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Teenage brains - OECD - 15-04-2005
Recent neuroscientific research shows that brain maturation develops into the third decade of life. This questions whether adolescents are fully ‘ready’to take their role in society, even though many adolescents think they are. From a brain research point of view, this finding suggests that didactic/educational concepts which state that the educator should retreat and that education should change into ‘facilitating’ the autonomous learning process in children/adolescents should be considered with caution. It can be questioned whether children and adolescents are already able to find their own way in the diversity of knowledge domains.
We would like to hear your experiences with teaching adolescents, and whether you think current schooling systems are appropriate for them, if you think any changes are necessary etc.?
Teenage brains - geodob - 20-04-2005
Hi OECD,
I would speculate that you are referring to important research carried out by Dr's Ruben Gur, Beatriz Luna, Jay Geidd and others?
Which has been investigating the growth of our brain's White Matter, which provides the Hard Wiring/ Network to interconnect our Grey Matter.
A crucial issue that they have identified, is that the Frontal Lobe of our brains. Which is often called the CEO or the executive of our brain. Which is involved with things like planning and organizing and strategizing, initiating and stopping and shifting attention.
Does not have the white matter hard wiring connecting it to the rest of the brain, built until late adolescence / early adulthood.
Up until this stage, it is inaccessible and therefore the brain operates without an executive overseer controlling and coordinating it.
Which has significant implications.
Following, I would like to post a report from an interview with Dr Ruben Gur:
space
New research shows stark differences in teen brains
Lee Bowman, Scripps Howard
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May 11, 2004: Scripps Howard News Service
New research shows stark differences in teen brains
By Lee Bowman
Recent popular films depicting teenagers suddenly housed in adult bodies have more than a little truth in them.
The latest brain research has found strong evidence that when it comes to maturity, organization and control, key parts of the brain related to emotions, judgment and "thinking ahead" are the last to arrive.
"It seems that regulation of impulse control is the last on board and often the first to leave in the brain as we age," said Dr. Ruben Gur, a professor of psychology and director of the Brain Behavior Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania who has been researching brain development in young adults.
Until recently, most brain experts thought the human command center stopped growing at around 18 months, and that neurons were pretty much set for life by age 3.
In fact, the brain's gray matter has a final growth spurt around the ages of 11 to 13 in the frontal lobes of the brain, the regions that guide human intellect and planning.
But it seems to take most of the teen years for youngsters to link these new cells to the rest of their brains and solidify the millions of connections that allow them to think and behave like adults.
At the same time, the release of a cascade of adolescent hormones during and after puberty causes other areas of the brain, particularly the amygdala, which governs basic emotional response, to fire up or expand.
The result is that teens look at things differently than adults. This has tremendous implications for education, mental health, drug abuse and moral and legal responsibility of adolescents.
Deborah Yurgelun-Todd of Harvard Medical School and McClean Hospital in Boston has studied how teenagers and adults respond differently to the same images. Shown a set of photos of people's faces contorted in fear, adults named the right emotion, but teens seldom did, often saying the person was angry.
When Yurgelun-Todd and her team did the same test while doing functional magnetic resonance imaging of the subject's brains, they found a stark difference in the parts being used. Adults used both the advanced prefrontal cortex and the more basic amygdala to evaluate what they had seen; younger teens relied entirely on the amygdala, while older teens (top age in the group was 17) showed a progressive shift toward using the frontal area of the brain.
"Just because teens are physically mature, they may not appreciate the consequences or weigh information the same way as adults do," Yurgelun-Todd said. "Good judgment is learned, but you can't learn it if you don't have the necessary hardware."
There is more evidence of the differences:
* A recent imaging study by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that teens taking an experimental gambling test are less likely to activate a region in the base of the brain that motivates behavior to work to obtain rewards than a control group of young adults, ages 22-28, playing the same games.
* Numerous studies show alcohol and perhaps other drugs hit teen brains harder than they do adult brains. The frontal lobes and the hippocampus, which is involved in memory formation, are particularly vulnerable.
* It has been known for some time that children have sharp growth spurts in brain connections among regions specialized for language and spatial relationships between ages 6 and 12. That language capacity tends to reside mostly in a person's nondominant side - the left hemisphere of the brain in right-handers, for instance. But a recent imaging study by researchers at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center found that this distinction ends in the mid-20s when the brain shifts to use both sides in language processing.
The story of teen brain development lies in a process called myelinization, in which a layer of fat coats wire-like fibers connecting regions of the brain, back-to-front, side-to-side, and everywhere in between. Over time, this makes the operation of the brain more precise and efficient, affecting not just thinking and problem-solving, but also coordination and mastery of skills ranging from throwing a baseball to playing the trombone.
But there's a price for this greater efficiency -brain cells that aren't hooked up to other parts tend to get killed off.
"If they're not on the network, they die and their place is taken up with cerebral fluid. This goes on well beyond age 18," said Dr. David Fassler, a psychiatrist at the University of Vermont.
Even in adulthood, the wiring job is not completely done. Imaging done on the brains of people in their 40s and 50s show there's another surge of connections being made, perhaps in response to menopause or to prepare the brain to better compensate for the loss of brain cells as we age.
Still, it's a slow, arduous road to maturity and insight for teens.
"We have some new insight into the 16 year-old that doesn't think twice about getting in a car with a friend who's been drinking, but they're still not going to appreciate adults arguments for why they shouldn't," said Fassler.
At the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Jay Giedd, who helps run the ongoing imaging studies that first detected the middle school growth spurt, said the new understanding of teen brains "argues for doing a lot of things as a teenager. You are hard-wiring you brain in adolescence. Do you want to hard-wire it for sports and playing music and doing mathematics, or for lying on the couch in front of the television?"
The new understanding of adolescent brains leads to questions of ethics and legalities.
The Supreme Court already has decided that people should not be executed for crimes committed when they were age 15 or younger, and in the fall is scheduled to consider whether the restriction should be extended to everyone under 18.
Two years ago, the court banned execution of mentally retarded people because of deficiencies that "diminish their personal culpability."
"With the new biological explanation that adolescent brains are different, we think there's scientific evidence that they, too, are less culpable," said Stephen Harper, an adjunct professor of juvenile justice at the University of Miami School of Law who specializes in capital cases.
Gur said some scientists would put off the age of legal majority to 22 or 23, and said there will likely be considerable debate over how to tell when a person's brain physically looks like an adult's as imaging research continues and efforts to set standards and norms develop.
Fassler predicts that within a decade, brain images will be sophisticated enough to "help us determine the age for appropriate treatment of addictions and therapy models for adults and adolescents with disorders."
Other researchers say that while it's possible to gain general understanding about brain development and function from the images, the notion that medicine, law enforcement or anyone else should work from some ideal, normal brain model is troubling.
"Each individual is not an exact map, and the difficulties in determining what the range of variations are is really dangerous. The data is incredibly easy to be over-interpreted," said Sonia Miller, a New York attorney who specializes in cases dealing with new technologies.
Some courts are already accepting brain scans as evidence of a person's mental capacity in criminal cases, she said, and "as the neuroscience of intentional behavior develops, the way we assign responsibility and blame will be challenged. This raises a lot of questions about how much neural privacy can we expect, how much the authorities can get into your brain."
Dr. Peter Bandettini, a brain-imaging researcher at the National Institutes of Health, said the science of understanding what small structures and chemicals are doing within the brain is far from a gold standard for mental function or age.
"Right now, I personally think you'd get more information about a person's mental age by going to a set of behavioral tests. But I'd agree that as these technologies become more powerful, there's going to be a greater need for checks and balances to determine how the imaging information should be used."
On the Net:
* http://www.nimh.nih.gov
* http://www.dana.org
* http://www.aap.org
* http://www.psych.org
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Teenage brains - OECD - 21-04-2005
Thank you for sharing this interview article, it is most interesting. We welcome any teaching experiences on coping with teenage brains, for example: whether you see any evidence of gender differences; do you think they need more sleep; is the current learning setting appropriate for this agegroup; do they have a bad attitude towards learning and if so can this be altered; how do you motivate them?
Teenage brains - geodob - 22-04-2005
I'm glad to hear that you found this article interesting.
Just one point I would pick up on, in regard to it.
Is the area of Behaviour Management. Which is an issue of major concern to Schools globally.
Crucially this raises a question about the use of a "Consequences" approach, which employs a Reward/ Punitive method.
Whilst this model reinforces correct behaviour, it simply punishes incorrect behaviour.
Which is analogous to simply punishing a Student for getting a Maths problem wrong. Rather than informing them of the correct way to approach it.
Instead, they are left to find their own way to 'do it correctly'.
Where they will no doubt, continue to get it wrong.
Of course this would be a futile approach to Maths learning, yet it is assumed that Correct Behaviour is instinctively developed.
Whereas 'correct social behaviour' is as equally something which needs to be learned, as Maths is.
Therefore, I would suggest that the issue of Behaviour Management in Schools, needs to have a 'corrective' approach. Which is focussed on the learning of correct behaviour, rather than simply punishing incorrect behaviour and hoping that they will eventually guess the right, one day?
Teenage brains - geodob - 22-04-2005
In regard to your mention of the 'gender difference' issue.
I would just mention that their is an abundance of research that has identified that the female brain develops and matures much sooner than the male brain.
Language acquisition is but one example.
Not to mention connectivity to the frontal cortex of the brain.
This variation in brain development, does raise the question of the suitability of placing girls and boys of the 'same age' in classes?
Or even the same classroom?
Teenage brains - OECD - 22-04-2005
Hi again Geodob,
Indeed the importance of teaching emotional literacy is only just becoming acknowledged in some countries, and mainly on an experimental basis. Our recent report from a meeting on emotions and education << http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/30/34098220.pdf>>; deals with this subject. I quote from p.19 which provides an interesting reflection on your email:
"Although the formal expectations of the adults in schools may be
that students strive to learn for the â€pleasure of learning†or the “beauty of knowledgeâ€, the students are actually caught up in a competitive system of assessment, testing, success or failure, etc. Coping with this situation confronts each student individually with a set of very diverse experiences and interactions through which something else and more is learned than the
curriculum. Some students e.g. understand quite rapidly they better “learn to play the gameâ€, others need more time, and some never learn to cope or to catch up. But they all experience something that has strong positive or negative emotional components that interact with the intended curricular learning."
Teenage brains - 4th grade teacher - 24-04-2005
Between my partner and myself, we have four duaghters that are now between the ages of 20 and 24. As we've watched them grow, and shared their experiences, we've become well acquainted with the trials and tribulations of teenagers, in school and out.
The problems that have been discussed are, obviously well substantiated: gender differences, immature judgement, and sleep, to name three. The educational issues realted to these have been in large part ignored at least in the public schools. Emphasis has not been on providing an education to create self sufficient adults. Instead, it has been on accountability to validate funding which looks like college prep to most legislatures, government officials, and tax paying citizens
This last week our state began its yearly standardized testing. There was an aritcle in the paper this morning about students in an alternative high school who are taking the test. One student explained that she was really going to try and pass it, because she wanted people to know that kids in her program were not the stereo typical stoners that most people associate with alternative education. Funding for her high school is targeted to be stopped because of the large budget deficit in our district.
Parents want children to go to college and get good jobs. It works for some, but not for others. Those who don't go on to college see themselves as failures. My personal feeling is that this is why high schoolers are targeted by the military, in the U.S.
I believe that educators are more aware of the issues that need to be addressed than parents and legislators. But, educators don't have the money to change the system. All you need to do is look at the different life styles in our world, and see all the creative ways parents nuture their children to see the need for educating students differently.
Teenage brains - geodob - 26-04-2005
Hi 4th Grade,
I would suggest that your concern with "standardized testing" and "accountability to validate funding", highlights perhaps the most critical issue in education?
Where education is viewed as a 'quantifiable product', as opposed to a 'qualifiable product'.
I would note the Oxford dictionary definitions of:
Quantitative: of quantity as opposed to quality.
Qualitative: of quality as opposed to quantity.
Where the term 'opposed' suggests some conflict in objectives and evaluation?
Where a Quantitative approach to education appears to currently be the overarching focus?
Is it just a matter of time before after completing a course of Study, one will no longer gain a Qualification, but instead a Quantification?
Therefore, should Education be a 'product' focussed on Quantity or Quality?
Is it a difficult choice?
Teenage brains - OECD - 27-04-2005
You might be interested in a new book that has just been published by OECD on Formative Assessment, here's the abstract:
This study features a collection of eight case studies of exemplary cases from secondary schools as well as international literature reviews and policy analysis related to formative assessment - the frequent assessments of student progress to identify learning needs and shape teaching. It examines such issues as benefits and barriers for using formative assessment, policy frameworks and implications, and formative assessment in practice. Achievement gains attributed to formative assessment are reported as being quite high, but it is not yet practiced systematically. This book makes the case for use of formative assessment and shows how it can be put into practice.
Teenage brains - 4th grade teacher - 28-04-2005
Sounds like a book I would appreciate reading. Is it on the market?
Teenage brains - OECD - 03-05-2005
Hello 4th grade teacher,
Here is the e-mail address where you can buy all OECD books.
http://www.oecdbookshop.org
Once you are in the homepage you just need to go into the left column and click "books". After that you can do a research by name.
You can buy the printed book or the e-version of it.
Good reading!!!
OECD moderator