Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

supports his argument based on a view that boys and girls learn differentlybecause their brains develop differently. He draws from a wide arrayof scientific research that may give reason as to why boys and girls observe,behave, and communicate in fundamentally distinctive ways. According toSax, boys and girls should be taught separately, using prescribed techniquesgeared toward each gender’s innate strengths.Brain-based education is the common term used for the adaptationof scientific brain research directly to the classroom. Over the last twentyyears, the tools used to study the brain, especially functional magneticresonance imaging (fMRI), have significantly improved. Neuroscientistshave been able to map the brain with greater accuracy, higher resolution,and under different conditions and stimuli. This has led to an increase inpublished findings regarding the anatomy and development of the brain. Inrecent years, many popular magazine articles and books in the mainstreampress have circulated “best practices” for the classroom based on the latestscientific “evidence.” Critics have cautioned that these amount to unauthorisedoversimplifications of controlled scientific methods. Discoveriesat the neurological and anatomical level, they argue, cannot necessarily beapplied at the behavioural level for students.In 2007, the OECD published "Understanding the Brain: The Birth ofa Learning Science," acknowledging the importance of brain research foreducation. It is a primer for educators to consider how brain science mayone day affect classroom pedagogy, based on more recent discoveries in thephysiology and development of the brain.Scientists are investing more to learn about brain development amongadolescents, with a heavy focus on the prefrontal cortex, the area responsiblefor “executive function.” It is the locus for decision-making, planning,complex thought, and weighing risks versus rewards. The onset of pubertydelivers a tremendous growth spurt within it, followed by a prolongedperiod of “pruning” through adolescence until the age of twenty. Moodswings and impulsive, thrill-seeking behaviour occur with greater frequencyduring this time in part, because the brain has yet to fully develop.As young people’s brains’ mature, these traits subside.D4.2 Differentiated IntelligenceIntelligence, what it is, and how it is measured is an area of researchfilled with competing theories and applications for learning. Traditionalviews of intelligence saw it as something fixed, a quantity that could bemeasured, predicted and even compared based on the size, shape or weightof a person’s brain. The IQ test evolved from this tradition, holding to thebelief that intelligence was static, that a person was born with a finite capacitythat would not change with age or experience.177