Social Brain Goes to School

Social Brain Goes to School: How Relationships Power Learning

Our social brains developed this superpower, called Mentalizing, and it is constantly active. 16 Have you ever observed students’ eye gaze as they watch their teammates at work? Without asking, they get a good idea of what’s going on in their minds. When learners leverage this neural network, it activates their social think- ing, deepens their learning, and builds stron- ger brain infrastructure for teamwork. “You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t connect with other people, nothing

will come of it. You can’t build a rocket ship by yourself – you need to work with others,” notes Lieberman. 17 The secret sauce of collaborative teaming is designing tasks that create “Sticky Learning” experiences that are encoded into long-term memory storage. Collaborative tasks engage students’ mind-reading networks to help the be more successful in learning academic con- cepts.

• Communication-Intensive Social Interaction – Research suggests that students are more likely to remember information when they take it in socially. Working collaboratively, students tap into a wellspring of motivation and engagement. Through small teacher-cre- ated teams with stable membership over four or more weeks, students develop lasting relationships fostering a collective responsibility for both the team’s success and their indi- vidual student learning journeys. Teams continually practice effective communication skills, including respectful dialogue, building of accurate knowledge, and connecting to prior learning. Students engage in argumentation, not arguing, as they test their understanding of concepts, construct explanations, and challenge each other’s quality of evidence and rea- soning. The excited, collaborative hum of student voices reflects their active participation. • Beneficial Cognitive Challenge – Providing students with the proper level of challenge is the sweet spot — it’s a challenge that ignites their passion and fuels their growth. Like Gold- ilocks seeking the perfect porridge, students thrive when the tasks are neither too easy nor too difficult. A carefully calibrated level of challenge keeps learners engaged, stretching their abilities while maintaining motivation to achieve. An essential component of challenge is establishing a class climate that embraces productive failure and allows for errors. This encourages students to reach beyond their comfort zones, persist through obstacles, and experience the exhilaration of mastering new concepts and skills. • Emotional Connection – Learning is not just an intellectual pursuit; it’s intricately inter- twined with our emotions. Our emotions serve as a filter, shaping the way we form mem - ories. Neuroscientist Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang explains, “Emotion and cognition are supported by independent neural processes. It is neurobiologically impossible to build memories, engage in complex thoughts, or make meaningful decisions without emotions... Put succinctly, we only think about things we care about”. 18 Students instinctively under- stand the significance of their emotional connection to the content, often inquiring, “When will I use this?” as they assess their personal interest, relevance, and importance of the task to their lives. Leveraging emotions productively in collaborative task design fosters curiosi- ty and influences the meaning students make of what they are learning. These five active learning principles stand out as stimulating multiple neural connections in the brain, facilitating the encoding of long-term memories.