Fostering Motivation by the Help of Neuroplasticity

Fostering pauperization by the Help of NeuroplasticityThere atomic chip 18 deuce types of take ining ability break versus issue mindset. In fixed mindset, students (people) believe that their abilities is innate and they put upnot change it, therefore a failure makes them start doubting in themselves and believing they argon not smart/good enough to achieve their name and addresss. On the different cave in, those who fox a growth mindset believe that they provide break their abilities by erudition and practicing. They fancy failure as an opportunity to works on their mistakes and weaknesses their perseverance and resilience makes them more than propel and work harder to improve their abilities. Moreover, unity of the biggest difficulties that students looking when they enter to a raw(a) st twelvemonths of their pedantic life is lack of motivating. The main belief of this final cause is improving growth mindset as well as fostering innate motivation among students by t to severally 1ing them about the mindset and neuroplasticity. For this purpose, a weekly shop provide be visualizeed for five posings. Below is the detail of each session.MethodThis project is instal on gibeing science start out with focus on embodiment and feedback which be explained in details.ParticipantsIn value to meet the goals of this project and having a sound base of interpretation of the matters and eliminating rough of the confound variables like method of learning and environmental inconsistencys, students from one disunite volition be selected to participate in the workshop. Junior students ar extremely vulnerable to fail to achieve an acceptable grade during their high take, because in general children in this age suffer from antisocial behavior, lack of self-esteem, school engagement and more importantly being stir upd enough to watch their study. Having a positive or negative exit in this age dep ceases on students motivation and motivation is dep curiosityent on children core belief. In some other(a) pa enjoyments, the expression students deal with their environment, indicate their future(a) success and scarcely here motivation comes to play an important routine because if students are motivated enough to continue their study and like to challenge themselves, they tramp suffer and rase flourish during this period (Blackwell et al., 2007). For this reason, target meeting in this project impart be high school students. Both male and young-bearing(prenominal) students with any ethnic background sess participate in this study. It is holy person to eat a balanced publication of male and female participants in order to control for any potence gender inequalitys in the study.Materials anterior to participating in the workshop, participants forget be asked to answer to two questionnaires one of them is a motivation questionnaire to examine students goal in the coming year and their view about the value of efforts and the other one is a mindset questionnaire. The mindset questionnaire leave alone measure students core belief about their intelligence, goal orientation, belief about effort and attribution and strategies in response to failure. Teachers advertise on students level of engagement and motivation in classroom exit be likewise cacheed.To investigate the impact of growth mindset on long term achievements (outcomes), the same questionnaire allow for be distributed at the end of semester, which will be two months later the workshop. The latest grade of students mathematic achievements (CAT) and students new math grade at the end of semester will be collected. agencySession 1 The Neurons Structure and FunctionIn this session, students will learn about concept of nerve cell and its structure and neurotransmitters by lecture and pictures ( sort 1 and 2). The lesson plan for this session is as the followingLesson Plan There are two types of stalls in the head The first type is called glia, which comes from a word that means glue and they hold the virtuoso together. Glia plays an important role in the processing and communication. The main consciousness cells are called neurons. They have a lipid bilayer as a cell tissue layer to keep every social function inside. They have the fluidly cytosol, the liquid inside. Neurons have three main move, the cell consistency, or the soma, is where we maintain the nucleus, the part that has DNA. And the other parts are the specialization that allows the neurons to channelise with other cells. Dendrites are branches around the soma. It integrates it in two ways, both spatially and temporally. spatially means weve got all these inputs coming from different parts of the whizz and temporally means that theres a time window over which the cell is aspect at. Once the information has been summed up and the neuron decided how to process it, the neuron sends output imbibe to the axon. Neurons shapes and sizings depend on their function deep down the neuronal circuit. The stereotypical one is called a multi-polar neuron which has more than one dendrites and simply one axon. Bipolar neurons have one input and one output. unipolar neurons have basically one long transmission wire with the cell personify off to the side, so information just kind of flows see with, no real interference from the soma itself. Physiological properties of the neuron The neuron is actually using electricity to send done the dendrites and then down the axon. Every cell has an electric tissue layer potential, or an electric resting potential, which is the difference amongst the electrical potential energy inside and outside the cell. By recording the electrical potential of cell membrane versus the electrical potential at an electrode outside the cell membrane we can have potentiality difference. Most cells have a resting membrane potential of about -70 or -65 mV. The other property thats really i mportant about the neurons is that they have Ion channels, which are like accessionways in their cell membrane. When their membrane potential gets high and reaches the thresholds, these doors can open. Signal starts at this area at the juncture of the soma and the axon thats called the Axon Hillock. So, what pass alongs is the membrane potential of the cell reaches a certain threshold, and that causes the door to open. When the door opens, positive ions start coming into the cell, which causes the membrane voltage to go up and opens more of these voltage sensitive doors. And eventually there would be a big influx of positive current, but the Ion Channels will be close very fast. That quick adjoin and decrease of the membrane potential, is called an pull through potential, which lasts for about one to two milliseconds. Action potential is an all-or-none event. As the positive ions are coming in from implement potential that started at the Axon Hillock, its going to increase the memory voltage of the axon chastise next to it. Therefore, more channels will be opened and more positive current flow in which will cause attain potential to travel down the length of axon. What the neurons saying in the physique of its spiking practise. In general, neuron does not directly talk to the next neuron via an electrical signal, instead when the electrical signal gets to the tip of the axon, the axon will release chemicals called neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are chemicals messengers that travel over a infinitesimal opening night betwixt the neurons sending the information and the dendrites of the neuron receiving the information. That ranch is called a synapse. The neuron receiving the information by their dendrites on that post synaptic side of this gap have special receptors for receiving the released chemicals by the presynaptic neuron. When the chemical binds to those special receptors, that causes changes in the membrane potential of the second neuro n and then that neuron can collect that information and send its signal to its neighbors.After this lecture, students will have time to ask any questions and discuss their thoughts and mental capacity of the concept of neurons within low-down groups. By the end of this session, students will learn about basic properties of neurons and how neurons communicate with each other. Session 2 Brain structure and Function In this session, after a brief recalling of last session which was about neurons, a few(prenominal) fact cards about pass will be prone to students. Next, a brief introduction of brain anatomy and main areas of brains will be given by the help of pictures ( predict 3 to 5). For avoiding boredom in students, instead of lecture given by the instructor, they will watch trivial videos explaining brains function. Videos are from an online course offered by University of TorontoFacts that are given after figure 3Weight 3 lbs2% of total physical structure weight unit Consumes 25% of the personifys oxygen supplyConsumes 70% of the bodys glucose supplyConsumers 25% of the bodys nutrients cytosine Billion NeuronsFacts that are given after figure 4With librate is inside the brain and Gray matter is outside the brainintellectual cortex is wrinkled. The grooves that make these wrinkles are called sulci and the ridges between them are called gyriTwo hemispheres are connected by Corpus CallosumFacts that are given after figure 5Brain has two main parts cortex which has 4 parts frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital lobe. and the other part is cerebellumAfter watching the videos, students will discuss their questions, any misconception that they might have about the brain and gained knowledge in small groups. The session will end by given pictures of brains structure and areas that students are required to name them.Session 3 Neuroplasticity In this session, the topic of neuroplasticity which is about the electrical and neural changes in the brain during learning will be thought. The lesson plan will be a brief explanation of neuroplasticity by summarizing some researches about this concept malleability is one of the most essential functions of the human brain. According to Munte et al (2002) Neuroplasticity allows the brain to adapt to environmental factors that cannot be anticipated by genetic programThere are a vast majority of researchers that are arouse in this topic and have been examining plasticity via different experiments both on animals and human. One of these researchers named Dr Norman Doidge who is condition of The Brain that Changes Itself. In his book he talked about the brain as a modifiable, changeable, adaptable and plastic being that is able to change its function and even structure without chemical reply in the body, just based on our inter performance with the brain. The interesting thing about the power of the brain is, its ability to change structurally even with imagination. Another movey relate d to plasticity is the fact that learning changes the number of connection between neurons even with hours of training the number of connection between two neurons can increase from 1300 to 2700 as an practice session. The reason how plasticity happen in our brain is through activities and thoughts that people do with their brain, there are certain genes in nerve cells that become on and others off, this change causes producing protein and protein at last makes change in brain structure. This discovery made a dependable proof for the role of learning and training in changing our brain and as a result changing our mind and behavior (Bush et al., 2004). mess are able to change their behavior as a result of functional changing in their brain, for example depression is a operose disorder that causes 25% opened of gray matter in hippocampus. This is cod to fact that chronic stress release cortisol which gradually weakens the role of left prefrontal cortex, a region that is known a s a controller of negative emotion, and the weak action at law of PFC causes 25% loose of gray matter in hippocampus. An experiment done in UK memorialiseed that the size and amount of gray matter would be the same again after 5 weeks of treatment in depressed people. Similarly, in article written by Draganski et al., (2004) the same finding was reported. Subjects of their experiments were divided into two groups learner and non-learner. They registerned their subjects brain at the beginning of experiment and find that there is no difference between two groups. Then they taught the learner group how to juggle and when their subjects were passkey enough to juggle in 1 minute, they had another FMRI scan for both group. For learners the amount of gray matter in the mid-temporal area and in the left posterior intraparietal was increased by 25% compared to non-learner and compared to the first scan. at last they had third scan after 3 months without training for both group and they found that the amount of gray matter decreased again in learner group. Their finding was consistent with the finding about depression.Mnte et al., (2002) examined neuroplasticity in musicians that had begun their training in early age. They found musicians who began before the age of sevener had a larger anterior midsagittal principal callosum compared to others that started later. Therefore, they were able to have a duplex movement. In order to be able to control bidirectional movement, an enhanced interaction between two hemispheres is indispensabilityed and since number of axons that can be transmitted to other hemisphere depends on size of midsagittal corpus callosum, therefore musicians with larger AMCC were able to have bidirectional movements. Elbert et al., (1995) showed that string players had a larger cortical representation of the digits finger in the left hand compared to non-musicians. They argued that even neuroplasticity was different among musicians depending on their interaction with music and their professional physical exercise of music for example a conductor is better in understanding non-adjacent and separating adjacent sound sources. Accordingly, there is an automatic movement in musicians body (fingers of hand or even leg) when they just listening to music and crime versa. This is because of co-activation of motor-audio regions in their brain.After this lecture, students will ask their questions (in case of any) and form small groups to share their ideas about neuroplasticity. During these sessions, students learned how their brain can be manipulated by practicingBy the end of this session, knowledge creation about the brain will be ended. Therefore, in order to test the output of the sessions, they will be required to articulate their learning. They can either create an artifact (brain, neuron), or write a short essay related to neuroplasticity. As Chinn and Sherin (2005) mentioned one of the conundrum of team work would be mor e knowledgeable students will do the load of works and some students might be softened and their learning process might be overestimated if they work in a group. To avoid this problem, each student is required to do articulation alone. They need to complete this task before last session.Understanding Goal By the end of this session, students will understand that brains function and even structure can be changed.Session 4 Mindset ChangeThis session consists of two parts. First part is the activity part in which students will discover more about brain and brain plasticity.This part is designed based on embodiment approach. Embodiment in a broad wizard could be defined as the study of the subjective role of the body in making sense of life experiences (Kiverstein, 2012). In other lecture how our bodies learn and shape the way we speak, think, and behave with regard to environmental challenges we face in our daily lives (Gibbs, 2005). Following such a explanation the idea of corp oreal cognition points out to the inter-connection of mind and body and how they both influence each other. Such an idea was raised as a counter-intuitive rock against the mind-body dualism proposed by Rene Descartes in the 17th century which supported a breakup between human body and the external world in which body is completely divisible and mind is completely abstract and indivisible. However, this view was challenged by philosophers like Merleau-Ponty (1962) who viewed body as a primordial existence prior to the existence of a reflected world, and understanding of the external world as a reflection of the humans body. Pointing to the inter- relationship between body, environment, and peoples perception of the environment (i.e. the external world) Merleau-Ponty (1962 235) writes that body is the fabric into which all objects are woven, and it is, at least in relation to the perceived world, the general instrument of comprehension (cited in Gibbs, 2005 p. ).Drawing from the defi nition of the embodiment, it can be concluded that acquiring and comprehending knowledge and solving problem are not solely manipulated in the brain. Conversely, it is influenced by the interaction we have with the external world and how our bodies manage to perceive them. According to Lakeoff and Johnson (1980) this relationship is passing represented in numerous metaphorical expressions in the language we use. For example we may say the something is beyond us when we cannot understand what a precise expression refers to. In this case we make a connection between our understanding of physical distance and mental concept of uncertainty in order to show how we feel about it. Using Lakeoff and Johnsons metaphorical representations, Barsalou (2008, p. 618) through exemplifying the act of sitting on a chair argues that embodied learning can take place through activating a perception-action-introspection entangled. According to Barsalou (2008) this whole process is an integrated and m ultimodal representation of current and chivalric sensory experiences which results in comprehending an object.According to Abrahamson and Lindgren (2014)in order to place the embodiment surmisal in education there is need to have an embodied design in order for learners approach a problem in a subject matter through their natural body instinct and movements (p. 363). However, embodied designs could be challenged from three aspects of the types of activities, materials and artifacts, and facilitation of conceptual development. Accordingly they proposed that each of those challenges could be fitly met through using initial simple activities which fall within the experiential domain of learners and then gradually move toward more symbolic one. Moreover, the types of materials and artifacts employ to promote learning in such kinds of designs should be similar to ones found outside these designs and in unmediated environments. Finally, the movement and body engagement should be faci litated through providing real-time feedback by tutors and teachers to help learners develop their own conceptual insights.Given this brief explanation of embodiment, students will participate in an activity that will result in understanding how their brain can be manipulated by practicing and how their intelligence could be increased through learning. During activity part, they will go through a Neural Network Maze spell out out the word SMARTER and saw how this network change when they learn something new. This activity is based on BNlackwell et al., (2007).In the second part students will see some examples of disabled people who were able to manage their disability and comply in their life. The aim of this activity is showing students that even people who are suffering from major problems and lost their critical abilities (like walking) did not give up and challenge themselves to achieve their goals. An example of disabled people is Nicholas James Vujicic who is an Australian m otivational speaker. He was born with tetra-amelia syndrome and has neither arms nor legs, but could refine college with a bachelor degree in financing and is a prospering writer.Understanding GoalEveryone can be smart, because intelligence is not statistic and durableEfforts is the most important factor in improving abilityThe way they think about their ability, can affect their behaviorSession 5 Improving motivation by the help of feedbackIn the last session of workshop, students will summarize their learning and will explain how their misconceptions have changed (if changed) and the instructor will give each student the appropriate feedback. Depending on the number of students participated in this workshop, each student will have time to show their artifact or read their essay that was asked to complete it by the end of session 3. Instructor (experimenter) will give feedback for each students work because as we already know feedback is one type of take and it can motivate stu dents and even change extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation. Below is a summary of researches that support the effect of reward in increasing students motivation and their performanceHarackiewicz (1979) was concerned about relation between feedback, motivation and the outcome and examined this relation among high school students. He found positive feedback increase motivation and motivation increase performance. However he claimed that positive feedback on the performance has different effect compared to reward effect. Positive feedback which is assessed as verbal rewards is known as an unexpected, competence improvement reward and has a important positive influence on intrinsic motivation.In two studies that apply positive feedback as a motivational resource, they tested how a meagerly change in wording can bring a original change in the motivation. In the first study, Ryan (1982) used a despotic feedback by saying Excellent, you should keep up the good work, whereas i n the other study, Pittman et al. (1980) used an informational feedback Compared to most of my subjects, you are doing really well. The result of these two studies was in line with the claim in the first statement subjects had less intrinsic motivation after few trials compared to second informational feedback. In conclusion, positive feedback can bring interest for receivers and will increase intrinsic motivation.ODohetry (2004) wrote an excellent polish up about the underlying mechanism of reward seeking and punishment scheme in human behaviors. He discussed recent neuroimaging findings which gives insight into the reward representations and reward-related learning process that take place in the human brain. The author highlighted the intricacy of ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, striatum, and dopaminergic midbrain in the reward-related learning process. Providing evidence from human neuroimaging, the author argues that specific reward-induced behaviors are subject to the function of different parts of the same network. However, no matter which component guides which specific reward-related behavior, the persistence of behavior is certified on the value assigned to the reward and perhaps the punishment within this network. The importance of the findings reported in this paper is connecting them with goal-directed behavior which requires complex cognitive resources and functionalities. In other words, the complexities involved in choosing between several(a) behaviors and actions are based on evaluation of their representation of the predicted future rewards with the selected action having the highest predicted reward which varies depending on the its quality, frequency and variance in specific situations. As stated in the article, there are three main parts of the brain that is responsible for guiding our action. Therefore, our behavior is formed controlled as a response to a value of reward or punishment. The author also made a distinction be tween these parts and the role of each part in seeking the reward, evaluating the value of reward or punishment, predicting the future reward/punishment and deciding about a proper action based on the prediction of value. As a result nice motivated in doing an action depends on the value of reward or punishment as well as its amount that is aligned with that action even in future. Our brain and even animals brain is able to learn how to guide our action to receive rewards. It means, our brain tracks and analyses the process of gaining a reward for future use just like the classical conditioning situation. give reward causes more motivation (ODohetry, 2004).Understanding GoalBy lay enough efforts, students can increase their performance on school indication Abrahamson, D., Lindgren, R. (2014). Embodiment and embodied design. In R. K. Sawyer (ed.)The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, pp. 358-376.Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. yearly Review of Psychology, 59 , 617-645.Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an immature transition A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child development, 78(1), 246-263.Busch, V., Schuierer, G., Bogdahn, U., May, A. (2004). Changes in grayish matter induced by training. Nature, 311-312.Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. Penguin.Draganski, B., Gaser, C., Busch, V., Schuierer, G., Bogdahn, U., May, A. (2004, January 22). Changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature, pp. 247 311-312.Elbert, T., Pantev, C., Wienbruch, C., Rockstroh, B., Taub, E. (1995). Increased cortical representation of the fingers of the left hand in string players. Science, 270(5234), 305.Galvn, A. (2010). Neural plasticity of development and learning. Human Brain Mapping, 31(6), 879-90. doi10.1002/hbm.21029Gibbs Jr, R. W. (2005). Embodiment and cognitive science. C ambridge University Press.Harackiewicz, J. M. (1979). The effects of reward contingency and performance feedback on intrinsic motivation. Journal of spirit and well-disposed Psychology,37(8), 1352.Kiverstein, J. (2012). The meaning of embodiment. Topics in cognitive science, 4(4), 740-758.Lakoff, G., Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. moolah University of Chicago Press.Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. London Routledge Kegan Paul.Mnte, T. F., Altenmller, E., Jncke, L. (2002). The musicians brain as a poser of neuroplasticity. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 3(6), 473-8. doi10.1038/nrn843ODoherty, J. P. (2004). Reward representations and reward-related learning in the human brain insights from neuroimaging. Current opinion in neurobiology,14(6), 769-776.Pittman, T. S., Davey, M. E., Alafat, K. A., Wetherill, K. V., Kramer, N. A. (1980). Informational versus controlling verbal rewards. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 6(2), 228-233.Ryan, R . M. (1982). Control and information in the intrapersonal sphere An extension of cognitive evaluation theory. Journal of personality and social psychology, 43(3), 450.Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.). (2005). The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. Cambridge University Press.