The educator is working with “thinking cells” operating beyond their teaching art to control within antique classroom designs that distract rather than impact the learning faculty produce. In 1900 Charles Sherrington became the first scientist to demonstrate that the brain held “thinking cells” that exhibited the existence of inhibitory nerve cells that could turn signals on or turn signals off often on an involuntary basis depending on the stimulation taking place (or source). But how did the impulses jump from neuron to neuron?

Sherrington compared the brain to a telegraph series of stations with signals moving from point to point. Three years earlier Sherrington (father of whole brain learning theory) had already labeled the contact points synapses, which literally meant “connections”. Still this early theory failed to describe how the impulse (learning impression) could cross the “gap” between synapse fields. Later American pharmacologist Otto Loewi delivered the final experiment that proved reproducibly that a stimulated nerve cell does in fact secrete a substance. His English colleague Henry Dale following up on the Loewi experiments discovered that this core substance was acetylcholine.

In parallel the first recording of an impulse inside a nerve cell – today called an action potential – was made in 1939 by Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley two English biophysicists. This action potential proved to be the universal signaling mechanism in nerve cells throughout not only the human but the entire animal kingdom – a literal breakthrough in learning theory.

The next major breakthrough would take half a century. Bernhard Katz uncoded the next giant mystery with the advent from his London College experiments in the 1950's that the synapse substance conveying the “information” critical to the learning and all memory retention and recall was to become known as “neurotransmitters”. This next break through proved the vital information was secreted in “packets” depending on the neurons electric conductivity “state”. 

Perhaps most important for later Super Teaching theory was the foreknowledge that the neuron electrical conductivity “state” could be altered or influenced to be in a higher or lower state of reception to creating impressions for the information packet that would correspondingly be lower or higher. As this involuntary state inducement is occurring throughout each and every Super Teaching learning period in modern classrooms advantages are gained. To the degree the brain state is elevated or not elevated (switched off) the memory retention and recall are by degree more deeply “impressed” into the cortex or squandered and virtually lost forever to human memory. If the brain of the child can now be optimized for learning, how illuminated might a generation of Super Teaching graduates become to the world community?

Human understanding and learning is in part induced an involuntary electric neuron “state” level. Another important ST axiom: Unassisted faculty can not by teacher art alone elevate the impression level of large groups of highly differential learners as to neuron “state”.

Super Teaching produces an optimal learning state throughout the entire student body of any age of learner groupings by elevating the receptor states in applied whole brain learning – a state inducement that has not proven possible when Super Teaching is absent from modern classrooms. Educational AIAs may wish to pay more urgent attention to this element of the classroom design criteria in the future for the obvious learner advantages implied.

Initially the discovery of excitatory and inhibitory synapses in the brain fed learning theory speculation that whole brain processes recorded information according to fixed and predictable process stimulations. However Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb entertained the theory that the recording impression value of information packets could change depending upon the cells core state of activity (1949). In recent decades this postulate has been confirmed and duplicated many times. The foundation of Super Teaching theory embraces the notion that the receptor learning cell state may be, by degree, switched on or off to record more deep impressions for any learner information packet or curriculum. The switch could be turned off if mismanaged to produce less of an impression depending upon largely involuntary and highly variable cell states cycling at all times during any learning period across all the brains of newly wired student body. Unassisted teacher art cannot by style and curriculum design shift the memory retention and recall of the core cell state sufficiently to elevate performance for the now universally challenged learner group. Further the development of new multimedia induced synapse patterns provides an impossible digital divide for the cell state of the learner until the classroom modifications are made to reset the cell state to higher reception for the learner information packet. Super Teaching represents a break through in setting synapse reception cell state to acquire deeper impression for the faculty learner information packet (curriculum).

Donald Hebb without meaning to father Super Teaching theory in 1949 entered the critical theoretical break through experiments that reported, “the intensity of communication between two neurons can be modified by experience.

Nerve cells indeed “can” learn.

BJ Dohrmann – Spring 2005