1. Student Centered Learning and the Brain
Dr. Sarah Jane Fishback
Kansas State University
Educational Leadership

2. Student Centered Learning focuses on what the students are learning, not what instructors are doing.

3. Instructors become facilitators and creators of learning environments

4. Not a bag of tricks, or methodology

5. Instructors Need to Know
What students are learning
How they are learning
How they might use the learning

6. In order to accomplish this an instructor must understand how the brain works.

7. The body and the brain interact when learning, but the brain processes and stores what we learn.

8. What We Need to Know About the Brain
Neuroplasticity
Attention
Memory
Critical Thinking

9. We are pattern creators and meaning makers

10. A Cow

11. Neuroplasticity Brain constantly changes
100 billion neurons that connect in trillions of different ways

12. Most of this occurs unconsciously
Neural networks are created through associations with already stored schemata
Most of this occurs unconsciously
animals
PURPLE
fruit
flowers
Symbols
Gems

13. The brain filters out most sensory information

14. Factors that Impact Attention
Novelty

15. Fear

16. Emotion Passion for playing Love what you do
Elated all the hard work paid off

17. Memory Systems Memory Declarative Memory Non-Declarative
Episodic Semantic Cerebellum
Memory Memory
Personal Facts Automatic
Reminiscences and Memory
Of Life Events Figures

18. Declarative
Hippocampus sorts incoming information, passes to working memory which sends it on to long term storage.
Hippocampus

19. Hippocampus impacted by stress, multiple tasks and aging.

20. If memories are not stored so they can be retrieved, they are unavailable to the prefrontal cortex which is involved in critical thinking.

21. The prefrontal cortex is the “decider”- where we solve problems, evaluate solutions and critically reflect.

22. An instructor can only do this for him/herself
An instructor can only do this for him/herself. We cannot do this for students.

23. Only the student can attend, remember and think for his/her self.

24. We cannot crawl into a student’s brain.

25. We may impact them if they chose to attend, listen or think about what we say, but it is always the students set of memories and experiences that this new learning is attached to.

26. What we can do is create a learning environment where students are likely to learn.