Youki Terrada, Edutopia, 15 Tips to Align Your Teaching With Brain Science: A comprehensive guide to applying the latest insight from neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science to improve your instruction
In this very short and wonderful article, Mr. Terrada explains 15 insights from modern brain science and details how to integrate those insights into our teaching. While the article may seem to be aimed primarily at K-12 teachers, there is no question that the recommendations would enhance teaching at all levels, including law school.
Here is a short excerpt to what your appetite for more:
. . . In a 2022 study, researchers discovered that a neuroscience-based professional development program not only improved teachers’ understanding of key brain functions like attention, memory, cognitive load, and emotion, but also led to meaningful changes in classroom instruction, resulting in “significant improvements” in students’ reading competence, mathematical competence, and empathy. Understanding how student brains work doesn’t provide “exact rules that can tell the teachers what to do in every situation,” the researchers explained. Instead, it can help teachers understand the underlying mechanisms that shape learning and provide insights into how to fine-tune instruction to meet the needs of all learners.
Here are 15 tips to align your teaching with the science of how student brains work.
1. WORK ON YOUR OPENERS
The first few minutes of class set the tone for the rest of the lesson. Students’ brains are shifting from chatting with friends in the hallway to processing information and sustaining attention.
Abrupt transitions can momentarily tax students’ regulatory systems, which is why a steady, predictable opening procedure keeps cognitive load in check and helps them refocus. A 2018 study found that greeting students at the door, for example—a gesture that is both friendly and formal—increased academic engagement by 20 percentage points and decreased disruptions by nine percentage points, adding up to “an additional hour of engagement” in a school day.“If students come in knowing they’ll be required to write, read, or share at the launch of the lesson, they enter the room already anticipating that there is an immediate expectation,” writes Rebecca Alber, an instructor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. You can start class with a short, engaging activity—a rose and thorn check-in, math brain teasers, or a guess the connection riddle—to ensure that students start fresh, review previous learning, and direct their attention to the lesson’s topic. Be brief and stay on point, recommends music teacher Bill Manchester, enough to ensure a “smoother start” as students shift gears at the start of class.
2. COLLECT REGULAR FEEDBACK
What you explain and what students understand aren’t always the same thing: Attention can falter, confusion can set in, and the accumulated debris of a long lesson can slowly overload working memory.
That’s why high-performing teachers make diagnostic feedback a regular part of classroom activity, not just to check for student understanding, but to find out whether their own teaching hit the mark, researchers explained in a 2019 study. This feedback tended to reveal cognitive choke points—places where confusing directions, unclear expectations, or information overload sabotaged student learning.
Use short, anonymous surveys to gather feedback. Mix targeted prompts with open-ended questions—like “Are assignments clear?” “What can I do to improve our classroom?” or “Are there any topics we should spend more time on?”—to quickly surface what’s working and what needs refining.
