Posts under ‘research’

Canadian Alanna Mitchell, this year’s winner of the Atkinson Fellowship in public policy named brains as the secret to better schools. Not all agree.
Mitchell recalled a Minister of Education who asked a neuroscientist: “The brain? What does the brain have to do with education?” In my renewal work across many countries I heard similar [...]

Written By Ellen Weber, PhD and Robyn McMaster, PhD
Higher Education and Brain Based Benefits

Challenges of Change
Renewal is to the university community today what Renaissance was to the Middle Ages. Both encompass a resurgence of learning. Both tap into more potential from the human brain. To reconfigure university teaching for a rebirth [...]

Consider current higher education communities in crisis, where one dean said, We pretend to teach them, they pretend to learn. Have you seen the disconnect between learning and leading change for the 21st Century?
Yet normal brain activity is now observable to show how humans acquire and use knowledge. How will neuro discoveries impact higher [...]

What would it take to renew university learning and draw more brainpower from learners and leaders? We know adult intelligence improves – from MDs such as Dan Siegel, Director of  Mindsight Inst at UCLA School of Medicine, who draws on recent science to harness the brain’s circuitry. The results?
Research offers increased brainpower opportunities that [...]

Few disagree on an urgent need to increase America’s science and math proficiency in order to compete in our fast paced world. But less art?
Sadly, the arts become an easy target when budgets get slashed. Yet both multi-dimensional advances of art along with empirical rigor of science both challenge and transform high performing minds. Like [...]

When you rev up mental equipment daily to either sink or swim, you discover how creativity and curiosity will trump criticism and intimidation. How then can you experience mental power in settings where no brain is left behind?
One friend and fellow leader Dave Caiazza, put it this way:

Work against the dangerous twins of jealousy and [...]

To renew with the brain in mind is to approach teens and teaching with new vision, diverse tools, and higher expectations for all:

Teens bring unique knowledge to technology and renewal both recognizes and uses their technical skills. (Braden Husdal in Teaching starts from Brain Down)
Repetition is less effective for teens than teaching math [...]

New York burns while Albany fiddles. News of political infighting, stalemates, accusations and posturing flood us daily, while opportunities for greatness fade for NY. A closer look, though, shows bureaucracy working against ethical brainpower. How so? 
Neuro discoveries uncover organizational problems and possibilities.
1. Secondary schools and universities in crisis continue to downsize rather than reconfigure [...]

The mark of a successful secondary school is motivated teens achieving at the peaks. Does it happen in your community?
This summer launches Rochester’s first MITA Brain Institute – custom designed for secondary faculty, and poised to reconfigure learning – with the brain in mind.
Participants will create curriculum together to jumpstart teen brains for higher motivation [...]

Read vision statements  that affirm  secondary and university renewal, and you’ll spot innovative learning opportunities for all. Observe classes in these same schools, though, and practical results appear far less impressive. Have you noticed that a school’s intent, and its classroom practices too often differ when it comes to renewed learning and assessment opportunities for [...]

Headsets are soon coming out that enable people to control technology with electrical signals that come from firing your brain’s neurons. Imagine a helmet that works a keyboard or that operates software programs – simply because you think into a mind reading gismo, and you have seen the latest invention.
No longer do mind-bending operations happen [...]

Each step to renew your workplace ethically and with the brain in mind – casts lights on mental barriers that prevent change in stagnant organizations. How so?
To rethink old approaches is also to take a stand against Hebbian hardwired thought that defaults back to ruts and routines.
To upgrade motivation and achievement at secondary or higher [...]

Spot any gap where you live or work, regardless of how small, and you may well be staring into the eyeballs of your own destiny.  How so?
Even though I taught university classes and facilitated top leaders around the world for many years, it still surprises me how few people ever discuss the proven wonder of [...]

At a university debate on the brain’s role in education, the dean asked: Why bring the brain into learning, when higher education already has traditions and a proven history? How would you have responded?
Looking back, I likely should have told about my own dream that leaders and learners can  prosper more by tapping into extravagant [...]

It seems the brain blocks your own decision making intelligence, and tends to shut down when you hear an “expert’s” advice. Rather scary research, if you think of the financial gurus who make our decisions in the stock markers and banks.

Check out Dr. Greg Berns’ fascinating finds about the brain shutting down and you’ll see [...]

Did you know that your brain’s equipped to change rapidly and to biologically reshape itself through chemical and electrical activity? This brain fact can speed up or slow down the ethical changes people crave, and too often fail to achieve at work. How so? Changes and growth are based more on doing acts though, than [...]

It takes skill and courage to value  ideas that differ from your own.  Interestingly, while few do it well, those who listen and learn from others tend to transform their circles. They disagree with amazing tone skills and in so doing,  inspire others to express novel ideas that may otherwise never surface.
Progressive thinkers often deep [...]