What I learned today: Social Intelligence in the Studio

We have powerful influences on the brains and bodies of the people we interact with every day. From the perspective of recent nueroscience, our person-to-person interactions turn out to be tightly linked circuits, shaping our brains, our hormones, even the expression of our genes. In his latest book Social Intelligence Havard scientist Daniel Goleman takes us on a tour of this new science at the intersection of biology, nueroscience, and psychology. The implications for education are profound.

Here's an excerpt:

Mounting research shows that students who feel connected to school -- to teachers, to other students, to the school itself -- do better academically. They also fare better in resisting the perils of modern adolescence: emotionally connected students have lower rates of violence, bullying, and vandalism; anxiety and depression, drug use, and sucide; truancy and dropping out.

"Feeling connected" here refers not to some vague niceness but to concrete emotional links between students and the people in their school: other kids, teachers, staff. []

In a study of 910 first-graders from a national sample representative of the entire United States, trained observers evaluated their teachers, and assessed the effect of teaching style on how well the at-risk children learned. The best results were found when teachers:

• Tuned in to the child and responded to his needs, moods, interests, and capabilities, letting them guide their interactions.
• Created an upbeat classroom climate with pleasant conversations, lots of laughter and excitement.
• Showed warmth and "positive regard" toward students.
• Had good classroom management, with clear but flexible expectations and routines, so that students followed rules largely on their own.

The worst outcomes resulted when teachers took an I-It stance and imposed their own agenda without tuning in, or were emotionally distant and uninvolved. Such teachers were angry at students more often and had to resort to punitive methods of restoring order.

Students who were already doing well continued to do so regardless of the setting. But at-risk students who had cold or controlling teachers floundered academically--even when their teachers followed pedagogic guidelines for good instruction. Yet the study found a stunning difference amont at-risk students: if they had a warm, responsive teacher, they flourished, learning as well as the other kids.

The power of an emotionally connected teacher does not end in first grade. Sixth-graders who had such a teacher earned better grades not only that year but the next as well. Good teachers are like good parents. By offering a secure base, a teacher creates an environment that lets students' brains function at their best. That base becomes a safe haven, a zone of strength from which they can venture forth to master something new, to achieve.