When Collaborating, Remember the Brain-based Social Needs of your Colleagues by Dr. Brady Quirk, SPS Coordinator of Professional Learning

     When utilizing the Seven Norms of Collaboration in faculty meetings, team meetings, or collaborative learning groups, being conscious about our brain-based social needs will help everyone be more successful. Paying Attention to Self and Others (norm #6) pertains to your level of consciousness about what you are thinking, feeling and saying and what others are thinking, feeling and saying.  Sometimes it is not obvious, even to ourselves, how/why we react to what we see and hear.

     As school-based collaborative groups continually refine their craftsmanship, having a raised awareness of the brain-based social needs of your colleagues is a real advantage.  In Your Brain at Work, author David Rock explores the theory that the brain responds to all stimuli in two ways: the need to minimize danger, which creates the “away responses” of anxiety, fear, and sadness, and the need to maximize rewards, which create the “toward responses” of happiness, curiosity and contentment. These needs of minimizing danger and maximizing rewards at the most basic level, can cause shifts in our brain during collaboration time that directly affect the outcomes of that collaboration. Rock further elaborates on these critical social needs of the brain through his S.C.A.R.F. acronym:

STATUS: Status refers to our natural brain-based need to be accepted, liked and respected by others.  Threats to one’s status cause an immediate “away response”, whereas experiencing a sense of importance or recognition within an organization causes reward circuits in our brain to fire.  What might be you be doing, through body language, tone of voice, or the words you choose (or don’t choose) that may threaten your colleagues’ status?  Status threats shut down collaboration more quickly than anything.

CERTAINTY: We are all programmed for certainty – we need to know what to expect in order to access collaborative, higher-order thinking.  The human brain has a basic need to know what is coming next. A primary function of the brain’s neo-cortex is to predict, and whether we realize it or not, we are constantly making conscious and subconscious predictions about everything.  When in a meeting or small collaborative group, a higher level of discourse and critical thinking will be achieved when the group knows what to expect.  Using meeting norms and/or sticking to your agenda is a way to achieve this.

AUTONOMY: The brain’s need for autonomy is strong.  We all need to feel a sense of control and to use self determination to make decisions in our work.  When our sense of control and our sense of efficacy is low, the “away response” kicks in and people shut down. Knowing that people need to feel free to make choices, or at least choose among some options, what are some strategies that could be incorporated into your regular collaboration?

RELATEDNESS: Making connections is as critical to our brain as food and water are to our bodies.  We are constantly making connections among variables and developing and refining relationships with our colleagues.  We quickly size up others as either a friend or a foe, and foes are met with the brain’s threat response.  When relatedness is strong, our brain releases oxytocin, causing an increase in trust.  When relatedness is weak, the brain releases cortisol, increasing our stress (and decreasing the quality of our collaboration).

FAIRNESS: A sense of fairness may be the strongest brain need of all. Feeling that you are being treated fairly is critical in keeping our thinking from shutting down.  A perception of fairness and/or justice has been shown to be even more important than the need for food and water in some research studies.  Fairness is a source of threat or reward, and when it is out of balance, quality collaboration is impossible.

    Think about an example when you have been highly aware of others’ social needs in a collaborative setting.  What was the outcome? The S.C.A.R.F. model helps us remember these important social needs of the brain in order to better empathize and understand our colleagues, and ultimately maximize our collaboration.

SOURCE: Rock, D. (2009). Your brain at work. New York: Harper-Collins

 

 

Turning to Tables by Alicia Moore, Professional Learning Specialist

 

          The summer after my first year of teaching, I attended two Kagan Cooperative Learning workshops. From that time on, Cooperative Learning became essential in my approach to teaching. The biggest challenge for me, though, was the decision to seat my students in teams full time.

I finally took a leap of faith at the beginning of the 2011-12 school year: I traded my desks for tables. I started this venture with some doubts and fear but was convinced that it was in my students’ best interest. Within a few months, I was sold on tables, and based on my students’ feedback, so were they. Here are the pros and cons we observed:

BENEFITS

Management: Once the physical space was set up for cooperative learning, I spent much less time in transition between teacher talk, solo work, and structured interaction. Also, because students knew their team number and their individual numbers on each team, it was easy to give efficient instructions to assign roles and delegate tasks.

 

Community: Students who were seated at the same table built relationships that made the class a better learning environment. Because I had my students grouped heterogeneously, they were also a great academic support system for each other.

 

Neatness: One unexpected benefit was the cleanliness of my classroom. With nowhere for students to stash trash or leave papers, my room looked as neat at the end of each day as it did at the beginning.

 

CHALLENGES

Talking: Students looking at peers across the table made them want to talk.

TIP: Begin the year with clear guidelines about when it’s okay to talk and when it’s not, and remind students of your expectations frequently.  Still, this is no easy-to-solve problem. As with any other behavioral issue, hold your students accountable to the standards you’ve set, and be prepared to make a few phone calls home if needed.

 

Lone Rangers: Some students just preferred working alone—tables were a stretch for them.

TIP: Build in social skills to help them learn how to collaborate with peers, but honor their need for solo time by letting them move to a quiet spot on occasion.

For me, making the change to tables was the final step in creating a cooperative classroom. The payoff was exactly what I had hoped it would be: closer knit classes of engaged students.