

Zull, James A. From Brain to Mind: Using Neuroscience to Guide Change in Education. Stylus Publishing LLC. 2011

Self-discovery of knowledge is both extra-ordinarily easy and very hard – at the same time in a world completely swamped with data and information coming at us from multiple media channels every second of the day. The Internet combined with the ubiquitous availability of smart phones, means that millions of students have instant access to information on any topic. 

Exploration, discovery and comprehension are all milestones along the way to self-discovery of knowledge. The dangers of living in a technology-driven, information-rich world, means it is so easy today for our students to find information. However, understanding its ‘worth’ to our questions is a whole other story. Asking the ‘right question’ is more important than ‘getting the answer right.’ Zull says, “the machines will get it right if they are asked the right question.” 

What is most relevant to me about “From Brain to Mind” is Zull’s particular emphasis on feelings and emotion – and most importantly an emphasis on the joy of discovery. As Zull puts it, “joy is an integral part of any learning experience. It is what keeps us going on our journey.” 

Enabling technologies have opened up the world of the senses – in the sense that in our urbanized world, images and sounds of all kinds, crowd our every waking moment. In thinking about ‘the cognitive senses – vision, hearing and touch, Zull says: “In many ways images are the vehicle of comprehension thought and action…In thinking about thinking, we find ourselves continuously returning to images.” Spatial maps, according to Zull, are what are being generated in the cortex – in response to what we are picking up through our cognitive senses.

I ask myself, where do the connections between neuroscience and these comments of Zull as well as about much needed changes in 21st Century education lead us, when we think of new approaches to teaching and learning in Holocaust studies? Zull says. “Knowledge of the past is essential for thought, development and growth. The ability to remember allows us to establish our identity.  He goes on to state: “ultimately, understanding and learning are highly personal experiences. Each of us builds on our own neuronal networks…” 

With enabling technologies opening up a completely new world of visual, tactile and audio convergence, Zull’s comments resonate with my research.  The ability of big data and correlational research to make links in previously disparate data, points to the possible new impacts of big data –driven research into new compilations and arrangements of Holocaust images and other Holocaust related artifacts.  Images have the power to drive intrinsic motivation, according to Zull. The use of Big Data in harnessing new lines of inquiry and  new ‘collidings’ of Holocaust related imagery, can have an effect on keeping Holocaust education both interesting and relevant to future generations.

Zull writes about the role of cognitive neuroscience in helping bring about the needed changes in education for students of today and the future to understand and learn ‘the process of learning itself.’…in order to lead to “the development of mature, independent, and thoughtful minds.”  Zull’s hope is to “identify how a brain becomes a mind through experience, and to create an educational agenda that will encourage and support that goal.” 

He writes how important it is for students to ‘take ownership of their own learning.’ Zull emphasizes experiential learning as a necessary component of education. School and real life are not integrated, then education has no meaning. Zull sees that as forming a barrier to mental development that hampers both the depth ability of students to accomplish complex thinking. 

Page 19-22 – Discussion of memory

Zull asks: “What does the technological revolution really mean for the future of education?

We are no longer just being saved from physical labor – now we are being ‘saved’ from mental labor’!

P. 18 “In many ways images are the vehicle of comprehension thought and action…In thinking about thinking, we find ourselves continuously returning to images.”

p.131 “Images can be an important tool for developing intrinsic motivation.” “They motivate and provoke the mind to exploration, and new possibilities. The historical and cultural contexts of symbols convey different awareness and associations highly dependent on the historical and cultural contexts of each individual’s age and background.  

P.135. “Self-image is of great importance in education.”

p.261. Discovery: Keeping Track of the Thread enabling technologies can assist in keeping track of and finding ‘new knowledge threads’…

“Discovery is an essential point along the thread. It is necessary if random action is to lead to metacognition. In fact, discovery is the ultimate goal. We want to experience the conversion of unconscious sensory experience into conscious awareness of a meaning, concept, or relationship.”

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Basic Books, 2016

• “The History of Teaching Machines.” The Hack Education Project. Accessed December 11, 2017, http://teachingmachines/timeline.html

Diane Ravitch is a Research Professor and historian of education. She served as Under Secretary of State for Lamar Alexander in the Bush years of 1980-83. As her book title indicates, she sees the survival of public schools as never having been really in question – until today.

From the 1960s Ravitch had been preoccupied with the conflict between promise and reality of public school reforms. In the mid 1970’s she wrote a defense of American Public Schools, to refute a group of revisionist university professors that American public schools were devised by elites to oppress the poor. Like Jefferson and Dewey before her, Ravitch believed that in a democratic society:

public schools are necessary and valuable in that “it gives its citizens the opportunity to attain literacy and social mobility…Opportunity leaves much to individuals; it is not a guarantee of certain success. The schools cannot solve all or social problems, nor are they perfect.  

She goes on to say: 

When tests and what they measure, are the ‘primary means of deciding the fate of students, teachers, principals and schools’…For, what is tested may ultimately be less important than what is untested, such as a student’s ability to seek alternative explanations, to raise questions, to pursue knowledge on his own, and to think differently. If we do not treasure out individualists we will lose the spirit of innovation an, inquiry imagination and dissent that has contribute powerfully to the success of our society in many different fields of endeavor. 

In this 2016 book, Diane Ravitch, takes us on a ‘tour de force’ through the turbulent history of public education in America. If the march of technology into every aspect of teaching and learning in schools is to have the enabling effect that the demands of 21st Century learning are putting upon us, then Ravitch points the way forward to allowing educators and teacher professionals – not business professionals - to develop a new kind of teaching, focused on ‘learning how to learn.’ 

As the changes in American Educational policy continue to have major impact on the running of American public schools, I believe that the shift from causality to correlation, brought about by the advent of big data, allows for the kinds of interventions necessary to bring about more basic process-centered education.

Once one of the most enthusiastic and outspoken supporters of the benefits of school reform based on testing, accountability, choice and markets, Ravitch explains how and why she has completely changed her views as she saw how all these ideas ‘played out in reality.’ Accumulated evidence clearly showed that the promised dividends of these reforms (less bureaucracy, empowering of poor parents, shining the light through testing on poor performing schools, enabling poor children to escape failing schools through enabling parental choice, closing the achievement gap between rich and poor, black and white, etc. – did NOT playout.

By 2009 Ravitch fully realized the dangers to public schools of the choice and accountability movement. In this book she writes (p.13). 

The more uneasy I grew with the agenda of choice and accountability the more I realized that I am top “conservative” to embrace an agenda whose end result is entirely speculative and uncertain. The effort to upend American public education and replace it with something market-based began to feel too radical for me. I concluded that I could that I could not countenance any reforms that might have the effect of- intended or unintended of undermining public education. 

She also began to fully comprehend the dangers of what she refers to as “venture philanthropy.” 

She notes that the turn of the Millennium saw a huge ‘change of the Guard’ in the foundation world. Two new foundations: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation – both founded by mega billionaires, by 2002 were making 25% of funds – more than they were making the 50 top funders of the previous year... (Joined a bit later by the Eli Broad Foundation. In 1998 the top four funders used to be Annenberg, Lilly, Packard and the Kellogg Foundations: all of whom accepted proposals submitted to them and left it to recipients to do as they thought best. The three venture philanthropists operated completely differently – and as a result, have and continue to exert profound influence over American education today. They choose to make targeted investments in education reform, and they expect returns on their investment. So, these foundations are setting the policy agendas of school districts, states and even the Department of education – under Betsy DeVos today. Yet as Ravitch notes:

These foundations, no matter how worthy and high-minded, are after all, not public agencies. They are not subject to public oversight or review, as a public agency would be…these venture philanthropists themselves “are accountable to no one. If their plans fail, no sanctions are levied against them. They are bastions of unaccountable power.” 

A look at Diane Ravitch’s Background.

In 1983 Ravitch wrote a ground-breaking work called: “The Troubled Crusade: American Education 1945-1980.  What lead her to a from then-on lifelong interest in the quality of the curriculum, came from her deep analysis of all the major controversies of those days – including, but not limited to: McCarthyism, progressive education, the civil rights movement, bilingual education, the women’s’ movement. In 1985 she helped write a new curriculum for the State of California. In 1991 Ravitch was invited by the Secretary of Education (under the Bush Administration’s, Secretary of Education, Lamar Alexander), to become Assistant Secretary in charge of Educational Research and Improvement. During the next decade, Ravitch became a proponent of School Choice charters, merit pay and accountability. The big change here was that she believed in trying to make schools follow the principles of the business world. – where teachers and schools would be judged by their performance. That this new ‘alliance with corporate business principles would help American education ‘transition from the industrial to the post-industrial age. Like many people at that time, Ravitch was “attracted to the idea that the market would unleash innovation and bring greater efficiencies to education” (p.10) .She began to …think like a policy-maker and see ‘like a state’…

Towards the end of this book, Ravitch declares what are the fundamentals of good education and the conditions necessary for American schools to improve…

The fundamentals of good education are to be found in the classroom, the home, the community and the culture, but reformers in our time continue to look for shortcuts and quick answers. Untethered to any genuine philosophy of education or current reforms will disappoint us, as others have in the past… It is time to reconsider not only the specifics of current reforms, but also our very definition of reform…Our schools will not improve if we continually reorganize their structure and management without regard for their essential purpose. Our educational problems are a function of our lack of educational vision, not a management problem that requires the enlistment of an army of business consultants…Our schools will not improve if elected officials intrude into pedagogical territory and make decisions that properly should be made by professional teachers and educators. Congress and state legislators should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations. 

Coming ‘full circle” Ravitch declares that American schools cannot improve if charter schools are allowed to continue siphoning off from the regular public schools, the most motivated students and their families in the poorest communities. She sees that Charter schools are now competing with public schools instead of being a collaborative partner – and that the bottom line is:

There is no silver bullet to miraculously improve education.

Learning How to Learn

 Novak, Joseph D. and Bob Gowin. Learning How to Learn. Cambridge University Press, 1984.

• Novak, Joseph D. “Meaningful learning is the Foundation for Creativity.” Revista Curriculum Marzo, vol 26, 2013, P. 27-33.

The foundation of this work is Nova’s theory of education, “human constructivism”, summed up as:

Meaningful learning underlies the constructive integration of thinking, feeling and acting leading to empowerment for commitment and responsibility The concern with “educating people and with helping people learn to educate themselves. 

Because Novak saw creative thinking as an extension of meaningful learning, he focused on the use of concept maps as a tool to facilitate meaningful learning. This approach speaks strongly to my research – particularly in the role of concepts rather than key words as an enabler in finding new relationships in information based on conceptual closeness enabled via iterative knowledge discovery. 

The two principal educational tools discussed here are Concept Mapping, (to help students and educators see the meanings of learning materials) and Knowledge Vee Diagram, (a heuristic device for helping people to understand the structure of knowledge and process of knowledge construction). The author describes some strategies that help students and teachers move toward what the authors call shared meanings and feelings.

It is encouraging to think about Novak’s incorporation of meaningful learning with new approaches to academic research can be used with enabling technologies. In particular, His approach of concept mapping has particular attraction when presented to new audiences in an electronic, visually creative way (See Nix Nix, Rebekah K. Virtual Field Trips. Using Technology to Create an Integrated Science Learning Environment.). 

Page 4. They distinguish that the “construction of knowledge is not discovered like gold or oil, but rather is constructed like cars or pyramids.” They go on to explain how concepts play a role in knowledge making. In speaking of Culture - they state it is the vehicle through which children acquire concepts that have been constructed over centuries.

Page 5. The authors differentiate between learning and knowing. “Learning is personal and idiosyncratic, knowing is public and shared.” they go on to say that they are “interested in thinking, feeling. And acting – all three are present in any educative experience and change the meaning of experience.”

Page.9. In thinking about educating about meta-knowledge and Meta learning. “Learning about the nature and structure of knowledge helps students to understand how they learn. And knowledge about learning helps to show them how humans construct new knowledge.”

Think before it’s Too Late!

De Bono, Edward. Think before it’s Too Late! Vermillion, Ebury Company, 2009.

This book brings together all of de Bono’s ‘thinking methods’ into one work. De Bono focused his work on coming up with solutions to help human thinking evolve to emphasize better perceptual thinking rather than concentrate on logical thinking. To him this was the way to have an effect on people’s emotions and thus affect behavior. Logical thinking on its own, de Bono says emphatically, is not enough, (P. 137-156) 

Educators in the 21st Century recognize the importance of teaching their students ‘21st Century skills – which include ‘higher order’ thinking skills needed for knowledge work. Inquiry – based learning and learning how to think more effectively and creatively are certainly needed to help students think and learn more effectively.

In relation to my research, putting a focus on basic thinking skills is extremely important if educators are to enable all students to become successful contributors to society in a big data –driven world. Learning how to ask better questions and to appreciate how vital it is to pay attention to provenance and the potential for bias, is key no matter what content area is under study.  In the realm of the Holocaust, the dangers of bias and un-researched provenance of Holocaust related artifacts are amplified in a world where modern antisemitism is so clearly on the rise. Examining how enabling technologies, coupled with more effective inquiry-based research has the potential to mitigate ‘untruth’ is of particular research interest to me. De Bono’s body of work focuses on the teaching of thinking as a skill – to people of all ages and abilities. This focus on the development of thinking skills can support a shift to inquiry-based learning and thinking for problem solving.

The importance of thinking skills is most often expressed in American public-school mantra as the need for students to gain ‘critical thinking and problem solving’ skills. In the context of Holocaust artifacts, helping students ask the ‘right question’ about the credibility of an artifact, (digital or otherwise), and use their own vernacular and form their own stories and connections across distributed information channels is a challenge worth investigating.

The kinds of thinking tools Edward de Bono uses can motivate students to think much more broadly and reach their own conclusions that are relevant to their own time and place. (Having taught de Bono’s thinking skills myself in both a factory setting and a school setting, I can attest to finding these thinking tools can make a difference.)

De Bono from the beginning of his career as an ‘evangelist’ and practical provider of specific ways to teach thinking as a skill, has always expressed the need for students to practice more than just the critical thinking skill – but also equally important, creative and constructive thinking skills as well. In the 21st Century, in our world of ‘Big Data’ and the importance of algorithms, ‘computational thinking’ becomes another of those ‘must teach’ thinking skills. 

We need thinking to look at the information in different ways. We need thinking to extract value from the information. We need thinking to put the information together in order to design the way forward… (p.202) The role of universities needs to shift dramatically from being a provider of information to being a developer of skills. These would include, among others, information access skills and thinking skills. (Think before It’s Too Late, p.-203)

Edward de Bono, a medical doctor by profession, became fascinated with the idea that thinking skills can be taught. He stopped being a doctor and started writing. His first work on the subject of thinking was “The Use of Lateral Thinking” published in 1967. De Bono is credited with coining the term ‘lateral thinking.’ He has taught his thinking methods all over the world, to government agencies, Fortune 100 companies, native tribes in far-off geo-locations and schools for children of all ages. His books are translated into 34 languages.

In 1969 de Bono came out with “Mechanism of the Mind” one of his seminal works, focused on how the brain forms patterns. It describes the mind as a self-organizing system, and is the work on which many of the thinking modes he developed, are expounded on namely: Natural Thinking, Logical Thinking, Mathematical Thinking Perceptual thinking, and Lateral Thinking. In 1972, de Bono formed CoRT (the Cognitive Research Trust) under which he developed his ‘thinking’ ideas to teach thinking in schools. The CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) Thinking Program was the upshot of that effort. (See the details of that program as cited below under “The CoRT Thinking Program.” 

In 1985, de Bono published a second seminal work, “Six Thinking Hats.” – This work out of over 130 books written by de Bono, is the most widely read today. This work is a system designed by de Bono to challenge people to use their brains to think in a number of distinct ways. Colored hats are used as metaphors for six different ‘thinking’ directions:

1. Managing Blue – what is the subject? what are we thinking about? what is the goal? Can look at the big picture.
2. Information White – considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
3. Emotions Red – intuitive or instinctive gut reactions or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification).
4. Discernment Black – logic applied to identifying reasons to be cautious and conservative. Practical, realistic.
5. Optimistic response Yellow – logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony. Sees the brighter, sunny side of situations.
6. Creativity Green – (seeing something differently) - statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes. Thinking creatively, outside the box.

If a framework is provided for ‘directing attention’, then a person’s attention scan ‘will be far more comprehensive.’ “Attention is a key element in improving perception.” (p. 143)

In this work, De Bono uses the term “my thinking” to differentiate his new thinking methods from traditional thinking – He labels his methods as:

• Lateral thinking
• Exploration methods of Six Hats and parallel thinking (instead of argument)
• Perceptual thinking of the CoRT Thinking Program (for schools)
• Programs for simplicity and value scanning
• Creativity (as distinguished between artistic creativity and idea creativity – which helps our thinking)

In this work, de Bono makes the statement:

All valuable creative ideas will be logical in hindsight…For the first time in history we have a logical basis for creativity. Creativity is no longer a mysterious gift or special talent. We can now see creativity as the behavior of a self-organizing information system that makes asymmetric patterns (the brain). P.35

De Bono goes on to address the importance of concepts. He writes: (Pages 50-57.)

Concepts are a very important part of thinking in general and an even more important part of creative thinking. He talks of different kinds of concepts: ‘operational or functional concepts…value concepts…purpose concepts…descriptive concepts…and states that ‘concepts breed ideas.’ (Page 51)

De Bono sets out his idea of a “Concept Fan” as described in this work on pages 53-57. The MOHO iterative discovery software is an example of how an enabling technology has been able to take that idea and put it into software that is driven by human thinking and human interaction with the software – not machine – thinking.

In speaking about computers, (P.78-81) de Bono comments:

The excellence of our computers allows corporations to feed all the necessary data into a computer. The computer analyzes the data, and this analysis forms the basis for all decisions and strategy. This is very dangerous. Because unless you make the effort to look at the data in different ways, you stagnate in the old concepts. P.79-80

Chapter specifics

Page 21-44 (Ch2) Examines Creativity - practical creativity.

Page 45-68 (Ch3) Examines the formal tools of lateral thinking

Page 92-97 (Ch4) Examines Parallel Thinking… separating out the different modes of thinking (as in “Six Thinking hats”…)

Page 77-98 (Ch 5) Knowledge and Information.  Here de Bono discusses the dangers of computer analysis…because “unless you make an effort to look at the data in different ways, you stagnate in the old concepts.”  On page 204, he comments on whether computers will ever learn to think… he thinks, “we may have to move away from ‘digital ‘programming to ‘field effect’ programming, which more closely resembles the behavior of the human brain.”

On p. 90 de Bono sets out the use of ‘argument - not being very useful for exploring a subject…P. 93-97 explanation of the 6 Thinking Hats. P. 99 sets out de Bono’s interest in lateral thinking…

Page 99-104 (Ch5) Treats Language. P. 103 “language freezes perceptions in to concepts and words”

Page 137-155 (Ch10) Treats Perception.

Page 146 -151 (Ch10) Explanation of the “CoRT Thinking Program”.

Page 239-247 (Ch19) Values and Truth… “Just as discovery is to truth, so design is to value” (p.240). de Bono goes on to discuss “Six Value Medals”

Page 245-250 (Ch20) The Right to Think. de Bono states that thinking is a skill, like mathematics, and is not political.”

The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876 – 1957

Cremin, Lawrence A. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876 – 1957. Vintage Books, 1961.

• David F. Progressivism, Schools and Schools of Education: An American Romance. Paedagogica Historica, Vol. 41, Nos. 1&2, February 2005, pp. 275–288
• ERIC. “Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education”, Bulletin, No. 35, 1918, Bureau of Education, 1918. Accessed January 21, 2018, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED541063.pdf

This work is an account of ‘progressivism’ in American education between 1876 and 1957. Yet by the end of this work, Cremin points forward to the ‘swinging pendulum of educational change based on societal change.’ 

In describing where the progressive impulse in education came from, Cremin starts with the year 1892 and the impact of a series of ‘call to action’ articles about the state of public education at the time, written by a pediatrics doctor in “The Forum”, a New York monthly . As Cremin put it:

The way was simple and clear…lead by an aroused public, the school system would have to be “absolutely divorced from politics in every sense of the world”. Direct, thorough and scientific supervision would have to be introduced; and teachers would have to endeavor constantly to improve their professional and intellectual competence. “The general educational spirit of the country is progressive,” Rice concluded; it remained only for the public in local communities throughout the nation to do the job.  (p.6)

Due to the inextricable link in the public’s mind between education and national progress, Cremin tells us that Rice’s findings were a severe wake-up call to the likes of Horace Mann in Massachusetts, a great pre-war architect of the vision of universal schooling. We learn that Mann proceeded to put forth the notion that what was needed was not a ‘school for the common people’, but a school common to all people. 

Cremin goes on to express that it was Mann’s aggressive leadership that taught the nation ‘the ideals of universal education.’

Cremin sees many reasons for the failure of the Progressive movement (P.347-353). Most of all he writes that: 

Postwar America was a very different nation from the one that had given birth to progressive education…. The search for Gemeinschaft of the nineties had become the quest for pluralism of the fifties, while the rampant individualism that Dewey so earnestly feared was now widely applauded as non-conformity. (p.351)

Even though he reminds us that the Progressive Education Association died, by the end of the book (1957), Cremin talks of progressive education needing drastic reappraisal. He muses about the dawning of the information age and its impact on schools as places ‘traditionally responsible for organizing knowledge and its transmission’. Most fundamental of all, he notes the continued advance of mass media and the rapid extension of industry –sponsored education programs. 

Finally, Cremin sees the ‘authentic progressive vision’ as remaining:

strangely pertinent to the problems of mid –century America… Perhaps it only awaited the reformulation and resuscitation that would ultimately derive from a larger resurgence of reform in American life and thought.(p.353)