Faculty Bibliography

The teaching brain is a new concept that mirrors the complex, dynamic, and context-dependent nature of the learning brain. In this article, I use the structure of the human nervous system and its sensing, processing, and responding components as a framework for a re-conceptualized teaching system. This teaching system is capable of responses on an instinctual level (e.g., spinal cord teaching) as well as higher order student-centered teaching and even more complex teaching brain teaching. At the most complex level the teacher and student engage in a synchronistic teaching flow that achieves the optimal teaching and learning experience.

The teaching brain is a dynamic system that is in constant interaction with the learning brain. If we fail to explore the teaching brain we will continue to design educational reform policies that ignore the most important lens in the classroom: the teachers'. Master teachers recognize their perspective and leverage their teaching brains to embody a systems thinking view of their practice.If all teachers were taught how to recognize themselves as self-created, organized systems existing within the larger teachinglearning interaction, they would understand how their context and intentions affect the teacherstudent interaction. Education reform must acknowledge and understand more about the teaching brain, how master teachers practice systems thinking and the mutually interacting brains of teacher and student if we hope to truly improve how we educate children.

A new phase of research on teaching is under way that seeks to understand the teaching brain. In this vein, this study investigated the cognitive processes employed by master teachers. Using an interview protocol influenced by microgenetic techniques, 23 master teachers used the Self-in-Relation-to-Teaching (SiR2T) tool to answer What are you focusing your mind on throughout the process of teaching? A number of emergent themes were identified in participants' responses and one, awareness of interaction, is discussed here. This theme refers to teachers' recognition of the learner-teacher (L-T) relationship as a separate entity or system. Within interaction, at least three types of awarenesses emerged in teachers' responses: (1) connection, (2) collaboration, and (3) mutual effects. Furthermore, some teachers described a sense of synergy with their students due to this L-T interaction. The results suggest that a teacher's awareness of interaction plays an important role in the teaching brain, and support the implications of the proposed teaching brain framework.

I am excited to present this special section that explores the teaching brain. The goal of the series is to facilitate a transition in the lens on teaching from an empty vessel to a phenomenon as dynamic, variable, and context-dependent as learning. This transformation will likely push all of us to reevaluate our understanding and research on teaching. Over the coming year, each issue will provide several articles that seek to shed light on a different aspect of this burgeoning new area of research. This issue opens the series with a piece designed to lay out the conceptual framework and evidence base for a new way to think about teaching: the teaching brain. Next, Michael Chazan gives an archeological grounding for the existence of teaching in the earliest ancestors of Homo sapiens. Sidney Strauss and Margalit Ziv then describe how teaching is a fundamental human cognitive ability. Together, these articles begin to create a paradigm shift in the definition of teaching. We look forward to an exciting journey.