In his new book, "How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why It Happens," author Benedict Carey informs us that “most of our instincts about learning are misplaced, incomplete, or flat wrong” and “rooted more in superstition than in science.”
That's a disconcerting message, and hard to believe at first. But it's also unexpectedly liberating, because Carey further explains that many things we think of as detractors from learning -- like forgetting, distractions, interruptions or sleeping rather than hitting the books -- aren’t necessarily bad after all. They can actually work in your favor, according to a body of research that offers surprising insights and simple, doable strategies for learning more effectively.

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Teaching students basic knowledge about the brain’s potential can have a positive impact on their motivation, grit, and achievement. In particular, explicitly teaching them that learning changes the structure and function of their brains can be transformational in building a stronger belief in the value of working hard to master new material.
Teachers who explain these findings report that the knowledge has a positive effect on students’ perceptions of their abilities as well as on their expectations for success.

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cientists, teachers and policy makers increasingly recognize the importance of understanding how the brain works when developing learning programs for students. Across the globe, a number of schools are using principles of neuroscience to help students concentrate, regulate their emotions, retain information and more. In honor of back-to-school season, here are some of the neatest neuroscience-based learning projects we’ve heard of so far. 

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In a study of healthy volunteers, National Institutes of Health researchers found that our brains may solidify the memories of new skills we just practised a few seconds earlier by taking a short rest. The results highlight the critically important role rest may play in learning.
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“Everyone thinks you need to ‘practice, practice, practice’ when learning something new. Instead, we found that resting, early and often, may be just as critical to learning as practice,” said Leonardo G. Cohen, M.D., Ph.D., senior investigator at NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and a senior author of the paper published in the journal Current Biology. “Our ultimate hope is that the results of our experiments will help patients recover from the paralyzing effects caused by strokes and other neurological injuries by informing the strategies they use to ‘relearn’ lost skills.”

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In a recent post we looked at the neuroscience behind “aha” moments in the classroom—specifically, putting some space and time between yourself and the challenge you’re trying to solve; making the learning space psychologically safe; doing some simple, repetitive actions; and engaging in physical activity.
This post continues the aha theme as we discover how to turn the science into the action. ATD Education facilitators Nikki O’Keeffe, Nelson Santiago, and Carrie Addington provide some tips on how they go about creating these light bulb learning moments.

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In recent decades we’ve seen the rise of an emerging interdisciplinary field that brings together neuroscientists and educators. As technologies like brain mapping and scanning continue to advance our understanding of the human brain, a sub-sector of experts are applying those findings to the classroom.
Instead of being based on traditional or individual assumptions about learning, education is beginning to be treated more like a science. The new discipline, neuroeducation, serves to apply the scientific method to curricula design and teaching strategies. This comes with attempts for a more objective understanding of learning that is based on evidence.

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Research around the way humans learn is booming these days. Consider viral brain-based teaching trends and explorations of how the act of teaching shapes kids’ brains.

But studying how the brain learns doesn’t necessarily mean memorizing proteins and brain chemistry. Sometimes it’s about empathy—or in the case of some of the latest research coming out of Johns Hopkins, it’s about understanding how art plays a role in learning.
One person who has closely watched, and even shaped, the coevolution of neurosciences with education is Mariale Hardiman, vice dean of academic affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Education. The education professor is also the co-founder and director of Johns Hopkins’ Neuro-Education Initiative, a center that aims to bring together research on learning and neuroscience, teaching and education.

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Across the country, educators are changing practices to match a changing world. To get a peek behind the curtain, EdSurge has been visiting schools, convening educators and asking them to share about the novel ways they’re making learning more personal by rethinking what teaching the whole child really means, using evidence-based practices, incorporating innovative technologies and leveraging what we know about how humans learn to meet the needs of all learners.
Here are their stories.

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Teachers change brains. While we often don’t think of ourselves as brain changers, when we teach we have an enormous impact on our students’ cognitive development. Recent advances in educational neuroscience are helping educators understand the critical role we play in building brain capacities important to students’ learning and self-control.
To understand how teachers change the brain, we need to begin with a reasonably new understanding of the biology of learning. The human brain is an experience-dependent organ. Throughout our lives, the cerebrum—the largest portion of our brain—fine-tunes itself to adapt to the world around us. The scientific term used to describe this is “neuroplasticity, ” which involves three processes.

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