Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain

From an award-winning neuroscience researcher with twenty years of teaching experience, Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain uses educator-friendly language to explain how the brain learns. Steering clear of “neuro-myths,” Dr. Janet Zadina discusses multiple brain pathways  for learning and provides practical advice for creating a brain-compatible classroom. While there are an abundance of books and workshops that aim to integrate education and brain science, educators are seldom given concrete, actionable advice that makes a difference in the classroom. Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain bridges that divide by providing examples of strategies  for day-to-day instruction aligned with  the latest brain science . The book explains not only the sensory/motor pathways that are familiar to most educators (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic), it also explores the lesser known pathways--reward/survival, language, social, emotional, frontal lobe, and memory/attention--and how they can be tapped to energize and enhance instruction. Educators are forever searching for new and improved ways to convey information and inspire curiosity, and research suggests that exploiting different pathways may have a major effect on learning. Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain allows readers to see brain science through the eyes of a teacher—and teaching through the eyes of a brain scientist.

Acknowledgments ix Preface xi Introduction 1 1 How the Brain Thinks and Learns 9 2 The Sensory Motor Pathway 35 3 The Emotion Pathway 63 4 The Reward Pathway 89 5 The Attention and Memory Pathways 109 6 The Language and Math Pathways 133 7 The Frontal Lobe Executive Function Pathway 165 8 The Social Pathway 187 9 The Big Picture 211 Bibliography 239 The Author 259 Index 261