Education Students in the Classroom Must Be

¶ … Education

Students in the classroom must be properly motivated to achieve success in their studies and one proven way to do this is to link the subject being taught with a previous experience the student has had. In this way, the learning experience becomes more meaningful to the student and can be related to already familiar and concrete ideas. This process can work both ways as well. A student can be offered an experience that directly relates to information that has already been supplied, thereby reinforcing the lesson. This can also be called "discovery learning," wherein the student draws upon prior knowledge and past experiences to discover new information or skills (Burke, Lawrence, El-Sayed, & Apple, 2009, p.36).

There are many different principles that make this a very effective aspect of the educational system. First, the information presented must be meaningful to the student. This is important because the need for meaning is basic to the human brain, which registers the mundane automatically while concurrently seeking novel stimuli (Caine & Caine, 1990, p.67). Education must provide a similar environment in which the brain can function: providing a safe, nurturing environment while also offering challenges (Caine & Caine, 1990, p.67). Each student, however, brings to the classroom with him his own unique perspective and knowledge background. In this respect, each brain has its own unique makeup, even the aspects that we share with all others like basic emotions (Caine & Caine, 1990, p.69). Students should be presented with sufficient variety in learning processes for each one to find something to which they can relate.

The brain does not merely focus on one single thing at a time to the exclusion of all others. Rather, it processes many different levels and functions at the same time, from simple health processes to more intensive learning. Because of this, educators must utilize a varied array of teaching methods to stimulate all levels of brain processing activities (Caine & Caine, 1990, p.66). Doing so will enable new neuron connections to develop and help increase the brain's capacity for learning (Caine & Caine, 1990, p.66). Both past experiences and current educational knowledge gleaned are capable of implementing new wiring paths in the brain. Because of this each student learns at a slightly different pace and must be educated accordingly.

The information being taught to students must be relevant to their previous knowledge and experience. These experiences must be embedded with specific items that are bring taught, enabling the brain to more effectively organize and relate the events (Caine & Caine, 1990, p.69). Another way of perceiving this information is as the reactivation of prior knowledge. The schema theory suggests that when we receive information we only obtain a general impression of it and then we fill in the details based on previous experiences. For instance, should a person elaborate that he went to a restaurant and enjoyed a fine meal, it is understood that he also paid for the meal (Anson, Bommarito, & Deuser, 2010, p.197). This ability allows us to round out our educational experiences and is essential to the understanding of brain-based learning.