Teaching and Learning with the Social Brain in Mind

Abstract

The human brain is a social organ. Whatever an educator’s instructional goals or lesson plans, students’ brains experience the classroom first and foremost as a social system. Neuroscience research suggests that the organizing principle of the brain is one of “minimizing danger, maximizing reward.” Recent social cognitive neuroscience research suggests that there are five distinct qualities that minimize threat responses and enable reward responses in instructional settings: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness (SCARF). Behavioral scientists contend that learners’ default setting is to be autonomous and self-directed: seeking autonomy over tasks (what they do), time (when they do it), technique (how they do it), and team (whom they do it with).