Taking Center Stage – Act II (TCSII)

A Portal for Middle Grades Educators

Adolescent Development

Recommendation 4—Relevance

A summary of young adolescent development, including brain research, as it pertains to the California Department of Education's Recommendation on Relevance.

As young adolescents emerge from the cloud of childhood, a world comes into view that is new and exciting for them. They are curious about what is going on outside of their childhood sphere, and they want to know how they fit into it. Middle grades educators have a great opportunity to fill their students’ curiosity with deeper knowledge in all subjects. Because of new growth in the brain, there is a window of opportunity for young adolescents to more easily learn new ideas, knowledge, and skills from experience.1 Making the content relevant helps the young adolescent learn.

Relevancy ties information to the brain’s primary role: survival. “Learning is a biological process for survival.” (Dr. James Zull, Case Western Reserve University.) The brain will pay attention to what is important for survival. In Adolescent Characteristics (Part 1): The Survival Instinct and the Development of the Brain, Dr. Janet Zadina explains that it is the survival instinct that drives what people pay attention to and how we learn.2 If there is a bully in the classroom, a student is more likely to pay attention to what the bully is doing rather than to the teacher’s lesson. So, the brain seeks out what is important, which might not be what educators deem important, and favors a survival mentality.3

Learning that is connected to survival activates a part of the brain called the reward pathway. Solving problems and successful thinking brings pleasure, as when students experience those “aha!” moments.4 To ensure that young adolescents experience the pleasure of learning, the material needs to be meaningful and the learning effortful.5

• New knowledge becomes meaningful when the information relates to something that the learner already knows.
• New knowledge perks the attention when it is relevant to the learner.
• The more relevant the information, the more meaningful it becomes.
• The more meaningful the information, the more likely it will be stored into memory (learned).
• Working on problems that are at the right level of difficulty is rewarding.
• Working on problems that are too easy or too difficult is unpleasant.6

Problems can be made interesting by making the information relevant with “real-world” problems. As middle grades educators know, ensuring student academic success involves understanding the world of their young adolescent students and how young adolescents survive socially, emotionally, physically, and even economically. Applying class lessons to their students’ “world” through real-world connections and meaningful participation will pique the adolescent brain’s attention for survival. At the same time, real-life applications help expand the young adolescent’s growing cognitive abilities found in the part of the brain that is least developed at this age—the frontal lobe.

The frontal lobe in the human brain enables a person to plan, analyze, evaluate, reason logically, anticipate consequences, delay gratification, solve problems, and make sound decisions. The frontal lobe develops with experience so giving middle grades students opportunities to exercise these critical thinking abilities significantly helps in the development of the frontal lobe.7 For instance, when staff members create a college-going culture on campus, young adolescents are able to practice goal setting; at the same time, their interest is heightened because the information is related to surviving in the real world. In her research on parental involvement in middle grades schools, Dr. Nancy Hill found that student achievement increased when parents discussed plans for the future that fostered career pathways or linked what their children were learning in school to real-world activities and jobs.8

Teaching tips:

• The challenge for middle grades teachers is understanding both the prior knowledge of middle grades students as a whole and each individual’s prior knowledge. Ask students to talk about their own experiences as they relate to the lesson. This helps the teacher understand how the student is relating to the information, and it helps the student to understand the relevance of what is being taught.9
• Make sure students have the appropriate background knowledge; if not, the question posed will quickly be judged as “boring.” If the students lack the background knowledge to engage with a problem, save it for another time when they have the knowledge they need.10
• Develop cross-curricular lessons with colleagues. Studies have found that the brain seeks meaningful organization and categorization of information. Going to six or seven periods of unrelated classes each day translates to meaningless information for the brain. 11
• Be interactive with students in ways they find engaging;12 incorporate emotionally engaging activities that alert the brain that the information is important so students will more likely pay attention. It also increases their attention span.
  • Once you have your students’ attention, make sure they are focusing and thinking about the particular meaning of the material you want them to remember.13
• Weave in real-world problems or applications to standard lessons.
  • Incorporate project-based learning. This occurs when students create their own projects, including the content, research, and project structures that really interest and engage them. The world is the curriculum, and projects and technology are tools for inquiry, exploration, creativity, and understanding.14 For example, tie math into budgeting for a shopping spree at the mall.
  • Build in exploration and development of career interests and choices. Include a variety of activities and roles they may play as they learn standards-based content.15
• Create meaningful participation.
  • Incorporate service-learning projects. This integrates students’ academic learning with service that meets actual community needs.
  • Role playing helps students use real-world scenarios to draw out and recall information and place it in context.16
  • Collaborative learning sparks the reward pathway.
  • Use storytelling and narratives. Storytelling is ancient and originally served to pass down information. This sparks the survival instinct for the brain.
    

Parenting tips:

• Volunteer with your child so he or she learns about community issues and needs while exploring possible career options.
• Discuss your expectations of your child’s academic achievement as it relates to career possibilities.
• Take your child to work with you.
• Discuss the relevance of your culture to the history or literature lessons your child is studying.
• Take your child to your local public library media center to use educational technology. Visit local museums together to explore history, science, and culture.
• Discuss different learning strategies that might help your child learn more efficiently at school. Monitor homework, exams, and other assignments.17
• Teach your child to play cognitively stimulating games such as chess, Scrabble, or dominoes.18
  

Adolescent Development Index

Recommendation 4—Relevance Contents

Footnotes
1Barbara Strauch, The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids. New York: Anchor Books, 2003, p. 17.
2Janet Zadina, "Adolescent Characteristics (Part I): The Survival Instinct and the Development of the Brain" Taking Center Stage—Act II.
3Raleigh Philp, Engaging ‘Tweens and Teens: A Brain-Compatible Approach to Reaching Middle and High School Students. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 2007, p. 99.
4Daniel T. Willingham, “Why Don’t Students Like School?," American Educator, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring 2009), 6.
5Janet Zadina, "Adolescent Characteristics (Part I): The Survival Instinct and the Development of the Brain" Taking Center Stage—Act II.
6Daniel T. Willingham, “Why Don’t Students Like School?," American Educator, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring 2009), 7.
7Janet Zadina, "Adolescent Characteristics (Part I): The Survival Instinct and the Development of the Brain" Taking Center Stage—Act II.
8Nancy E. Hill and Diana F. Tyson, “Parental Involvement in Middle School: A Meta-Analytic Assessment of the Strategies That Promote Achievement," Journal of Developmental Psychology, Vol. 45, No. 3, 758.
9David A. Sousa,How the Brain Learns (Third Edition). Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 2006, p. 72.
10Daniel T. Willingham, “Why Don’t Students Like School?," American Educator, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring 2009), 12.
11Raleigh Philp, Engaging ‘Tweens and Teens: A Brain-Compatible Approach to Reaching Middle and High School Students. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 2007, p. 100.
12Daniel T. Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009. p. 50.
13Ibid., p. 49.
14Allan Wigfield, Susan L. Lutz, and A. Laurel Wagner, “Early Adolescents’ Development Across the Middle School Years: Implications for School Counselors,” Professional School Counseling, Vol. 9 (December 2005), 114.
15Ibid.
16David A. Sousa,How the Brain Learns (Third Edition). Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 2006, p.48.
17Nancy E. Hill and Ruth K. Chao, Families, Schools, and the Adolescent: Connecting Research, Policy, and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press, 2009, p. 132.
18Ibid.

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