Glenda Mac Naughton

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Brain/mind learning a critical look at the
neurosciences

• Glenda Mac Naughton
• Associate Professor and Director Centre for
  Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood, Faculty
  of Education, the University of Melbourne

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My early learning storyMiss George the
stinging blush
A is for apple
YOUR EARLY LEARNING STORY Share an early memory
that you have of learning something stinging,
blushing or equally emotion-packed. Why has it
stayed with you? Make some notes
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Why did you come to a session on critical a look
at the brain?
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What are 5 things you know about the brain
learning?
What are 3 questions or niggles you have about
the brain learning?
Listen for
Listen for
What is similar/different between your niggles
and mine?
What is similar/different between what you know
and what I know?
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What if Miss George knew

• Brain development is helped when children are
  encouraged to be active, to question and to build
  their own meanings
• Young childrens brains process information best
  in wholes
• Positive, nurturing environments are important
  for healthy brain development
• Stressful environments can reduce brain cells and
  neural connections
• (Catherwood 1999 Puckett, Marshall Davis,
  1999 Dockett, 2000)

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Linear causality - this causes that
Poor brain growth

• Tree-like logic
• Early stress can have a negative impact on brain
  development
• (The World Bank Group, 2002, p. 1)

Early stress
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Your own tree

• Draw a tree with a single main branch - roots and
  all - to show what causes it to grow
• AS YOU HEAR A CASUAL STATEMENT - -
• ADD A NEW BRANCH

A B C
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A B C
CI95Mt(?0.5 df n-1) SD/vn
.352.447 .108/v7 .35.10

• Degrees of confidence - beyond a reasonable doubt

The allure of beyond a reasonable doubt
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Linear causality - this causes that
Poor brain growth

• Tree-like logic
• What do you think directly caused you to learn
  and to remember your early learning story?
• Are there any A B Cs?
• What degree of confidence do you have that you
  can explain the causes of your learning?

Early stress
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Looking at some brain research
real

• What is the title of the article?
• What can we say collectively about the titles?
• Read the
• - try to put it into your own words.
• Read the
• - what hard facts have they produced?

Abstract
Conclusion
Do they offer any insights into the learning
stories of you, me, Rani or the King?
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Who first said this?

• Comenuis (1600s - European philosopher)
• Jenson (early 2000s - USA educator)
• Bailey (early 2000s - USA early childhood
  researcher)
• Rousseau (mid 1700s - European philosopher)
• Hubel Weisel (1970s - neuroscientists)
• Pestolozzi (late 1700s - Italian educator
  scholar)
• Froebel (early 1800s - German educator and
  philosopher)
• McMillan (late 1800s - British educator and
  health worker)
• Bower (late 1900s - USA neuroscientist)

• The first years are critical to later development
• Children learn through their five senses
• Positive and trusting relationships with teachers
  matter to childrens learning
• Play is important to childrens learning
• Emotional well being, parent involvement and a
  healthy body are each important to young
  childrens learning

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What about

• Comenuis (1592 - 1670) - the first years are
  critical to later development
• Rouseau - children learn through their five
  senses (1712 - 1788)
• Pestolozzi (1746 - 1827) - positive and trusting
  relationships with teachers matter to childrens
  learning
• Froebel (1782 - 1852)- play is important to
  childrens learning
• McMillan (1860 - 1931) - emotional well being is
  important to young childrens learning as is
  parent involvement and a healthy body
• And so on..

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Other logic.
Rhizomatic logic

• Linear causality - tree-logic
• cause and effect
• hard facts
• certainty
• universality
• knowable

change
heterogeneity
complexity
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Another logic - rhizomatics?

• The rhizomes lateral structure a collection
  of mutually-dependent roots and shoots is a
  metaphor of a dynamic, flexible and lateral
  logic that encompasses change, complexity and
  heterogeneity.
• We are becoming rhizomatically - we are not
  caused

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popular culture
parents
Draw a rhizome of a learning story your own or
the King I - complex shifting links -
unpredictable shoots - overlaps
teachers
peers
texts
gender
language
race
cognition
class
culture
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Rhizomatics

• How do we
• explain the late bloomer?
• argue for investment in life-long learning if
  the early years matter so much?
• plan for learners whose environments are
  deprived in their early years?

• Tension 1 its not about us in all our
  changeability

The allure of beyond a reasonable doubt The
status of hard facts and real research
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Reflect on your changability

• What are the twists and turns in your life that
  make you the learner that you are now?
• What changes in you that makes your learning
  story matter one day and not the next?
• What is unstable in who you are now?

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Rhizomatics
How confident of this are you? Where does your
confidence come from? Does it embrace all?

• Tension 2 its not about us in all our diversity

The allure of beyond a reasonable doubt The
status of hard facts and real research
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The real brain research
Questions niggles

• What are the origins of this piece of
  neuroscience?
• With what groups of people or animals was it
  done?
• How generalisable are the findings to the groups
  of people you work with?
• Do the researchers attempt to generalise?

Are the researchers confident?
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Where is the noise? How will you hear it?
Rhizomatics

• Tension 3 it doesnt like our noisiness

The allure of beyond a reasonable doubt The
status of hard facts and real research
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Linear causality?
Rhizomatic logic
Which explains you and your learning better? What
are the pros cons of each?
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Deconstructing the brain

• tools for critical engagement with the brain

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Deconstruction

• A postmodern approach to analysis, which aims to
  show the fragility of all positive statements.
  Deconstruction points at the contradictions and
  cracks in any text and the assumptions it builds
  upon.
• (Alvesson, 2002, p.178)

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Tactics for
deconstruction

• Erasure
• Metaphor
• Binary analysis - attending to and affirming the
  other

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Erasing the brain - what cant the word say?

• Erasure
• marking a term is inadequate for what we want
  to say
• casting a shadow over it
• highlighting strategic undecidability
• playfully mistrusting a word

What is the brain?
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Erasure

• SEEING MEANINGS AS PROVISIONAL

Erasure
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the brain - what is the brain?
Erasing
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Erasing the brain - what cant the word say?
Re-imagine yourself - your age, gender, culture,
ethnicity, geography, historical time
What is the brain? What cultural biases construct
your brain?
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Metaphor - a tactic to wonder a new
Metaphor

• What metaphors can you generate to describe how
  the brain works
• Try writing
• THE BRAIN IS A . ? BECAUSE IT?

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Metaphor - a tactic to wonder a new

• What is similar and different in your metaphors?
• What is contradictory?
• What are 5 metaphors could you not do without?
• What do loose by choosing these?
• Arrive from MARS - try to create a totally new
  metaphor
• How does your culture bias the metaphors you use?
• How do your metaphors bias meaning?
• Whose voices are silent in your metaphors?

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Meanings, brains and politics

• Meaning is not fixed in words - we construct it
  through culture and through history.
• Meaning based on binary thinking is political
  because it always silences an Other
• Understanding how meaning works politically is
  critical reflection

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Binary analysis

• Binaries (are pairs) - what are the binaries that
  the text relies on to create its meanings?
• How does this text create assumptions about what
  is normal or desirable?
• Who benefits from this?
• Disrupt the hierarchy - how is the norm
  exceptional?
• BE PLAYFUL WITH MEANING

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Binary analysis
Children with the fewest numbers of siblings
perform the best on tests of intellectual skills
and educational achievement. The reason for this
appears to be that additional children dilute
parental resources. These resources would include
time, money and interactions.(Downey (2001).
American Psychologist, vol 56(6/7), 497-504.
(http//www.Brains.org/ downloaded 6.4.04)

• How does this text create assumptions about what
  is normal or desirable?
• Who benefits from this?

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Binary analysis
Practice not only makes perfect, it makes the
brain efficient. What has previously been seen
with monkey brains now has been seen on humans.
Using functional MRI, a German University has
shown that when learning a motor movement (in
this case learning to play the piano), a great
deal of the motor region of the brain is used.
With experience, smaller and smaller regions of
the brain are used. In professional musicians,
only very tiny regions of the motor cortex are
involved in their playing. Thus practice makes
neural networks efficient and frees up regions of
the cortex again to be used for other things.(
Jancke, L., et.al. 2000. Cognitive Brain
Research. Vol.10(1-2), 177-183.)

• How does this text create assumptions about what
  is normal or desirable?
• Who benefits from this?

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Binary analysis
According to Ronald Kotulak, the author of
Learning How to Use the Brain, scientists learned
more about the brain during the last decade than
they learned during the entire century preceding
it. So if you've been out of school for even five
or ten years, chances are that much of what you
learned about how the brain develops and
functions is obsolete. Does it matter? Take a
look at some of the latest research and find out.
(Growing Bigger Brains, download 6.4.04)

• How does this text create assumptions about what
  is normal or desirable?
• Who benefits from this?

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Binary analysis

• How does this text create assumptions about what
  is normal or desirable?
• Who benefits from this?

The brain makes the most neural connections when
it is actively involved in learning, therefore,
learning should be multi-sensory and interactive.
(December 1998 Education Week commentary, Is the
Fuss About Brain Research Justified?, David Sousa)
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Binary analysis
Perhaps the most important thing to remember,
however, is that the research shows that each
brain is unique. The most effective teachers,
therefore, provide many opportunities for
enrichment and implement a variety of
instructional strategies. Those strategies are
most relevant and most successful when teachers
base their efforts on what researchers have
discovered about the brain. (Growing Bigger
Brains, download 6.4.04)

• How does this text create assumptions about what
  is normal or desirable?
• Who benefits from this?

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Binary analysis

• How does this text create assumptions about what
  is normal or desirable?
• Who benefits from this?

"We need programs that give all prospective and
current teachers a working knowledge of brain
growth and development and that include frequent
contacts with cognitive researchers to keep
abreast of relevant research findings. With such
a long-term commitment, teachers will have the
competence to determine which classroom
strategies are more compatible with the current
understanding of today's brain.". (December 1998
Education Week commentary, Is the Fuss About
Brain Research Justified?, David Sousa)
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Binary analysis

• How does this text create assumptions about what
  is normal or desirable?
• Who benefits from this?

Stimulating Environment Affects Learning. A
child's ability to learn can increase or decrease
by 25 percent or more, depending on whether he or
she grows up in a stimulating environment.
(brainconnection.com, download 6.4.04).
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Why bother?

• Meanings matter because they produce power
• Power to define normality
• Power to define what is desirable
• Power to act on others
• How do your meanings of the brain matter?

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Questions for brain research its consumers

• Whose voice is heard and whose is silenced in the
  use of brain research?
• To what extent are traditionally marginalised
  voices present?
• Who is not speaking today?
• How have gender, race, ethnicity, ability
  class been listened to?
• Who has exercised power, how with what effects?
• Do the effects of brain research reinforce or
  challenge unjust power dynamics?
• How can we remake its effects justly?