4 Learning Principles from Neuroscience: If You Have and/or Work with Young Children, You Should Really Read This

 

Helm and Snider (2020) recently published a text titled, Growing Child Intellect: The Manifesto for Engaged Learning in the Early Years, which offers a strong argument for why the Project Approach to learning should be front and center in early childhood (PreK-2) classrooms. The Project Approach involves teachers organizing and integrating learning objectives and standards into intellectually stimulating, authentic, student-driven projects. Successful project products (e.g., a brick courtyard path created by preschool children) and their processes are shared throughout this engaging text.

Though I encourage anyone interested in learning more about The Project Approach in the early years to read this book, it is the authors’ brain-based justification for using such an approach that I highlight here. Specifically, Helm and Snider offer an amazingly accessible synthesis of how and why our understanding of learning has changed in recent years. Rooted firmly in contemporary neuroscience, they maintain that everyone invested in the intellectual development of young children should understand four, basic, brain-based, learning principles:

1.      Connected Learning: When a child experiences a new stimulus (e.g., touching tree bark) the brain immediately tries to make connections to other experiences. Picture a neuron reaching for another neuron that was produced from a similar experience—the neuron literally asks for help from friends who have done something similar before! The best-case scenario for remembering and understanding new information lies in that neuron’s ability to connect to a rich network of related neurons. The stronger the network, the more likely the child is to recall and use the information later. Building neural networks through rich and varied content experiences—experiences that provide children with multiple opportunities to engage with related information—is  key! Project-based learning often accomplishes this goal, in spades.

2.      Synaptic Junctions: Because of fMRI technology we can actually observe a neuron connecting to another neuron—amazing, right?! One neuron doesn’t actually touch the other one; it lines up with it and chemical neurotransmitters fill in the gap to facilitate communication. Some neurotransmitters do a MUCH better job at building connections than others. If we want kids to remember something, the neurotransmitters filling those gaps need to be the adaptive kinds. And guess what—you can influence whether or not they are by cultivating positive emotions like curiosity, excitement, and JOY 😊

3.      Brain Structures: Children tend to learn differently than adults. Adults like to make lists detailing what should be learned and the order in which it should be learned. Young children’s deep learning usually depends on the regularity with which they have related experiences that are important to THEM. Physical changes in the brain can occur when children’s experiences repeatedly use a specific area of the brain. Put differently, those crucial neural networks discussed in the first principle function best the more often they are used—children, parents, and teachers all shape children’s brains. The neural connections and pathways made in early childhood influence children’s later abilities to think.

4.      Pruning: The brain is not a computer—we’d all be best to lose that deceptive analogy now. Children’s brains cannot be programmed like a computer; they are living organs that require proper nutrition, sleep, and physical activity to function. Neural connections in the brain must be used to be sustained. Those connections that are not activated regularly are discarded (pruned). Helm and Snider compare pruning to a gardener cutting back a lilac bush to fit the dimensions of a specific space; the living plant must be properly cared for to thrive. Similarly, the living brain must get rid of dusty neural connections to reserve space for those needed most often in its current environment.

These four brain-based principles indicate that adults play a substantial role in priming children’s brains for present and future thinking and learning. What young children investigate and how they do it matters A LOT. Those of us that are familiar with the research need to speak up when we believe young children are being educated in ways less likely to build rich neural networks. All kids deserve a healthy cognitive start.