The neuroscience lowdown: 6 brain-friendly strategies for back-to-school blues
By Sala Mkoka with expert commentary from Professor Ken Purnell
The start of a new school year may sound exciting for some – meaning the entrance into high school, seeing old friends and making new ones – but for many the prospect of returning to the halls after an extended holiday break can be daunting and tedious; so how to make the transition as seamless as possible?
Research and evidence from neuroscience and educational psychology combine to arm parents and teachers alike with strategies to alleviate much of the stress encountered at this time of year, and paves a practical way forward to mitigate lapses into less constructive behaviours.
CQUniversity Head of Course for Educational Neuroscience Professor Ken Purnell said that high school students often face challenges upon returning from extended breaks, such as fatigue, social anxiety, and academic stress; but has found through evidence-based practice that breaking away from traditional methods to get back to school is a step towards better health and enhanced learning.
“At its core, educational psychology explores how humans learn and develop, providing crucial insights that shape modern educational approaches,” Prof Purnell said.
“The recent integration of neuroscience has added a compelling dimension to this field, offering unprecedented insights into the biological basis of learning and the brain-body connect.
“For instance, the widely-held belief in fixed learning styles (a neuromyth) has been reconsidered in light of neuroscientific research highlighting the brain's plasticity and the benefits of diverse learning experiences.”
Professor Purnell stated that integrating wellness practices into daily routines was essential for teenagers’ mental and physical wellbeing, and highlighted the importance of practising abdominal breathing and mindfulness as key elements to students being able to operate from the pre-frontal cortex of the brain where neural firing occurs.
“With recent technological advances, particularly in neuroimaging and cognitive science, our understanding of learning processes has been revolutionised,” Prof Purnell said.
“Mindfulness practices can enhance emotional regulation and present-moment awareness,” Prof Purnell explained.
“This can include grounding or box breathing which are incredible techniques to help teenagers manage stress and enhance their daily focus, and reduce anxiety.”
The developments in the field of neuroscience have enabled researchers to observe neural responses to various teaching methods in real-time, and Prof Purnell outlines six simple strategies that parents and teachers can implement as students head back to the books.
Strategies for parents
1. Manage sleep schedule
Reset sleep patterns before school resumes.
“Quality sleep is crucial for adolescent development and academic performance,” Prof Purnell said.
“Maintain consistent regular sleep and wake times, even on weekends. Ensure to create a calming ritual 30 to 60 minutes ahead of bedtime, including limiting device use before bed and keep electronics outside the bedroom.”
2. Create a study space
Provide a quiet, organised area for homework.
3. Maintain dialogue
Discuss school expectations and concerns openly.
4. Monitor screen time
Set reasonable limits on digital device usage.
5. Ensure preparedness
Assist in gathering necessary school supplies.
6. Balance activities
Support both academic and extracurricular engagement.
“Regular exercise benefits both physical and mental health, so establish some regular organised activities where your teenager can participate in sports or recreational programs.”
Strategies for teachers:
1. Start gradually
Begin with engaging activities to rebuild classroom community.
2. Create a safe space
Foster an environment where students feel comfortable expressing their concerns.
“One simple technique is to speak negative emotions aloud, and by doing so it readily changes their state and allows students to participate, engage and bring them into the present moment.
“Negative thoughts can then be transformed through positive mental imagery, so practice this before stressful events using calming metaphors and incorporate simple relaxation visualisations during breaks.”
3. Set clear goals
Assist students in establishing achievable academic targets.
4. Vary teaching methods
Incorporate movement and diverse activities to maintain engagement.
“Make sure to schedule regular activity breaks during study sessions, and implement sensory activities with tactile materials. Engaging the senses can effectively reduce stress and improve focus.”
5. Connect to real life
Illustrate practical applications of learning material.
6. Restore routines
Systematically reintroduce classroom expectations.
“Implementing these strategies can help teachers and parents support a successful return to school whilst promoting teen wellbeing,” Prof Purnell said.
“Integrating neuroscience offers exciting possibilities for advancing our understanding of learning and developing more effective teaching strategies.”
Find out more in the latest instalment of Conversations with the Dean, where Professor Ken Purnell sits down with the Dean of the School of Education and the Arts Professor Stephen Dobson where they unpack the world of neuroscience and its findings: listen to the podcast, or watch the episode on the CQUniversity News Youtube channel.
Transcript
[Music]
Professor Stephen Dobson:
Hello again. Today again with Professor Ken Pell and we're talking about education neuroscience this um let's call it growing field of study for people or wanting to understand what actually goes on inside their head.
And I'm reminded of my mother-in-law, who has now passed, and whenever she told a story she never told it from the beginning she always told it from the middle and it was incredible. I was always woven into her stories, see, I wanted to know what was the beginning - why are you telling me this? Now is that the kind of thing which you'd work on in education neuroscience? What are the kind of things you you're looking and taking up here? Is it people things, is it storytelling, what is it?
Professor Ken Purnell:
Storytelling is very powerful, and one of the earliest neuroscientists talking about that and it's in his book Professor Louie calino from the United States, he's a psychologist and neuroscientist, has a whole chapter devoted to the importance of storytelling and how brain-friendly that is, how for tens of thousands or whatever years we've sat around campfires telling stories so it's innate to our psyche if you like and it's something that we love and usually we like a cognitive Gap as you described; I want to discover the beginning or work solve the end for myself rather than be explicitly told from the go.
Prof Dobson:
And does that connect with kind of brain science and things? In what way, what would I be learning?
Prof Purnell:
Yeah there's an awful lot of new stuff these days and uh if you don't mind I'll just quickly give overview of our Master of Educational Neuroscience that grew from my love of cognitive neuroscience which I developed at the University of New South Wales in the late 80s and 90s and continued on. And I was given free reign a few years ago to develop with in a hyper flexible way to study, 365 days a year, do your assessments when you like, all that sort of beautiful stuff, in the Be Different platform of our University in educational neuroscience, and before too long after a couple of hesitant starts I said, "Right, we want a master of Educational Neuroscience that consists of seven subjects - the last one being a Capstone project - and the Grad Cert to be half of that (well half of it's the first four) so what we did is we said we got some really good stuff here, there's no other university in Australia that has these sorts of things. The curriculum design came from a good colleague of mine even though I've done a lot in curriculum design myself - Dr Daniel Tigue - and so we followed his stuff very faithfully and it became a real winner. Could I give you an idea with our first four subjects in the Grad Cert, the first four of the Masters, uh we said let's take - they're 150 hours each 600 total - let's take about 6 hours out of each one and put it in this wonderful platform that's worldwide called Future Learn.
Well last time I looked we had 51,783 - it started in July 2020 (and that was just a a few weeks ago when I looked at it), when you look at it we've actually got about 80 pages of some top stuff from us and calling upon resources from Harvard, from Oxford, from Sydney, from wherever the Queensland Brain Institute and so on, so picking if you like the eyes out of the best the Judy Willises, whoever it is, and making that available - the article the video - and us weaving words around it to get them to focus and to then use it in their practice immediately, and so it's a matter of not just learning about and delaying but the instantaneous use and gratification because you get the dopamine kick then that solidifies learning.
Prof Dobson:
You slipped in a little bit of that education neuroscience there and you've created the cognitive gap because I'm interested - so what would I be learning?
Prof Purnell:
Right from the beginning we give you an overview the importance of the 'social brain' I say for example...
Prof Dobson:
What's that?
Prof Purnell:
The social brain is what Cosalino and others argue is what we're built for - human nature is entirely social. You remember Maslow who said back in '54 or whatever it was needs of people and you eventually get to social sort of up the hierarchy after you deal with your physical - well we contest that these days from Neuroscience saying "well how does a baby survive then?" because they socially connect with their parents and carers and and do things in their brain that result in them being fed clothed well-looked after loved etcso we had to say to Maslow, "well, good effort" but it didn't have quite the evidence base we've got today. So we just need to change a few things - not throw it out entirely - but just change a few things.
So we look at the 'social brain' which is critical because it's as though we are built with a brain that if I just use one word about the brain you'd have to say it's social - no other word, it's social - and you know there's been many experiments where babies were left alone and so forth in various parts of the world as we know that had horrific outcomes, but yeah so we start off with things like that and then go through to look at "well, where is this actually now?"
And so we have a look at a lot of contemporary things, for example, with Covid we had a lot of remote learning going on some of which was fantastic, some of which was atrocious, and there was a lot more of the latter than the former arguably, and so one of the key things we say "well how can we do that in brain friendly ways?" And the neuroscientists have actually given us a range of information and tools whereby we could create something that no matter where you were on the planet you'd be able to work with your students in ways who are meaningful them in remote and face to face, if need be you know that sort of mixed thing...
Prof Dobson:
Would it be a bit like I know one of our colleagues Julie Newman at the beginning of a meeting she always says "give me one word for how you feel", and then the explanation in that is it it how you answer forces your brain to think differently, is it those kind of things as well?
Prof Purnell:
That's a simple strategy to start a meeting, because we usually come into the meeting thinking of the five other things we could be doing now, or I'm not happy with this group, or whatever is going on, you're stressed and so you might be happy, you might be exuberant, you might be sad, you might be whatever - and just labelling that and speaking it to the group out loud results in your being able to give a label to your dominant emotion at that time - there was about seven categories of emotions and that's from psychology as well as Neuroscience by the way, seven - and with that what happens is that you've confessed that, people are aware of it, and you actually, by putting it to the fore, can then readily change it and participate become more mindful of being in the meeting with the people learning from one another and talking to one another in proper dialogue instead of "I'm still thinking about whatever it was"...
Prof Dobson:
And something's happening in the brain?
Prof Purnell:
Yeah what occurs is that often you're coming in with the more, if you like, base brain, so we actually describe it as the red area, the orange area, and the green area. The green is where you want your thinking to happen, and when you come to a meeting you're typically in the orange area which is really being hijacked and manipulated by the migula and so you got a lot of emotional sort of stuff going on.
What you want to have is that blood flow and so forth and the neural firing and up in the prefrontal cortex and by simply calling it what it is you move from sometimes the red, angry sort of you know I'm like a reptile, through to the "well, I can express myself but I'm still really not here", to "I am totally engaged and enthused with what I'm going to participate in now", so it brings you into the moment that's just one simple one.
Prof Dobson:
So if I'm interested then what I'm going to learn is also immediately applicable to the situations in which I am, I'm guessing that's also the appeal; it's not a kind of knowledge where you take it and you have to think about how you're going to use it - this you can use immediately.
Prof Purnell:
You know for example those many students who are in the Future Learn um some pages of those 80 have (I showed my wife one a few weeks ago) and I said "look, Sandra there's 2,601 positive comments on this", (and some are in different languages that I don't respond to but I pick out a couple to use and make some comment) and usually you'll see something like, "Wow I didn't realise that in the Philippines for example we spent multi-million dollars doing this on auditory and whatever learning styles and you mean it's actually not true, people learn differently to that?"
"Yes, and you spent a lot of money on it" and we actually explained to them the commercial interests that have driven that and then taken up by bureaucrats and so on without much investigation as to the efficacy.
Prof Dobson:
This is going to change the way we actually teach as well because it's it's going to affect the teaching profession, without doubt, and the learning which is global and not related just to teachers...
Prof Purnell:
Yeah we've got a situation in Australia where all universities shortly will be required by the body that looks after them, in terms of pre-service teaching programs degrees, to include brain friendly learning and that's to me brain-based learning I think they call it - that's what we used to call it, we moved away from that for various reasons, we call it educational neuros generally in the world, they'll catch up - but with them they're going to mandate that that's a requirement for all teachers to learn now.
What about the many many teachers who've been out there for some years? They can do the Future Learn courses, they could do the 20 hour 'social brain' one and get a bit of a good feel and then if they wanted to the Grad Cert of four subjects done at their own time and uh the Masters for a number.
So one of the key things, Stephen, that we teach them about for example (that's of great value probably to our audience) is that most of us believe it or not are stressed much of the time, and stress levels as we read in the media - mainstream, social and so forth - are probably at their peak, the highest they've ever been - whether you're a school kid an adult whatever. And so we teach them about what's going on in the brain and how to reduce that stress level and there's many different ways of doing that, and we say pick one that's suitable for your students.
So we say, look if you didn't have some stress you wouldn't get out of bed in the morning - you wouldn't do anything, you'd die - you need to have some stress. We actually call that good stress/you stress, and then you have a window of stress which all are different - yours is different to mine and so forth - and the context of the day it varies, you know my window is this big or whatever it might be.
Likewise for our students so teachers become 'managers' of the windows of stress of their students and so we talk about them managing their 'windows of stress' and so forth and as I say we give them a whole bunch of techniques.
One of my favorite ones which I personally use is just concentrating on the breath, getting it down to abdominal breathing because as soon as you get the oxygenation of the blood there it cuts the cortisol flow and the adrenaline flow - they're good chemicals in the right mix in the right amount - but often when we're stressed they're up there, cut them immediately and can bring you back to the present and feel much calmer.
You know how we used to say "count to 10 kid before you do whatever", now we say "deep breathing for 2 minutes thank you", well, whatever technique we've used. And it's interesting, Stephen, because I've got a whole bunch of people - medical practitioners, nurse educators, nurses, medical doctors, business people galore (surprising they they do a lot of education in business), and they're saying they're using that technique or whatever... And one very quickly on that one that I love - the medical profession uses a lot - is out of Perth - and it was done by a psychologist and we know the Neuroscience behind it now - it's called The Three Sighs - s-i-g-h-s - where you actually take three deep breaths and in one of them you breathe out and move your head and just exhale and make a bit of a noise; what that does is stimulate the vagus nerve which is part of the nervous system that calms you down, you know the rest and digest stuff it activates that very much. So there's little things like that you can do to instantaneously in the operating theater, or if you've got a kid in school "just you know relax for couple of minutes, you know the deep breathing" and they've practiced it in advance, it's not new. They're just simple ones and they're just breath ones, there are many others.
Prof Dobson:
Thank you so much Ken, and I'm mindful of when the the railway came it took people a long time to catch up with the idea they could sit on a vehicle, not move their body, and watch the world go by, and what I take from your teaching is - we're in one of those minds where we're trying to come to terms with this great piece of knowledge, thank you so much Professor Purnell
Prof Purnell:
Thank you
