This is an excellent program (and website) that really delves into a lot that is counter-intuitive about adolescents. It is strongly recommended for both teachers and students, because it goes into the fundamental question of why your teens seem like aliens. Indeed, it describes the type of research upon which the Montessori Middle School program is based.
Why do we use our hands? Milton Glaser (above) uses his to think, and he cites Frank Wilson who argues that the hand and the brain are so connected as to be a single almost indistinguishable system. In fact, Wilson extrapolates this connection to education where, he makes the arguement, “less rigid more individualized approach to education will yield a student with a unified body and mind” (according to The New Yorker, 1998).
Drawing is thinking for some people at least. Perhaps that’s one of the things that defines kinesthetic learners? It certainly is something to bear in mind when designing and implementing the curriculum. Teachers tend to use teaching methods that fit their learning styles, so it is important to bear in mind we will have a variety of students. It’s certainly something about which I have to keep reminding.
It is also important to remember that all students benefit from experiences with different modes of learning. Students, especially adolescents whose brains are rapidly developing new neural pathways and pruning others, need to experience variety, because once we are set in our ways, it becomes a lot harder to learn new tricks.
This is where preparing the environment becomes so important. We want student to have choices, but we want them to try new things, and sometimes these two objectives conflict. The video above does make a persuasive argument to me about why we should draw and practice drawing. Perhaps it will do the same for our kids.
Different parts of the brain mature at different rates. By early adolescence the parts of the brain responsible for social interaction are pretty well developed, but the parts responsible for critical thinking and impulse control (the frontal cortex) are not.
We visited the Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital today. And after a tour, a couple of people from the neurological division gave us a nice little presentation about the human brain. They used Rita Carter’s DVD, “The Human Brain“, which has a great animation of electrical signals pulsing from neuron to neuron through the neural network. I’m considering getting it for the class because the animations and the interactive slicing of the human brain are pretty neat. You can, however, find some, free applications for looking at the whole human body from the Visible Human Project.
Anyway, the fact that impulse control and critical thinking abilities are late to develop did not require fancy brain imaging to discover. Jean Paiget’s research on cognitive developmental stages found evidence that abstract thinking did not develop until the early teens. In fact, he found that abstract thinking (or formal operations as he called it) did not necessarily develop at all. As the frontal cortex matures, the ability to do abstract thinking also develops, but that does not necessarily mean that everyone learns how to do it. (At this point I make an unbiased pitch for the Montessori approach opposed to traditional schooling).
It’s very nice, or perhaps a better word is “elegant”, when very different types of research, using fundamentally different methods come to the same conclusions. In this case, neuroscience (brain imaging), which is ultimately based on physics and biology corroborates the psychological research into cognitive development, which is primarily based on observation and survey.
Know thyself - Socrates (and others) from Wikimedia Commons.
Personal World is the time for introspection. Every day students get a chance to think about themselves and, hopefully, about how they think. Thinking about your own thinking is called meta-cognition, and there is growing scientific evidence that it is an important life skill that leads to better decision making.
According to Jean Paiget’s theory of cognitive development students only begin to develop the capacity for abstract and meta-cognitive thinking in the middle school years. However, further research has shown that only about 30-35% of high schoolers actually develop the skill (it’s called “formal thinking” or “formal operations“). The brain develops the capacity for formal thinking in early adolescence, but people do not naturally move into that stage; school and the right environment are important.
For formal operations, it appears that maturation establishes the basis, but a special environment is required for most adolescents and adults to attain this stage. – Huitt, W., & Hummel, J. (2003)
The requirement that students spend some time in introspection is one key way that Montessori adolescent programs try to promote formal thinking.
Finally, Jonah Lehrer, a journalist who writes a lot about how people think and makes decisions, points out the importance of metacognition in the qualities that make for a good president.
some studies suggest that when confronted with a complex decision – and the decisions of the president are as complex as it gets – people often do best when they rely on their gut feelings …
However, it has also become clear that listening to your instincts is just a part of making good decisions. The crucial skill, scientists are now saying, is the ability to think about your own thinking, or metacognition, as it is known. Unless people vigilantly reflect on how they are making an important decision, they won’t be able to properly use their instincts, or know when their gut should be ignored. Indeed, according to this emerging new vision of decision-making, the best predictor of good judgment isn’t intuition or experience or intelligence. Rather, it’s the willingness to engage in introspection” – (Lehrer, 2008; emphasis mine)
With open classrooms allowing lots of movement, we don’t often have to deal with issues of seating arrangements. But, an interesting study (from back in 1993) found that students (adults in this case) who sit on the right side of the room are more right-brain oriented. They tend to be more the artistic types, less cautious in responding and less analytical. Right side sitters also scored higher on femininity on a Masculine-Feminine scale.
Since we’re creatures of habit, I wonder if we can see this pattern in the seating arrangements for lessons and community meetings. On balance though, I’d think this would be another argument (if another was necessary) for allowing students and lots of movement so there is more mixing and sharing of talents.
Montessori middle schools depend a lot on collaborative work and discussions. Individual parts of group work allow students to specialize in areas, hopefully, where they are interested and willing to learn the most. Then when they share their work with the group the whole group gets the information, and the person presenting it gets feedback from different perspectives. Collaborative work is excellent preparation for creative work in the future.
Some recent research by Kevin Dunbar, a neuroscience at the University of Toronto, gives some strong support to the usefulness of collaborative work. He found that group discussions, with people from different backgrounds can be much more effective at solving problems than discussions among specialists. Different backgrounds mean that each person is forced to take a step back from their expertise and think and describe the problem in a way someone else with a different perspective can understand. This allows both the expert and the person they are describing the problem to, to see the problem from different perspectives.
For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready.
This timescale coincides with Angeline Lillard’s observations in Montessori: The Science behind the Genius (Lillard, 2005) about how constructivist approaches to teaching, like Montessori’s, were devalued and derogated because the more factory-like approaches were seen as more efficient during a time when the marvels of the industrial revolution were continuously impressing. This general theory, of course, may or may not be related to the theory of teaching specific concepts like math. It is disappointing that the references to such a broad statement are not provided in the article.
