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What Neuroscience Tells Us About Deepening Learning

By Wendi Pillars

Teachers are brain-changers. As I've described in a previous article , our daily work physically alters students' neural networks. The more frequently a student's brain retrieves and connects information, the better the chance that the student will recall it quickly and accurately.

The strongest—and most easily accessible—memories are created through dense, interwoven neural networks. Information has a much better chance at being recalled more quickly when it has been retrieved repeatedly and connected to as many other pieces of information as possible.

However (and this has been a significant reflection point for me as an armchair neuroscientist) even a densely connected, sensory-rich memory is essentially reconstructed when it is recalled. The recalled information can be shaped by context, influenced by the student's emotional state,...