Teachers have often looked at their students and wondered, What is going on in their minds? Research shows that students—and all humans—are constantly processing a variety of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and experiences.
In fact, different ways of learning are the brain's natural operating systems (Ornstein, 1986). The brain is a biological organ of multiple systems that are related to its structures:Stuck side by side, inside the skin, inside the skull, are several special purpose, separate, and specific small minds. . . . The particular collection of talents, abilities, and capacities that each person possesses depends partly on birth and partly on experience. Our illusion is that each of us is somehow unified, with a single coherent purpose and action. . . . We are not a single person. We are many. . . . All of these general components of the mind can act independently of each other, [and] they may well have different priorities. (Ornstein, 1986, pp. 8–9) Disparate functions within us act unconsciously and automatically, and diverse control centers and different kinds of memories are associated with each "mind" (Ornstein, 1986).
Brain "modules" are interconnected collections and columns of neurons that reach across six neuronal layers in the cortex and into all parts of the brain (Restak, 1994) . At one moment, the emotional system may be in charge while the cognitive system struggles to make sense of new learning. At another time, hunger or illness may force the physical learning system to dominate. Or while the social system strives to obtain a sense of belonging, the reflective system may be unable to objectively reconsider social blunders that prevented acceptance by a preferred group. These five major systems and their subsystems wax and wane in their influence over our thoughts and behaviors.
Theaters of the Mind
The appropriate brain modules process information from all learning systems throughout each hemisphere and from one hemisphere to the other. Information processing is like what happens at a multiplex movie theater where several movies play at the same time. The brain watches these movies and makes sense of them. The brain's movie theaters never close, and their production and operational technologies surpass those of real-world theaters or movie sets. The mind creates scenes for the body to exhibit—our learning systems are at once writer, producer, director, make-up artist, cameraperson, and actor.
Focused attention and learning occur when input from the five theaters simultaneously stimulates the brain's multimodal association areas. If the different systems attend to different movies, however, confused thinking reigns. In fact, the main difficulty of thinking is confusion—we try to do too much at once. We need to slow down our thinking and focus (de Bono, 1985).
We slow down when we attend primarily to one mental movie or system and its subsystems at a time even though sounds, sights, and smells from the other systems demand equal attention. For example, a student may try to memorize multiplication tables (cognitive system) while feeling the pain of a teacher's insult (emotional system), loneliness created by class laughter (social system), and hunger from skipping breakfast (physical system). The student also wonders why others learn quickly and he struggles (reflective system). Competing movies demand the student's attention as each learning system processes specific types of information to address basic psychological needs.
When a system's basic needs are met, the system functions effectively. When they are not met, system demands interfere with effective functioning of the other systems. The emotional and social learning systems tend to be the most insistent about having their needs fulfilled, and many researchers have devoted considerable attention to the relationships between learning and emotional and social needs (Damasio, 1994, 1999; Goleman, 1995; Kessler, 2000; LeDoux, 1996; Palmer, 1993; Panksepp, 1998; Pert, 1997). Let's review how the five theaters of the mind affect learning.
Emotional Learning System
Negative emotions and social experiences can interfere with satisfactory academic achievement. For example, without acceptance and emotional support, students may spend energy seeking positive affirmations and guarding against abuse, ridicule, embarrassment, loneliness, and rejection rather than developing new skills and learning.
Scientists know that humans need emotional nourishment from birth (Kessler, 2000; Palmer, 1993). A lack of emotional nourishment negatively affects the entire being. Emotionally upset people cannot remember, pay attention, learn, or make decisions clearly because "stress makes people stupid" (Goleman, 1995, p. 149). Brain chemistries that drive emotions link the body and brain and provide the energy that fuels academic achievement as well as personal health and success: "Everything we do is run by emotions" (Pert, 1993, p. 187). In fact, our underlying emotional value systems are so powerful that, if destroyed, the cognitive apparatus collapses (Panksepp, 1998).
Reportedly, a 50-50 symbiotic mix exists between genetically ingrained emotions (nature) and learned emotions (nurture) (Harris, 1998; Panksepp, 1998). Surprisingly, research indicates that siblings and peers may influence a child's learned emotions more than his or her parents. According to developmental psychology writer Judith Rich Harris (1998), sibling and peer influence accounts for 45 percent of the nurturing factor and parental influence accounts for only 5 percent. Meaningful group membership within the school setting, therefore, may be more crucial than previously thought.
When needs for comfort and love are met, the emotional learning system triggers the brain's production of serotonin, a feel-good chemical and neurotransmitter. When these needs go unmet, some adolescents seek the feeling of love through drugs. For example, the synthetic drug methylenedioxy methamphetamine (MDMA)—"Adam" or "ecstasy" on the street—reportedly causes heightened feelings of love by increasing the production of serotonin that, in turn, reduces hunger, fatigue, and depression. When the drug's effects wear off, serotonin levels drop and the person becomes severely depressed and tired. The person may suffer serious memory loss and significant brain injury and sustain permanent damage to serotonin-releasing nerve cells (Diamond & Hopson, 1998). (See www.lec.org/DrugSearch/Documents/newEcstasy.html for more information on the effects of MDMA.)
A similar emotional high, without the side effects, can be obtained by cultivating meaningful personal interests or passions. That's why listening to children's wishes, dreams, and desires and using them to guide student knowledge and skill development are so important. When educators teach information that addresses students' personal goals, psychic energy flows effortlessly because the self doesn't need to defend itself from threat (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Those who attain the effortless state of sustained engagement—the flow experience—develop a stronger, more confident self because they invest more of their psychic energy successfully in personal goals (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). The flow experience occurs only when all systems are in a state of relaxed alertness and attending to the same stimuli or remaining neutral. In that event, naturally produced serotonin and opioids incorporate into biological tissues of the brain and drive the brain's continued production of these chemicals.
Passion fosters the flow experience and breeds talent by pushing people to work hard for what they envision. For example, some adolescents with limited musical abilities may practice the guitar for hours and imagine themselves as great classical guitarists. The fantasy of what is possible, their interest in the instrument and its unique sounds, and the hours of practice eventually result in some expertise and heightened enjoyment.
The emotional system thrives in psychologically safe classrooms where teachers recognize students' hopes, dreams, and aspirations and appreciate and weave students' personal goals into the curriculum. When teachers give students limited opportunities to express themselves as individuals, the students' enthusiasm for learning diminishes, they may become sullen or disruptive, and they might seek drugs and other antisocial activities. By contrast, teachers who support and nurture individuality motivate and encourage enthusiasm for learning and a passion for achievement (Donald, 1991).
Social Learning System
In social learning, we develop an understanding about who we are in relation to others and our environment. Social learning allows us to recognize how others feel and then to enjoy, enhance, or modify those feelings for each social situation (Goleman, 1995). Several neural structures and chemistries relate to specific social needs and emotions; however, a comprehensive understanding of the human brain's social subsystems continues to be speculative and based on animal, rather than human, research (Panksepp, 1998).
The brain contains at least two social subsystems composed of numerous lesser systems. The first is in place at birth and specializes in dyadic relationships. The second takes a little longer to assemble and specializes in group relationships (Harris, 1998). Both subsystems develop from mother-child relationships within the context of a family, peer group, and community. Educators are most concerned about peer relationships and whether students feel a sense of belonging to a group because these relationships influence students' behavioral choices in and out of school.
Peer relationships. The chemical systems that mediate maternal and sexual urges also seem to forge friendships and social learning. Children and adults like to spend time with others whose presence increases their brain oxytocin and opioid levels, and children feel more comfortable with those they know, trust, and like than they do with strangers (Panksepp, 1998). Yet, children can attend the same classes 5 days a week for 10 months and never really know their classmates or teachers well enough to consider them trusted friends.
Researchers hypothesize that one reason many individuals become addicted to external opiates (such as morphine and heroin, alkaloids that can bind to opiate receptors) is that these drugs artificially induce feelings of gratification similar to those normally achieved by the release of such endogenous opioids as endorphins and enkephalins when the person is in the company of supportive friends. Friendship is so powerful that investigators can increase the consumption of opiates from external sources in experimental animals simply by isolating them from the companionship of others (Panksepp, 1998).
The unmet need for meaningful relationships may be a factor in gang and cult membership; such relationships trigger specific brain chemicals left unactivated in school or home settings when children feel unloved, unconnected, and detached from others. Yet, too much opiate production can decrease socialization.
Group relationships. Youngsters who participate in groups—antisocial gangs or socially accepted extracurricular clubs—do so to achieve the recognition of basic similarities (we are alike in some way) or of shared fate (we are all in the same boat) (Harris, 1998). Each social group has a code of conduct that its members understand, and members know implicitly or explicitly that their code does not necessarily apply to other groups (Jackendoff, 1994). Also, groups have their own cultural values, and the group's members admire, respect, and praise those who adopt group values. Those who violate group values receive the scorn and discipline appropriate to the group's culture (Wright, 1994).
Young people who seek membership must change their behaviors to be compatible with the group's culture. When a person's behaviors fail to conform, the group may use laughter to keep nonconformers in line. For this reason, "for all of us, avoiding ridicule is, from an early age, little short of an obsession" (Wright, 1994, p. 266). Those who don't understand what they are doing wrong or who will not or cannot conform suffer a worse fate: expulsion from the group (Harris, 1998).
A school as a community of learners—with well-established cultural patterns, moral consensus, and rituals designed to embrace each student into group membership—is far more than a place where students are obligated to spend time. When students fail to gain socially appropriate membership in the school setting, however, primitive instincts might produce aggression, antisocial group membership, and other undesirable behaviors (Griffiths, 1997).
It takes masterful teachers in collaboration with students to create a classroom code of conduct that honors academic achievement for all group members on the basis of personal goals, dreams, aspirations, and strengths. Activity and authentic problem solving can foster such an environment.
Physical Learning System
Sports, drama, dance, and musical expression involve active problem-solving challenges associated with the physical learning system. Yet the physical system is underutilized for acquisition of academic knowledge and skills, even though more gifted students (Milgram, Dunn, & Price, 1993) and low achievers (Dunn, 1990) often prefer to learn new information through tactual (hands-on) and kinesthetic (whole body) engagement.
This complex learning system is located in the strip across the top of the head, the cerebellum or "little brain" where the back of the head and neck meet, the vestibular system in the inner ear, and numerous neural networks that convey messages to and from these structures to the neocortex, or thinking parts of the brain. If we ignore the physical learning system's needs for meaningful involvement, the body will find ways to move. Students' hands will find things to touch because they are programmed to do so, whether those activities support the cognitive system's efforts to develop academics or not.
Cognitive Learning System
Emotionally, socially, and physically comfortable students who are attuned to the content being taught learn relatively easily. Yet educators have focused primarily on cognitive learning, disregarding how this system interacts with the other four learning systems. Without question, the cognitive system is most closely aligned with the traditional mission of schools because it controls consciousness, language development, focused attention, and memory.
The cognitive, information processing system relies on sensory modalities—smell, taste, touch, vision, hearing, and movement—to alert us to and make us conscious of environmental stimuli that other mental modules filter for our interpretation. Receiving sensory input, making some sense of it, and deciding what to do with the input may sound easy. But at various points along the way, malfunctioning neurons or inappropriate chemical reactions can create serious learning difficulties in the neocortex or outer "bark" of the brain where modules of neurons purposefully strive to satisfy the brain's strong need to interpret sensory input.
Teachers facilitate learning by using novelty, movement, color, personal interests and goals, and authentic problem-solving challenges. Teachers must possess a keen grasp of the material they teach. When they do not, children quickly dismiss attempts to engage them in the learning processes. Once teachers lose students' confidence—let alone their interest, enthusiasm, or passion for the content—they find it difficult to regain.
Reflective Learning System
Reflective intelligence encompasses "thinking strategies, positive attitudes toward investing oneself in good thinking, and metacognition—awareness and management of one's own mind" (Perkins, 1995, p. 234). This learning system involves interconnections of multiple systems and subsystems. This complex biological system depends on interrelationships of memory systems, nonverbal and verbal communication, reason, attention, emotion, social awareness, physical experiences, and sensory modalities (Damasio, 1999).
Our extended consciousness allows us to create an autobiographical self with a richly remembered past and an anticipated future while we remain aware of the present (Damasio, 1999). These abilities permit humans to analyze circumstances, think about and react to the plight of others, search for truth, make plans with expected outcomes, and guide behaviors toward imagined results. Humans who refrain from developing extended consciousness of the reflective system lack goals and fail to rise above a survival-based existence. The reflective system makes us most human.
In the rush to develop the cognitive system, teachers may omit instruction in metacognitive strategies—guided analysis of attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors—or service-learning experiences that benefit others. Yet, these activities strengthen the reflective system and promote responsibility while helping students develop autobiographical selves.
Framework for Learning
If teachers develop lesson plans and interact with students by consciously addressing the theaters of the mind, then schools will be places where students are eager to go and reluctant to leave. By attending to each of the brain's natural learning systems, teachers and students can develop learning communities where achievement is expected and honored, active learning is valued, friendships are promoted, group membership is desired, and analysis of behaviors leads to worthwhile goals. Extended consciousness allows us to create these images and strive for their existence. It's up to us to develop the movies in the theaters of our minds and turn them into reality.
