When Carol Lee argues that the purpose of school should be to prepare young people for civic engagement, she recognizes that what they learn must be relevant to their lives. “The emotional salience we attribute to experiences,” she notes, “matters greatly to learning; students tend to learn more deeply when what they are learning is relevant.”
There is neurobiology and psychology behind this insight. Experiences that have the greatest impact on learning are ones that build on a child’s frame of reference, on prior knowledge gained in homes, communities, and classrooms. When children have the chance to use something they already know, the message they hear is “what you know matters; you matter.” The feelings this produces tap into the malleability of the brain, a key to unlocking learning and with it, potential. Meaning and salience release neurotransmitters and hormones that energize neurons — causing them to fire up, connect to other neurons, or strengthen existing connections. As Hebb’s law states, “neurons that fire together, wire together.” Human growth, whether it is the wiring of the brain, the building of an ethical core, or the capacity to love and empathize with others, all come from the affordances that such meaningful experiences provide.
Moreover, when educators design experiences for their students that are relevant and meaningful, they increase the cognitive load students can carry. Carrying increasing cognitive load is essential to new learning. Why would we not, as Zaretta Hammond argues, build on the pillars of knowledge children already possess, and from that foundation, with that energy, construct new knowledge and skills alongside the courage and belief to try and discover new things?
As Lee acknowledges, educators may take any academic subject and teach in such a way that affirms the cultures of children in the classroom — describing algebra’s roots, for example, in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and the Islamic, Indian, and Greek contributions to its understanding — rather than simply introducing an alien vocabulary ascribing values to x, y or z. This interdisciplinary approach (connecting history, language, even religion to the understanding of mathematics) not only invites students into the conversation from a variety of vantage points, but also produces connections with different areas of the brain where representations of the world are already present from prior experiences. These neural connections are the basis for new observations that sit at the heart of critical thinking and analytic skills.
Lee notes that models that treat learning as “purely cognitive” are outdated. Today, we know that development happens in a dynamic, open-ended system across the lifetime of a child. Interwoven webs of relationships and experiences harness learning and thriving. With this understanding, educators have the power to design the kinds of experiences and settings that prime the pump for learning and promote thriving for all their students. Even young people who have experienced many adversities can surmount them if they are given opportunities to experience contexts, relationships and experiences on an ongoing basis that are designed for safety, support, and productive challenge.
How do we know this? We have examples of young people who are overcoming adversity all around us, even more so after witnessing the impacts of the pandemic and racialized violence in such vivid, painful, and inequitable ways. Furthermore, findings from the science of learning and human development converge to suggest that the range of each young person’s development is open ended, happening over time in many different settings both in an out of school. As development occurs, the brain becomes increasingly integrated and connected, acquiring the ability to perform more and more complex skills, and improving its ability to ascribe meaning to new experiences. In this way, the talent, interests, and potential of each child are revealed. What Lee is asking, and what I affirm wholeheartedly, is that education systems — and all the systems where children are growing and learning — use the knowledge we and they have to ignite the learning processes in positive ways for each and every child. Then, not only will we see potential revealed, we will also see children who grow up to believe they have a place in the world, that what they do matters and that they can achieve what they aspire to. That is a recipe for civic engagement of the highest order.
References:
Cantor, P., Lerner, R., Pittman, K., Chase, P., & Gomperts, N. (2021). Whole-child development, learning, and thriving: A dynamic systems approach (Elements in child development). Cambridge University Press.
Cantor, P., Osher, D., Berg, J., Steyer, L., & Rose, T. (2019) Malleability, plasticity, and individuality: How children learn and develop in context. Applied Developmental Science, 23, 4, 307-337.
Hammond, Z. (2021) Looking at SoLD through an equity lens: Will the science of learning and development be used to advance critical pedagogy or will it be used to maintain inequity by design? In Cantor, P. & Osher, D. (Eds.). (2021). The science of learning and development: Enhancing the lives of all young people (1st ed.). Routledge.
Immordino-Yang, M.H., Darling-Hammond, L., & Krone, C.R. (2019) Nurturing nature: How brain development is inherently social and emotional, and what this means for education. Educational Psychologist, 54, 3, 185-204.
Osher, D., Cantor, P., Berg, J., Steyer, L., & Rose, T. (2020) Drivers of human development: How relationships and context shape learning and development. Applied Developmental Science, 24, 1, 6-36.
This article is an invited response to “A curriculum that promotes civic ends and meets developmental needs” by Carol Lee, part of Kappan‘s Reimagining American Education: Possible Futures series, sponsored by the Spencer Foundation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pamela Cantor
PAMELA CANTOR is a child and adolescent psychiatrist specializing in trauma. She is also the founder of Turnaround for Children, and a governing partner of the Science of Learning and Development Alliance.
