How Brain Differences Affect Learning

Brain-based research is providing new strategies for identifying and treating the many causes of slow learning.

A student’s inability to keep pace with the demands of the classroom can produce painful feelings of inadequacy, performance anxiety, depleted motivation, and even behavioral maladjustment. Too often, schools respond to such students with well-intentioned procedures or guidelines that fail to meet the needs of the thwarted learner.

However, in recent years an impressive body of research in the neurosciences, psychology, education, and related fields has provided promising answers to the frustrating quandaries schools have faced when students are unable to keep pace in reading, writing, mathematics, and specific subject areas. The message is clear: There can be a wide range of mechanisms underlying delayed skill acquisition. To devise strategies without identifying such mechanisms represents a “shot in the dark” approach.

> read the full article written by Dr. Mel Levine and Mary-Dean Barringer…