Brain: where complexity should meet effort.

Photo by MTAPhotos on TrendHype / CC BY 

The brain is indeed complex but believing that we will never ‘crack the code’ does little in advancing the collective effort that we have to engender to understand the different parts to make sense of the whole (Jasanoff, 2018). If there is something that can be understood, though, is that the biological and physically hierarchical structures of the human brain take time and order to develop (Dehaene-Lambertz & Spelke, 2015). 

Starting from inception, and going over our development in utero, we already know that there is a reason why our species take so long to prepare for birth and are born with a disproportionately large head. We have also come to realize how the programmed ‘travel’ that neurons take to go to their destined site is guided by an orchestrated chemical symphony. This process is largely conducted by glial cells which make neurons land where they are supposed to be by an almost total account. Still in utero, we know that babies are processing information – truly learning – having the mother’s voice, reactions and emotional states as a conduit for how this information is delivered to them (Aamodt & Wang, 2011).

After birth, we become the emotionally regulated ones, to such an extent that we get unsurpassed powers among other species in our capacity to modulate and modify how we feel the world via the experiences we have (Tottenham, 2017). If we consider the experience from the language development perspective, we can already appreciate how imitation - the trigger of social learning (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977) - of surrounding sounds allows language to emerge and to become a gateway into the world we are to become an active part of. Besides, we have already know that the quality of the input the baby receives compounded with the interaction that he/she gets engaged in, impacts language acquisition profoundly (Saxton, 2017). This goes to such an extent to make this kind of learning (of languages) the preferred one for instruction since infancy (Denckla, n.d.; Paradis & Ruiting, 2016).

The fact that our brains seem predisposed to learn languages easily, does not detract nor stimulate the importance of respecting our developmental readiness and the stages we go through. Motor learning, whose networks are developed prior to cognitive ones, are resistant to change. Therefore, educators should be warned against societal pressure for early literacy. We have evidence of how respecting our nature makes our nurture much more apt at providing the adequate stimulus for improvement (Dehaene-Lambertz & Spelke, 2015). Therefore, the importance of understanding how we, as teachers, can comprehend the learners that come to school in their totality, accounting for deficits, which may be worked through or around, confers an extra weight to the kind of instruction we get in our formation courses.

On the topic of deficits, the amount and depth of learning that we can, and should, go through, makes me wonder how much harm education – that which has been practiced by uninformed professionals – has caused already. If that is added to how much we already know about the effects of stressful experiences early in life (Thompson, 2014), much has to be done. But instead of downing our hopes, this body of knowledge has to rekindle our good will to make the information that we already have also available to others. This will in turn propitiate the amount of care and well-rounded attention for Learning Impairments we must strive to give.

Being able to recognize, name and deal with LD, SLD, ADHD, ASD, EDF from the standpoint of an educator has to become a requirement in our formation courses. After all, it is the educator who has the student at their forefront and therefore stands in a privileged position for observation. Additionally, we must strive to communicate better and with clarity to our community, be them parents, hospitals, peers and students. Once we know how much we are dependent on accuracy of information to deal with the array of behaviors we have (Blankenship & Canto, 2016), the better chances we have to do good.

References

Aamodt, S.& Wang, S. (2011). Welcome to your child’s brain: How the mind grows from conception to college. New York: Bloomsbury. 

Blankenship, A. P., & Canto, A. I. (2016). Traumatic brain injuries and special education services in the schools. Exceptionality, 1–12. doi:10.1080/09362835.2016.1238379.
Dehaene-Lambertz, G., & Spelke, E. S. (2015). The infancy of the human brain. Neuron, 88(1), 93-109.

Denckla, M. (n.d.) [video interview]. Brain Development and Readiness for Learning. Available at Brain Development and Readiness for Learning-SD from SOE-IT on Vimeo.[30:12]

·        Jasanoff, A. (2018). The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us who We are. Basic Books.

·        Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science, 198(4312), 75-78.

Paradis, J., & Ruiting, J. (2016). Bilingual children’s long-term outcomes in English as a second language: Language environment factors shape individual differences in catching up with monolinguals. Developmental Science, 20(1). doi:10.1111/desc.12433

Saxton, M. (2017). Child language: Acquisition and development (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

Thompson, R.A. (2014). Stress and child development. Future of Children, 24,1, 41-59.
Tottenham, N. (2017). The brain’s emotional development. Cerebrum. Retrieved from http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/2017/The_Brain_s_Emotional_Development/