Enriching the Brain: How to Maximize Every Learner's Potential - Hardcover

Jensen, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0787975478 ISBN 13: 9780787975470

Publisher: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub, 2006

Synopsis

Arguing that teachers underestimate students' learning potential, a leading educator suggests that contemporary test-driven schooling practices are short-changing young people, drawing on neuroscientific research to explain how various types of learning conditions can enrich the brain and revealing the need for stimulating learning environments, exercise, and solid nutrition.

About this title

About the Author

Eric Jensen is an internationally recognized educator known for his translation of neuroscience into practical classroom applications. A former teacher, he is the author of over twenty books, including the widely acclaimed Teaching with the Brain in Mind. He is a longtime member of the Society for Neuroscience and the New York Academy of Sciences. Jensen is currently a staff developer and is completing his Ph.D. in psychology.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Enriching the Brain

"Eric Jensen's Enriching the Brain is an outstanding, reader-friendly resource filled with the best information available on how to teach and bring out the best in every child. This is a must-read for every educator, parent, or anyone who works with children."
Jonathan Erwin, educational consultant and author, The Classroom of Choice: Giving Students What They Need and Getting What You Want

"Many young people with gifts and talents underachieve. This book gives quality information about the scientific-based practices needed to turn around all learners, including the low performers and the gifted. It's all about the power to change."
Joseph S. Renzulli, director, The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, University of Connecticut

"Eric Jensen's new book, Enriching the Brain, gives parents and teachers strong rationale and research support for rethinking how children are reared and taught. This is a powerful book for those interested in the cognitive development of children."
Barbara K. Given, director, Adolescent and Adult Learning Research Center, Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study and director, Center for Honoring Individual Learning Diversity and International Learning Style, George Mason University

From the Inside Flap

Eric Jensen, a leading expert in the translation of brain research into education, argues in Enriching the Brain that we greatly underestimate students' achievement capacity. Drawing from a wide range of neuroscience research as well as related studies, Jensen reveals that the human brain is far more dynamic and malleable than we earlier believed. He offers us a powerful new understanding of how the brain can be "enriched" across the board to maximize learning, memory, behavior, and overall functioning. The bottom line is we have far more to do with how our children's brains turn out than we previously thought.

Enriching the Brain highlights the brain's extraordinary capacity for positive change. Jensen questions the "deficit-ridden" models in current education, including the value of standardized testing. Suggesting that certain forms of schooling actually shortchange young brains, Jensen offers solutions. He calls for an enrichment-based educational framework that emphasizes customized schooling for every learner from underachievers to the gifted. He goes on to show how the way we teach, parent, or run our schools can dramatically enrich brain capacity. In fact, we can now enrich over 90 percent of all learners, including those in poverty, with special needs, in pre-school, and of course, the gifted.

Enriching the Brain shows that lasting brain enrichment doesn't occur randomly through routine or ordinary learning. It requires specific and persistent experiences that amount to a "formula" for maximizing brain potential. Parents, teachers, and policymakers would do well to memorize this formula. In fact, the lifelong potential of all school-age kids depends on whether or not we use it. Offering an inspiring and innovative set of practices for promoting enrichment in the home, the school, and the classroom, this book is a clarion call. All of us, from teachers to parents to policymakers, must take our role as "brain shapers" much more seriously, and this book gives us the tools with which to do it.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0787975478
• ISBN 13: 9780787975470
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 330