Chandra Boon's List: Educational Research

• The qualifications for success in today's ever-changing world will demand the ability to think critically, communicate clearly, use continually changing technology, be culturally aware and adaptive, and possess the judgment and open-mindedness to make complex decisions based on accurate analysis of information.
• These students have fewer opportunities to discover the connections between isolated facts and to build neural networks of concepts that are needed to transfer learning to applications beyond the contexts in which the information is learned and practiced
• As educators, it is our challenge to see that all students have opportunities to stimulate their developing executive function networks so when they leave school they have the critical skillsets to choose the career and life paths that will give them the most satisfaction.
• "executive functions"
• are these highest cognitive processes.
• Executive functions
• include planning, flexibility, tolerance, risk assessment, informed decision-making, reasoning, analysis, and delay of immediate gratification to achieve long-term goals.
• further allow for organizing, sorting, connecting, prioritizing, self-monitoring, self-correcting, self-assessing, abstracting, and focusing
• executive function control centers develop in the prefrontal cortex (PFC)
• prefrontal cortex is the last part of the brain to mature. This maturation is a process of neuroplasticity that includes 1) the pruning of unused cells to better provide for the metabolic needs of more frequently used neurons and 2) strengthening the connections in the circuits that are most used.
• Each of the brain's over one billion neurons holds only a tiny bit of information. It is only when multiple neurons connect through their branches (axons and dendrites) that a memory is stored and retrievable
• electrical flow carries information and also provides the stimulus that promotes the growth of these connections. Each time a network is activated -- the information recalled for review or use -- the connections become stronger and faster (speed through a circuit is largely determined by the layers of myelin coating that are built up around the axons -- this is also in response to the flow of the electric current of information transport when the circuit is activated
• We have the obligation to provide our students with opportunities to learn the required foundational information and procedures through experiences that stimulate their developing neural networks of executive functions. We activate these networks through active learning experiences that involve students' prefrontal cortex circuits of judgment, critical analysis, induction, deduction, relational thinking with prior knowledge activation, and prediction.
• experiences promote creative information processing as students recognize relationships between what they learn and what they already know
• ew connections (dendrites, synapses, myelinated axons) physically grow between formerly separate memory circuits when they are activated together
• "neurons that fire together, wire together"
• Unless new rote memories are incorporated into larger, relational networks, they remain isolated bits of data in small, unconnected circuits. It is through active mental manipulation with prior knowledge that new information becomes incorporated into the already established neural network of previously acquired related memory
• The disuse pruning is another aspect of the brain's neuroplasticity. To best support the frequently used networks, the brain essentially dissolves isolated small neural networks of "unincorporated" facts and procedures that are rarely activated beyond drills and tests
• In contrast, opportunities to process new learning through executive functions promote its linkage to existing related memory banks through the growth of linking dendrites and synapses
• Students need to be explicitly taught and given opportunities to practice using executive functions to organize, prioritize, compare, contrast, connect to prior knowledge, give new examples of a concept, participate in open-ended discussions, synthesize new learning into concise summaries, and symbolize new learning into new mental constructs, such as through the arts or writing across the curriculum
• • This is a key point and really changes the priorities of the teacher and what the classroom experience needs to involve.
• • This is where the emotional rudder comes into play. Guides attention to what is important and is connected to the application of learning in real-life situations.
• Prioritizing skills are also used when students are guided to see how new facts fit into broader concepts

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