Can Sites use Exercise to Boost the Learning Experience?
Seven or eight years ago, studies offered mixed results on the question of whether exercise can boost brain function in children and adolescents. Experts are beginning to contend, however, that the case is getting stronger.
“There’s sort of no question about it now,” said Dr. John J. Ratey, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “The exercise itself doesn’t make you smarter, but it puts the brain of the learners in the optimal position for them to learn.” Dr. Ratey is the author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, a book published last month by Little, Brown and Co. It draws together emerging findings from neuroscientific, biomedical, and educational research that correlate exercise with a wide range of brain-related benefits—improving attention, reducing stress and anxiety, and staving off cognitive decline in old age, for example.
The interest in documenting a link between exercise and learning in children and adolescents comes as trends in physical activity seem to point in the opposite direction. Studies suggest that, with 30 percent of the nation’s schoolchildren classified as overweight, childhood obesity is reaching epidemic proportions.
Proponents of the educational benefits of exercise maintain that the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which puts pressure on schools to raise students’ test scores in core academic subjects, is prompting some schools to cut back on time for physical education classes and recess. Nationwide, Dr. Ratey writes in his book, only 6 percent of schools now offer PE five days a week. “At the same time,” he adds, “kids are spending 5.5 hours a day in front of a screen of some sort—television, computer, or hand-held device.”
Charles H. Hillman, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his university colleague Darla M. Castelli assessed the physical-fitness levels of 239 3rd and 5th graders from four Illinois elementary schools. Their findings published last year in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology show that children who received good marks on two measures of physical fitness—those that gauge aerobic fitness and body-mass index—tended also to have higher scores on state exams in reading and mathematics. That relationship also held true regardless of children’s gender or socieconomic differences.
But district administrators would like to enlist university-based researchers to do more-formal studies before incorporating major scheduling changes districtwide. “We have so many different variables that could affect how we evaluate the course,” said Jody Wirt, the district’s associate superintendent for instruction. “Is it the class size? Or the teachers?”
Likewise, scientists are still not entirely sure how exercise primes the brain for learning. But, according to Dr. Ratey, they have some good ideas. Laboratory studies in mice and humans, for instance, show that exercise prompts the brain to produce greater amounts of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF, which Dr. Ratey likes to call “Miracle-Gro” for the brain. It encourages brain cells to sprout synapses, which are crucial to forming the connections the brain needs to make in order to learn. It also strengthens cells and protects them from dying out. Other research also suggests that exercise plays a role in neurogenesis, the production of new brain cells, in middle-aged and older adults and in laboratory animals [hey, there's still hope for us!].
“There’s no way to say for sure that improves learning capacity for kids, but it certainly seems to correlate to that,” Dr. Ratey said. What seems to continue to be important, though, is what gets put in those brain cells—in other words, whether students a re given complex learning fodder to practice and master.
It’s also not likely, Dr. Ratey said, that just any physical education curriculum will produce the kinds of benefits that Naperville saw with its “learning readiness” classes. At the instigation of former physical education teacher Phil Lawler, the Naperville district has been at the forefront of a national movement for the “new PE,’’ a philosophy that promotes teaching students how to be fit and lead healthy lives, rather than focusing on sports skills and game rules.
“No more getting picked last for basketball. No more climbing ropes or playing dodgeball,” said Mr. Lawler, who now works for a Kansas City, Mo.-based foundation, called PE4Life, that trains teachers and promotes the concept nationwide. Mr. Lawler and Mr. Zientarski, for instance, began using heart-rate monitors with all their classes more than a decade ago. They also raised money to install climbing walls and ropes courses in their schools and brought in kayaks and sophisticated exercise equipment that incorporates video games and virtual-reality technology to make exercise more engaging for students.
Traditional sports are still taught, but the games, such as three-on-three basketball, take place in smaller groups, Mr. Lawler said. “This isn’t just a few PE teachers with a wild idea anymore,” he said. “It’s combining what should go on in a quality physical education program with some of the highest-quality research in the world in neuroscience and cognitive science.”
To learn more, read the entire article at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/02/13/23exercise_ep.h27.html?tmp=647290521
Something to consider at Historic Sites: Can some form of physical activity be incorporated into a school program at an historic site? Can the physical activity be linked to the program’s theme or site’s mission? What activities are appropriate and inappropriate? Walking, baseball, butterchurning? You’re welcome to reply below with your thoughts and suggestions.
Filed under: Education, Visitor Research | Tagged: Exercise
