PBS高端访谈:教师挖掘脑科学以促进学习

 　　JUDY WOODRUFF: Next: neuroscience and education.

　　Thousands of teachers around the country are learning about an alternative teaching program that aims to use scientific discoveries about the brain to improve the way children learn in the classroom.

　　Special correspondent John Tulenko of Learning Matters reports from Philadelphia.

　　JASSELLE CIRINO, Teacher, Francis Scott Key Elementary: When I say class, you…

　　CLASS: You stop what you're doing. Look at the teacher.

　　JOHN TULENKO: Today is Wacky Wednesday in Jasselle Cirino's third grade classroom, which explains the blue wig¹.

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: So I want you to teach your neighbor.

　　JOHN TULENKO: But the rest of what you're about to see is what her classroom looks like every day.

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: I want giant gestures.

　　JOHN TULENKO: She uses a set of techniques some call whole brain teaching.

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: A lot of times in traditional teaching, you're just lecturing, and you're talking and talking. And what we like to say, whole brainers, we like to say that the more you talk, the more students you lose. And so we use different methods to engage multiple parts of the brain. And that way, you get 100 percent engagement.

　　JOHN TULENKO: These days, scientists can look further into the brain than ever, pinpointing² the neurons and circuits that control how we think and act. All that's sparking a movement that's changing the way some teachers teach.

　　Are there parts of the brain that you're aiming at?

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: Yes, the hippocampus, the motor cortex, the prefrontal cortex, which is the brain's boss, so something like class, it turns on the prefrontal cortex, which makes the brain's decisions.

　　So it says, hey, pay attention. I'm about to tell you something. So, once I have their attention, I teach the material usually through mirrors.

　　This deals with the mirror neurons in your brain. And so what I say, they repeat. To learn anything, you have to repeat something. You have to repeat something that's modeled to you. That's where it starts.

　　JOHN TULENKO: A lot of times in your class, I saw you gesture, and then you asked your students to gesture.

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: Right. That's for engaging their motor cortex. When you act things out while you're reading, you comprehend more. And we use brainees. These are gestures that are tied to writing skills.

　　JOHN TULENKO: Can you give me some examples?

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: Sure. For example is an example. But or however. If, then, so more of like a cause and effect. Adjective. A noun is a person, place or thing, compare, contrast, simile³, metaphor⁴, I mean, the list goes on and on.

　　JOHN TULENKO: I saw you a bunch of times where you would stop, and then you would say to the group, teach.

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: Teach.

　　JOHN TULENKO: What's going on there?

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: So I have taught them the lesson, but now they need to teach that main point to each other. They're getting another repetition of the material, but, this time, a lot of times it's in their own words. And they're learning how to put things in their own words.

　　You're writing while you're doing it. You're gesturing, so you're remembering it in different parts of the brain. You're not just listening. You're also speaking. You need to be doing all of these things at once in order to engage the whole brain.

　　JOHN TULENKO: We wanted to know if science actually backed up any of this. So we brought a video of Jasselle's class to Daphna Shohamy, a neuroscientist at Columbia University.

　　DAPHNA SHOHAMY, Columbia University: I buy it. It makes great sense to me.

　　I mean, the brain is really in many ways wired for actions. Right? It's — it's really not wired to sit passively and absorb any information. But I think where — you know, where I wouldn't fully⁵ agree is the idea that more activity is always good. More brain activity in more places doesn't equal more learning or a better memory.

　　JOHN TULENKO: OK. How can children learn better?

　　DAPHNA SHOHAMY: Right, right. Yes, it's the million-dollar question. I think we have some answers.

　　The brain learns when things are surprising and interesting.

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: What is going on here?

　　DAPHNA SHOHAMY: So if I give you a $20 bill, now, all of a sudden, you will sort of have a burst of activity in your dopamine neurons. They fire.

　　But if I do that regularly, like every five minutes, I give you $20, your dopamine neurons will stop firing. So what these neurons are doing is they're signaling how unexpected an event was in the world. They're not signaling how good or bad it was. They're signaling how unexpectedly good or unexpectedly bad it was.

　　So keeping things a little bit noisy and a little bit different is actually really beneficial for learning in many different ways.

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: Hold your horses.

　　JOHN TULENKO: Neuroscience says there's something else important going on here.

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: When you're learning things, just even in life, you connect it with a type of feeling. And so the main emotion we want you to feel in a whole brain classroom is fun.

　　Seriously?

　　DAPHNA SHOHAMY: Our brain was evolved to survive. We need to remember things that were of emotional and social significance. That's probably much more important than remembering any bit of information that was communicated to us within a lecture.

　　JASSELLE CIRINO: We're done being blah. It's time to get fuzzy.

　　CLASS: Fuzzy!

　　JOHN TULENKO: Here are a few other things neuroscientists think the rest of us ought to know about the brain, that stress damages neurons and impairs⁶ learning. Brain training games claim to be effective, but, in fact, the jury's still out.

　　What does help is regular physical exercise. Staying active keeps the brain developing and delays cognitive⁷ decline as we get older.

　　In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I'm John Tulenko reporting for the NewsHour.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: As for results, a study on the effect of whole brain teaching in one California elementary school found test scores in math and language arts rose by an average of 11 percent.

1 wig   

n.假发

参考例句：

• The actress wore a black wig over her blond hair.那个女演员戴一顶黑色假发罩住自己的金黄色头发。
• He disguised himself with a wig and false beard.他用假发和假胡须来乔装。

2 pinpointing   

准确地找出或描述( pinpoint的现在分词 )； 为…准确定位

参考例句：

• The difficulty of pinpointing primitive and derived characters remains. 要正确地指出原始性状和次生性状仍然感到困难。
• Pinpointing the true source of power in Japan is a notoriously slippery task. 要准确指出日本真正的权力来源，是一项非常困难的任务。

3 simile   

n.直喻，明喻

参考例句：

• I believe this simile largely speaks the truth.我相信这种比拟在很大程度上道出了真实。
• It is a trite simile to compare her teeth to pearls.把她的牙齿比做珍珠是陈腐的比喻。

4 metaphor   

n.隐喻，暗喻

参考例句：

• Using metaphor,we say that computers have senses and a memory.打个比方，我们可以说计算机有感觉和记忆力。
• In poetry the rose is often a metaphor for love.玫瑰在诗中通常作为爱的象征。

5 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

6 impairs   

v.损害，削弱( impair的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Smoking impairs our health. 吸烟会损害我们的健康。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Almost anything that impairs liver function can cause hepatitis. 任何有损于肝功能的因素，几乎都会引起肝炎。 来自辞典例句

7 cognitive   

adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的

参考例句：

• As children grow older,their cognitive processes become sharper.孩子们越长越大，他们的认知过程变得更为敏锐。
• The cognitive psychologist is like the tinker who wants to know how a clock works.认知心理学者倒很像一个需要通晓钟表如何运转的钟表修理匠。