My interest in gaining a Ph.D. at George Mason University is to further my understanding, and the understanding of teachers and parents, on how to teach the brain to learn.  Specifically, I am interested in researching and teaching students to think fast, find focus and sharpen their concentration. Current research on how the brain learns is primarily conducted by psychology researchers; however, it is my belief that in order for this research to have an ubiquitous impact it must be married to educational research. For this reason, I have decided to pursue research that would explore the possibilities of creating an educational design founded with neuroscience data.

For example, Mason’s psychology professor Dr. Maria Kozhevnikov’s (now visiting professor at Harvard Medical School) research on the benefits of meditation for visual-spatial cognition suggests a potential implication for mental training. Mental training can lead to the development of educational techniques to assist in accessing greater levels of visual-spatial memory.  Combining Dr. Kozhevnikov’s cognition (consciousness) research with educational researchers’ knowledge can result in the development of a new educational design to increase student motivation and self-directed learning. This type of cognitive research is ongoing and has exciting implications for educational designs to improve students’ higher-level thinking development. In particularly, I am interested in how this research can be used to develop academic designs for students with learning difficulties to ‘learn to learn.’

In the two decades I have been a teacher, the incidence of ADD/ADHD and the frequency of language based processing deficits has risen. I believe the increase is due to a sociology shift. Young children, adolescents, and young adults interact through the use of electronic media which makes interaction instantaneous. Information gathering is quick and easy. The brain is shifting…but education is not keeping up. Technology has ushered a sociological shift in which students connect to each other instantly, no wait time, no prior planning needed. Also, students are losing the ability to gather, organize and synthesize information because technology does it for them, higher level thinking (cognition) is done electronically. Educators must keep up! Or resign ourselves to teaching by rote memory without novel thinking. This social shift mandates the study of the brain and how to best teach it to slow down or speed up the process of processing information. I think the answer is in the neuroscience data awaiting an educational purpose.

As a special education teacher, I am in an extraordinary position to utilize brain research  to help my students learn to be cognizant of how they learn and what they learn. For example, the first assignment of the year for every student is to take an online ‘learning style’ assessment. Next, students are grouped according to their ‘strongest’ learning modality to create a document that describes their learning style; what works for them; and what teachers can do to help them learn. This is a powerful lesson for students. By the middle of the year the auditory learners call themselves the listeners; the visual learners call themselves the ‘lookers;’ and the kinesthetic learners call themselves the ‘doers.’  Teaching my students with diagnosed learning deficits has become easier. They are cognizant of their learning styles; they know how ‘they’ need to code information to memory. As a researcher I will endeavor to explore this type of lesson delivery.

In addition to teaching cognition in the classroom setting, I have dedicated the past five years to sharing cognition strategies with parents, educators and school administrators. I am a seasoned presenter and I am often invited to speak at conferences such as the ‘Mediterranean Association for International Schools’ (Spain and Tunisia), the ‘European Conference for International Schools’ (Niece and Italy) and the ‘Rome International School Association (Italy).  Workshops titles include: “The Self-Correction Spelling Strategy”, “Effective Classroom Management Tools”; “Metacognition strategies for Learning”; “What My Teacher Should Know About My Learning Style;” “How to Navigate the Academics and Extra-Curricular Activities?…Executive Functions!;” and “RTI in the International School Setting.” These workshop presentations, together with my classroom experience, demonstrate I have the needed skills for researching subjects that would enable me to successfully complete a PhD program. Furthermore, I anticipate the PhD program will allow me to further my interest in developing an educational design based on brain data to broadcast in future presentations.

I am a passionate learner and I am certain that George Mason University is the perfect fit for me. GMU is where I studied and gained my M.Ed.  I appreciated the instruction and the expertise of my professors, which I am very delighted to know, has not changed. As I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Galluzo over the summer. Dr.Galluzo was encouraging and offered more interesting reading on igniting student learning (Judy Willis). I look forward to beginning my Ph.D. studies at George Mason University in the fall of 2011.