Bellows Institute Research
Currently Being Reviewed:
1. Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, John Palfrey, Urs Gasser
2. iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, Gary Small, Gigi Vorgan
The Bellows Institute is compiling new research from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, developmental biology and other related fields that pertain to the thinking and learning processes of our next generation. We welcome any research that sheds further light on these processes. A sample of data is presented below:
Our next generation has been socialized in a way profoundly different from their parents. Today’s students have been impacted by unprecedented interactive technologies in the fields of information gathering, communications and entertainment, owing to the influences of video games, the Internet, personal computers, increasingly sophisticated software, the I-Pod, cellular phones and derivatives such as the I-Phone. The cumulative effect has been a fundamental reorganization of social interrelationships, including the workings of the global workplace. In addition, our next generation has experienced an intense immersion in popular value systems that compete with parental, community and church values, including the film industry, the MTV culture, the celebrity culture, and school clique and gang cultures. And since infancy, they have been massively proselytized by the American television industry, which, through its programming and advertising, has constructed a disempowering value system of self-absorption, consumerism, and an uncritical perspective of the future. Consequently, emerging research in neurobiology, cognitive psychology and related fields indicate that the thinking and learning processes of our next generation are also profoundly different from their parents.
(David Elkind is a professor emeritus of child development at Tufts University.)
RECESS is no longer child’s play. Schools around the country, concerned about bullying and arguments over the use of the equipment, are increasingly hiring “recess coaches” to oversee students’ free time. Playworks, a nonprofit training company that has placed coaches at 170 schools from Boston to Los Angeles, is now expanding thanks to an $18 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Critics have suggested that such coaching is yet another example of the over-scheduling and over-programming of our children. And, as someone whose scholarly work has consistently reinforced the idea that young people need unstructured imagination time, I’d probably have been opposed to recess coaches in the past. But childhood has changed so radically in recent years that I think the trend makes sense, at least at some schools and with some students.
Children today are growing up in a world vastly different from the one their parents knew. As the writer Richard Louv has persuasively chronicled, our young people are more aware of threats to the global environment than they are of the natural world in their own backyards.
A Nielsen study last year found that children aged 6 to 11 spent more than 28 hours a week using computers, cellphones, televisions and other electronic devices. A University of Michigan study found that from 1979 to 1999, children on the whole lost 12 hours of free time a week, including eight hours of unstructured play and outdoor activities. One can only assume that the figure has increased over the last decade, as many schools have eliminated recess in favor of more time for academics.
One consequence of these changes is the disappearance of what child-development experts call “the culture of childhood.” This culture, which is to be found all over the world, was best documented in its English-language form by the British folklorists Peter and Iona Opie in the 1950s. They cataloged the songs, riddles, jibes and incantations (“step on a crack, break your mother’s back”) that were passed on by oral tradition. Games like marbles, hopscotch and hide and seek date back hundreds of years. The children of each generation adapted these games to their own circumstances.
Yet this culture has disappeared almost overnight, and not just in America. For example, in the 1970s a Japanese photographer, Keiki Haginoya, undertook what was to be a lifelong project to compile a photo documentary of children’s play on the streets of Tokyo. He gave up the project in 1996, noting that the spontaneous play and laughter that once filled the city’s streets, alleys and vacant lots had utterly vanished.
For children in past eras, participating in the culture of childhood was a socializing process. They learned to settle their own quarrels, to make and break their own rules, and to respect the rights of others. They learned that friends could be mean as well as kind, and that life was not always fair.
Now that most children no longer participate in this free-form experience — play dates arranged by parents are no substitute — their peer socialization has suffered. One tangible result of this lack of socialization is the increase in bullying, teasing and discrimination that we see in all too many of our schools.
Bullying has always been with us, but it did not become prevalent enough to catch the attention of researchers until the 1970s, just as TV and then computers were moving childhood indoors. It is now recognized as a serious problem in all the advanced countries. The National Education Association estimates that in the United States, 160,000 children miss school every day because they fear attacks or intimidation by other students. Massachusetts is considering anti-bullying legislation.
While correlation is not necessarily causation, it seems clear that there is a link among the rise of television and computer games, the decline in peer-to-peer socialization and the increase of bullying in our schools. I am not a Luddite — I think that the way in which computers have made our students much more aware of the everyday lives of children in other countries is wonderful, and that they will revolutionize education as the new, tech-savvy generation of teachers moves into the schools. But we should also recognize what is being lost.
We have to adapt to childhood as it is today, not as we knew it or would like it to be. The question isn’t whether recess coaches are good or bad — they seem to be with us to stay — but whether they help students form the age-old bonds of childhood. To the extent that the coaches focus on play, give children freedom of choice about what they want to do, and stay out of the way as much as possible, they are likely a good influence.
In any case, recess coaching is a vastly better solution than eliminating recess in favor of more academics. Not only does recess aid personal development, but studies have found that children who are most physically fit tend to score highest on tests of reading, math and science.
Friedrich Fröbel, the inventor of kindergarten, said that children need to “learn the language of things” before they learn the language of words. Today we might paraphrase that axiom to say that children need to learn the real social world before they learn the virtual one.
Thought-Provoking Perspectives of the Next Generation: A composite of perspectives on the thinking and learning process of our next generation are illuminating:
“Although the vast majority of today’s educators and teachers grew up with the understanding that the human brain doesn’t physically change based on stimulation it receives from the outside—especially after the age of 3— it turns out that this view is, in fact, incorrect.
Based on the latest research in neurobiology, there is no longer any question that stimulation of various kinds actually changes brain structures and affects the way people think, and that these transformations go on throughout life. And, until very recently Western philosophers and psychologists took it for granted that the same basic processes underlie all human thought. While cultural differences might dictate what people think about, the strategies and processes of thought, which include logical reasoning and a desire to understand situations and events in linear terms of cause and effect, were assumed to be the same for everyone. However this, too, appears to be wrong.
William D. Winn, the director of the Learning Center at the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Laboratory: ‘Children raised with the computer ‘think differently from the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential.’
Peter Moore, editor of the human resources newsletter Inferential Focus: ‘Linear thought processes that dominate educational systems now can actually retard learning for brains developed through game and Web-surfing processes on the computer.’
This may help explain the attitude of the high school student who complains that ‘Every time I go to school I have to power down.’ To a huge, underappreciated extent in our training and education, we offer our next generation very little worth paying attention to from their perspective, and then we blame them for not paying attention. Our youth is accustomed to the twitch-speed, multitasking, random-access, graphics-first, active, connected, fun, fantasy, quick-payoff world of their video games, MTV, and Internet are bored by most of today’s education, well meaning as it may be. But worse, the many skills that new technologies have actually enhanced (e.g., parallel processing, graphics awareness, and random access)—which have profound implications for their learning—are almost totally ignored by educators. So, in the end, it is all these cognitive differences, resulting from years of “new media socialization” and profoundly affecting and changing this new generation’s learning styles and abilities that cry out for new approaches to learning with a better fit. One key area of student thinking that also appears to have been affected is reflection. Reflection is what enables us, according to many theorists, to generalize, as we create “mental models” from our experience. It is, in many ways, the process of “learning from experience.” In our twitch-speed world, there is less and less time and opportunity for reflection, and this development concerns many people. One of the most interesting challenges and opportunities in teaching our next generation is to figure out and invent ways to include reflection and critical thinking in the learning (either built into the instruction or through a process of instructor-led debriefing) but still do it in the digital language of our next generation. We can and must do more in this area.” (Marc Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, 2001)
In terms of 21st century realities, we have begun to recognize the urgency of breathing new life into the science, technology, engineering and math domains, which, heretofore, have attracted only a limited number of interested students. It is from these four domains that much of our urgently needed innovation will come and from where students can, potentially, make the greatest positive difference for our global society, for example, in newly emerging sustainable technologies and in taking action to mitigate global warming. As William Harris of Science Foundation Arizona has stated:
“We must create the (educational) systems that let quality flourish and encourage innovation from young people. We must avoid at all costs suffocating the (educational) system by preventing young people’s ideas and curiosity from blossoming.”
Implications for Approaching STEM Learning: This proposal from Bellows provides a STEM learning environment that addresses the following considerations:
• Traditional American classroom instruction is a 17th century model of education that began with the founding of Harvard College in 1636 and the founding of the first public school in Dedham, Massachusetts in 1643. Under that model, knowledge was presented in separated academic disciplines that did integrate with one another across disciplines, nor did those disciplines integrate with real-world applications. Under this model of education, the lack of integration of knowledge tends to prevent students from achieving a synthesis of knowledge or helping students to form an informed worldview. Furthermore, this model of instruction has a low level of interactivity.
• The new educational model must provide for an integration of knowledge and an integration of that knowledge with real-world applications to facilitate synthesis.
• The new educational model must be far better aligned with the next generation’s thinking and learning processes, facilitating a fast pace of ever-changing parallel processing; multitasking; random-access; graphics integration; real-world connectivity; fun; fantasy; quick-payoff rewards; and a high level of interactivity.
• The new educational model must include a means for reflection and critical thinking as an integral part of the learning environment.
Abstract—Neuroscience and The Next Generation: Science education researchers have suggested that neuroscientists can play an important role in science education programs for adolescents by creating “minds-on” teaching and learning modules for scientists and teachers to use in the classroom.
Effective educational partnerships between teachers and visiting scientists not only ignite student interest but also provide opportunities for scientist and teacher professional development.
The aim of the present teaching module was threefold: (1) to introduce adolescents to the acute neurochemical effects of the psychomotor stimulant drugs and their analysis using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), (2) to spur maturation of analytical reasoning skills among adolescents, and (3) to spark enthusiasm for science education. (Click below for full presentation and click again when new page opens)
neuroscience and the next generation
Abstract—A Portrait of Generation Next: A new generation has come of age, shaped by an unprecedented revolution in technology and dramatic events at home and abroad. They are Generation Next, the cohort of young adults who have grown up with personal computers, cell phones and the Internet and are now taking their place in a world where the only constant is rapid change.
In reassuring ways, the generation that came of age in the shadow of September 11 shares the characteristics of other generations of young adults. They are generally happy with their lives and optimistic about their futures. Moreover, Gen Nexters feel that educational and job opportunities are better for them today than for the previous generation. At the same time, many of their attitudes and priorities reflect a limited set of life experiences. Marriage, children and an established career remain in the future for most of those in Generation Next.
More than two-thirds see their generation as unique and distinctive, yet not all self-evaluations are positive. A majority says that “getting rich” is the main goal of most people in their age group, and large majorities believe that casual sex, binge drinking, illegal drug use and violence are more prevalent among young people today than was the case 20 years ago.
In their political outlook, they are the most tolerant of any generation on social issues such as immigration, race and homosexuality. They are also much more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than was the preceding generation of young people. Yet the evidence is mixed as to whether the current generation of young Americans will be any more engaged in the nation’s civic life than were young people in the past, potentially blunting their political impact.
This report takes stock of this new generation. It explores their outlook, their lifestyle, and their politics. Because the boundaries that separate generations are indistinct, the definition of Generation Next–and other generational groups mentioned in this report–are necessarily approximate. For analysis purposes, Generation Next includes those Americans between the ages of 18 the 25 years old. (Click below for full presentation and click again when new page opens)
Abstract–The Science of Thinking Smarter: John J. Medina is a developmental molecular biologist and the Director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University. Harvard Business Review’s editor Diane Coutu recently met with Medina to discuss the relevance of neuroscience to practical management. They explored, among other things, the neuroscience of stress and the link between exercise and cognitive power. By unpacking the neuroscience of stress, for example, companies can find new ways to dramatically improve the productivity of their knowledge workers and thus gain the competitive edge. (Click below for full presentation and click again when new page opens)
(click here and click again when it reappears) NEUROSCIENCE AND THINKING