12 Brain-Based Tenets from Caine & Caine

In 1994, Renate and Geoffrey Caine published a book entitled, “Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain.” This book became very popular within the education community, and it made recommendations for instruction based loosely on information from the neurosciences. Caine and Caine cautioned that direct applications of neuroscience findings to educational practice should be approached with caution, but never-the-less, provided a list of brain-based “tenets” and a list of suggestions. They recently published another book with slight changes to the original 12 tenets. The most recent version with a brief description follows.

1. All learning engages the physiology. The research on the brain and brain plasticity indicates that the body and mind are totally interconnected. As a result, students will learn more if learning experiences require them to use all their senses. Complex learning experiences require the learner to make decisions about their responses that require the integrated use of multiple body, brain, and mind systems. It is important to create an enriched environment for students by immersing them in complex experiences, engaging the senses and providing concrete experiences.

Think about: How can I engage students’ senses, bodies, emotions and interests? How can I help students make connections between content and other readings, fields or experiences?

2. The brain/mind is social. Social interaction that emphasizes belonging, recognition, and being listened to and noticed, contributes to a sense of relaxed alertness, the optimal emotional state for learning which consists of low threat and high challenge. Such an environment allows students to experience competence and confidence accompanied by motivation linked to personal goals and interests. Group activities serve to meet students’ needs for relationship, enabling them to learn more effectively.

Think about: How can I initiate group activities that enhance learning for all students?

3. The search for meaning is innate. The need to make sense of things, and to establish purpose and value is characteristic of all humans. This search for meaning encourages the use of higher order thinking skills. When student interests, ideas and “why” questions are honored and engaged, learning is enhanced.

PSLC Human Growth & Development Page 1 of 4 Lesson 5 Brain-based tenets Think about: How can I foster meaningful learning and encourage my students to seek relevance in what they are learning?

4. The search for meaning occurs through patterning. Humans are driven by a need to meaningfully organize, categorize and make sense of their world. The brain is designed to perceive and generate patterns, therefore teachers must design instruction that helps students recognize, use and communicate those patterns. Part of this process involves helping students to link new information and patterns to existing patterns and knowledge.

Think about: What patterns are evident in my instructional content? How can I help my students to recognize patterns in the content and link those patterns to their prior knowledge?

5. Emotions are critical to patterning. Every human thought, decision and response involves the emotions; therefore, learning is enhanced by rich emotional experiences.

Think about: How can I create a non-threatening, positive learning environment that will elicit positive emotions for my students?

6. Every brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts and wholes. The brain is designed to make sense of experiences. This involves both perceiving the big picture and attending to the parts or details. Effective teaching provides students with an overall context for the information being learned through a story, a model, or an example. This “big picture” serves to link the details or “parts” (facts and information) students learn.

Think about: What is the big picture that my students need to see? Does it have to do with the context of the outside world, social issues, personal impact of the topic, or the next course? How can I best convey that big picture in a way that links the detailed facts and information that my students are learning?

7. Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral attention. Attention is an essential element for learning and memory, and it is affected by learner interest and emotions, the novelty of the instruction, and the perceived meaning and relevance. However, human beings also learn from things in the instructional context to which they do not consciously attend. In addition to providing learning experiences that require students to attend to and engage with the PSLC Human Growth & Development Page 2 of 4 Lesson 5 Brain-based tenets content, educators must also contemplate what the learning context is teaching and seek to use that context to support student learning.

Think about: How can I increase students’ attention and use the teaching context and environment to support learning?

8. Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes. To learn effectively, students must consciously attend to an instructional problem or need, be given time to reflect on or unconsciously process the material learned, and must monitor the success of their efforts to learn. When students contemplate their own strengths and weaknesses in the learning process, they are better equipped to take charge of their own learning.

Think about: How and when should I give my students time to reflect on the information covered in class? How much information should I try to cover before giving my students time to process? How can I teach my students to monitor their own learning and to figure out how they learn best?

9. We have at least two ways of organizing memory (rote & spatial). The human brain can store isolated facts, skills, and procedures by rote memorization, and it can simultaneously engage multiple systems in order to make sense of experience. Teachers must decide whether there are facts and procedures that need to be memorized, and when learners must be engaged in experiences that require them to use what they recognize to make decisions in new contexts. Experiences that require students to use multiple ways to remember can produce effective learning.

Think about: What information must be recalled and what must merely be recognized? How can I plan instruction that requires students to use what they know and transfer it to new situations?

10. Learning is developmental. All learning builds on previous learning, and this process is accompanied by changes in the physiology and brain which are altered by experience. Humans learn at different rates and in different ways. Differentiated instruction that acknowledges variations in maturation and development produces effective learning.

Think about: How can I differentiate my instruction to accommodate individual differences? How can I provide levels of instruction and assessment that take into account these differences? PSLC Human Growth & Development Page 3 of 4 Lesson 5 Brain-based tenets 11. Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat. When students experience a learning environment that is threatening, they often become fearful and may experience a sense of helplessness that inhibits their learning and use of critical thinking skills. Teachers must provide an environment that fosters a relaxed but engaged mindset for learners.

Think about: How can I create a relaxed environment for learning that engages learners and keeps their interest without threatening them? How can I create a supportive, empowering and challenging environment?

12. Every brain is uniquely organized. Each individual’s brain is uniquely organized and each learner has unique learning needs. The challenge for teachers is to address and engage the unique characteristics, capabilities, needs, and differing background experiences of each learner while acknowledging and instructing to the commonalities.

Think about: How can I provide choice to learners to accommodate individual differences while also exposing all learners to required content? How can I guide my students in considering how they are alike and different from fellow students?

Applying the Principles

Caine and Caine advocate a guided experience approach to teaching, stressing that there are three fundamental elements to great teaching:

1. Create an environment of relaxed alertness where students are confident, are adequately interested, motivated and engaged, and there are no threats.

2. Orchestrate immersion in complex experiences, where students learn with the senses in realistic contexts, interact with content in concrete and physical ways, make meaningful connections to prior knowledge, apply new knowledge to address personally relevant questions and ideas.

3. Require students to actively process their experiences to consolidate and expand their learning through questioning, feedback, analysis, synthesis, critical decisions and communication of understanding.

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