Data shows that girls increasingly outperform boys academically, including higher high school and college graduation rates in Texas. Are such gaps due to developmental differences? Or do they stem from cultural and social factors?
Points raised these issues with Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman, founder and chief director of the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas. Research by Chapman, author of the new book Make Your Brain Smarter, and her colleagues into how the brain develops has led to strategies that have helped 14,000 students in Texas, Massachusetts and Arizona. Educators in Texas and other states are now being trained in the strategies.
You’ve studied the brain’s development in boys and girls. What observations particularly strike you?
The teen brain is undergoing more developmental change during adolescence than any other time of our life, except the first two months of life. The frontal lobes and rich connections to other brain areas are where the development is rapidly taking place. The key frontal lobe networks support higher-order learning, planning, decision-making, judgment.
Seventh and eighth grade is when the brain is particularly primed to develop higher-order reasoning skills, which will advance an individual’s success in obtaining high school diplomas, college degrees and set the stage for acquiring meaningful employment in young adulthood. Girls in seventh and eighth grade perform higher in higher-level reasoning and frontal lobe function. The gender gap is particularly wide in poverty.
Failure to engage teens in strategic thinking and advanced reasoning is happening across all socio-economic levels, regardless of whether students are at risk or are higher achievers. Recent scientific studies show that growing up in poverty can shape the wiring and even the physical dimensions of a young child’s brain, with negative effects on language, learning and attention.
BrainHealth researchers are showing that the poverty brain effect can be remedied with reasoning training during the pivotal middle school years. Elevating brainpower in impressionable adolescents is imperative to promote the independent and creative ways of learning that so many crave. The economic future of our communities and our nation depend on increasing innovation and reasoning capacity.
Those findings have tremendous consequences, but why do girls in seventh and eighth grades perform better?
We do not know the answer. Girls, from the beginning, have notable brain differences: less ADHD, fewer learning problems, more advanced language skills, etc.
Boys, because they are often struggling by seventh grade, are less engaged and are dropping out of school. Left untouched, it is a horrible equation, but the fact is that through research at the Center for BrainHealth, we have shown that we can catch boys up.
Knowing the “why” is only a small part of the equation, knowing the “how” is the key. Our goal is to be solution-oriented; we have shown dramatic gains through short-term intensive training in both boys and girls.
We’ll get to your strategies, but you said the gender gap is particularly wide in poverty. Why is that?
The effects of poverty shape brain development in profound ways.
Scientific studies show that growing up in poverty dramatically affects the wiring and even the physical dimensions of a young child’s brain, with negative effects on language, learning and attention. The stressors of poverty (environment, economic hardship, familial support, etc.) can divert attention away from the importance of school and the brain’s capacity to focus, innovate, be creative and plan.
The good news is that we can overcome the effects through training. The brain is the most adaptable, regenerative and trainable organ in the body; it can be rewired no matter the life stage.
Our research shows that students from poverty backgrounds demonstrate a significant ability to overcome their harsh environmental conditions and poor predictions. Our researchers went into a Dallas public school and trained students in strategies that allowed them to better process information.
The strategies taught students how to think strategically, instead of teaching them what to learn. We focused on improving the efficiencies within the brain through techniques that help students organize their thoughts, synthesize data, think abstractly and interpret meaning from the information presented them.
The training resulted in students doubling their commended scores in reading, math, science and social studies. Performance at commended levels means that these strategy-trained students were performing at Advanced Placement levels — not simply passing.
The middle school students we initially taught, who were from a low socioeconomic school in DISD, are now seniors: 80 percent remain in school and on track to graduate, and 73 percent are in three or more AP classes.
What strategies help adolescents get past their developmental challenges? What strategies particularly work for boys?
Adolescents become engaged when they are challenged to think strategically and generate ideas. Boys especially want to be creative and innovative. They want to create new knowledge. Rote bores them; technological progress and the ability to look up any fact in an instant is obstructing individual creativity and failing to inspire adolescents’ capacity to think for themselves.
Teens taught in a mechanistic, rote style will build very different brains than those trained to abstract, synthesize and connect meaning to their own world and other vast knowledge sources. The brain loves to solve new problems.
Frontal brain networks undergo dramatic expansion and remodeling during the teen years. Education is neglecting the fourth “R” of education — reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic and now reasoning.
Brain science has shown that constructing novel, generalized meaning is how the brain best learns. The program developed by the Center for BrainHealth team, Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Training, teaches teens how to strategically think rather than what to learn.
This Q&A was conducted and condensed by Dallas Morning News editorial columnist William McKenzie. His email address is firstname.lastname@example.org. Sandra Bond Chapman’s email address is email@example.com.