So why the need to have students predict, engage, reflect, and monitor? It has to do with dividing learning events into segments that students feel confident about learning. In survival terms, withholding effort is useful when there is low expectation of success. This response will benefit a fox living in a region with limited prey when it avoids chasing a rabbit uphill because the energy expended is not likely to result in energy restored when the chase fails to yield a meal. The human brain weighs three pounds and uses 20 percent of the body’s oxygen and glucose. It has similar survival mandate as the fox to limit energy and effort when it sees a low yield of success based on past experiences. In short, students have to believe that they can, and that there is a significant reason for them to try.
The cycle for disengagement and the self-fulfilling prophecy of failure is sustained because, without effort, the student does not keep up with the basic knowledge required to understand the subsequent lessons and related concepts. A student might have excellent skills at creative problem solving and concept construction, but because he or she didn’t have the chance to construct understanding with a relevant goal that would motivate the brain to hold the necessary factual or procedural information, this student fails to obtain the knowledge. His or her brain now adds another failure to its experiences that further reduces the likelihood of sustained effort toward the next goal. With falling expectations of future success and without the needed concept and factual knowledge to persevere in the topic or subject, subsequent information is increasingly decontextualized. The student can’t see the forest for the trees. In response, the brain “unplugs” as part of its energy-preserving survival mechanism.
Stop this unplugging! Through sustained student awareness of relevance and context, and through integrating cognitive interactions with learning, students’ brains will ignite and hold what they learn.