When Social Studies Meets the Brain:

An Exploration Towards Re-inventing the Teaching of Social Studies

Feliece I. Yeban, Ph.D.
Philippine Normal University

I. Introduction – How do students view social studies?

Generally speaking, social studies is one of the least liked subjects in schools. Studies from the United
States (Lawson, 2003), Australia (Moroz, 1997), Jordan (Alazzi and Aldowan, 2011), Saudi Arabia (Alajaji,
A., 1999), Oman (Al-Gharibi, Zainab Mohammed Salim, 2009), Pakistan (Umair Ahmed & Shaista
Maryam, 2016), and India (Ramachandran, R. & Pandian, U., 2014) to name a few, have consistently
shown there exists a significant deterioration in attitude toward social studies as students move up the
grade level ladder. Students initially find the subject interesting but lose interest because they disliked
the delivery of the subject. Its reliance on rote learning to remember dates, places, people, and events
makes it boring. Its repetitive content and the learning activities undertaken in social studies lessons
they could not relate in their life. Students do not think that social studies can help them in their future
career. Research findings suggested that social studies classroom did not foster critical thinking and
inquiry, contrary to what it claims it does.

II. What are the challenges teachers face in teaching social studies?
2.1. Breadth vs Depth
The social studies curriculum has so much to cover with little time provided. Normally, the social studies
subject is expected to integrate “special” and mandated programs. In the case of the Philippines, social
studies subjects are expected to integrate peace, gender, human rights, anti-corruption education, etc.
This further “jams” the curriculum. Teachers become hard pressed to sacrifice depth just so they could
cover the curriculum. Is the emphasis on the content or learning outcomes?

2.2. Biases, Prejudices, and False Knowledge

When students come to class, they already have biases, prejudices, and beliefs that may be based on
wrong information which may cause cognitive dissonance in them. Controversial issues that might run
contrary to the students’ biases, prejudices, and prior knowledge might inhibit learning. Is the focus for
the students to get the “right” answer or to challenge the students to refine their arguments? The
nature of social studies knowledge is multi-perspectives and interpretive. Finding the “right” answer is
more of a discourse rather than of “facts”.
 2.3. Lectures and Group Discussions vs Activities
There is tendency to stick to lectures and group discussion to cover the social studies material. Use of
diverse instructional strategies requires striking a balance between lectures and group discussion on one
hand and activities like debates, role playing, field trips on the other. Is there a more scientific way of
identifying which strategy works best for which topic?

2.4. Beyond Recall of Names, Places, and Dates

Students surveyed in the studies cited herein described their social studies classroom experience as
filled with recalling names, places, and dates. Tests are normally “recall” oriented which students claim
require them to resort to rote learning or “memorization”. The challenge to social studies teachers is
how to teach beyond the names, places, and dates that proliferate the content of social studies
curriculum. It is important to stress that social studies by nature is interpretive. Data, information, and
facts become important only if these reveal important patterns and meanings. They are tools to
understand something but not the end by themselves.

2.5. Problem of Meaning, Relevance, and Connection to Students’ Lives

The student will always find the study of ancient civilizations and other topics especially historical topics
as meaningless if not connected with their lives. Students bring in prior knowledge into the classroom.
This should be used to create meaningful and interesting connection between the material and the
students’ lives. The interpretive nature of social studies should make such connection possible.

2.6. Reliance on Textbooks and Written Materials

Much of the content covered by social studies requires written materials which may not be readily
available and accessible to both teachers and students. Teachers rely heavily on textbooks which
inevitably provide limited perspectives. Teacher creativity and resourcefulness is a must for the learning
experience to remain interesting, novel, and meaningful.

2.7. Cognitive Skills vs Practical Skills

How can we make social studies concrete and personal? Do social studies equip students with practical
skills? Traditionally, students are expected to learn critical and analytic thinking in their social studies
class. The objective is to equip them with civic competences to function in a democratic society. What
are practical applications of such competence? Are social studies mainly about cognitive skills? What can
they do and cannot do if they do not know social studies?

III. What can we draw from findings of cognitive and neuroscience that might be relevant to
the teaching of social studies?

The development of the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) device made possible measuring
and describing the activity of the brain. Findings generated using fMRI and those by cognitive science have
expanded our understanding of how the brain works. The 1990s may well be considered as the decade of
the brain because of exponential increase in brain research which paved the way for the emergence of
new fields of study related to brain science and cognitive science such as neuroscience, cultural
neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, bio-neuroscience, cognitive anthropology,
etc. Both neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science are radically re-inventing education.
Movements for brain-based learning are challenging educators to integrate findings about the brain in re-
designing education.

Some of the findings about the brain which social studies teachers may consider in innovating social
studies classrooms are as follows:

1. We tend to forget. If much of social studies teaching and learning is about names, dates, and
places, this may run contrary to our brain default. There are three types of explicit memory
pathways namely semantic, episodic, and procedural. Semantic refers to the textual and
linguistic memory or knowledge and general information about the external world that we have
acquired and is considered short-term memory. Episodic refers to the collection of past personal
experiences. It is autobiographical. It involves one’s memory of specific events, location, time,
and emotion. This memory tends to be longer lasting. Procedural memory is the “how-to”
memory. It is about stored information about procedures in performing certain tasks. This
memory pathway is more “automated and reflexive” and requires minimal retrieval triggers. The
consistent feedback by students that they tend to forget what they learn in social studies may
well be a function of teaching and learning process that only touched on semantic memory and
 not on episodic and/or procedural. The key is to provide activation hooks or cues to help
retrieve memory.

2. Emotions drive learning, attention, and meaning-making. Emotions, thinking, and learning are
linked. We learn best when we are emotionally engaged (LeDoux, 1994). According to Cahill
(1994), memory of events is enhanced if there is strong emotion associated with the event. This
nature of the brain runs contrary to the belief that permeates social studies that reason is
objective. The prevailing view is, there are enduring ideas that human reason devoid of passion
has successfully discovered. The enlightenment ethos of reason as the source of legitimacy
dominates the practice of social studies. However, more and more research findings are
pointing to reason being motivated rather than dispassionate. Reason is used to justify emotion
and value judgments rather than reason as the foundation of human decisions.

3. Brain default is to look for patterns to ascribe meaning to what is experienced. Relevance is a
function of the brain’s making a connection from existing neural sites (Coward, 1990). The brain
works better when facts and skills are embedded in real life experiences. For patterns to
develop among younger students, learning should be hands-on, experiential, and relevant.
Interestingly, researchers have increasingly realized that episodic memory is also important for
connecting the past and present with the future (Szpunar et al., 2014). The same region of the
brain gets activated when one thinks about his/her past and future (Schacter and Tulving, 1994).
This has tremendous implication in the teaching of history, for instance. If the social studies
lessons do not provide salience, the brain does not become attentive and it shuts off.

4. Our lifestyle customizes our brain. We can learn and unlearn because the brain is plastic. The
more we learn, the more unique our brain becomes. (Diamond, 1988). The physical
characteristics of the brain shape the way we experience the world and vice versa. The quality of
our engagement with the world, helps create a feeling of existential “insidedness” (Seamon,
1980 in Lengen C, & Kistemann T (2012). which form the meanings and symbols we have for the
place. The outside world is the growing brain’s real food (Diamond, 1988). What this implies is
 the goals of social studies cannot be achieved without authentic learning situation for the
students. Classroom information remains inadequate to generate the personal relevance
necessary for any meaning to be ascribed.

5. The brain is social. It develops better in concert with others. What others think, expect, and do
influence our own thinking and decision making. The brain thinks in terms of in-groups and out-
groups. Social categorization occurs spontaneously (Crisp and Hewstone, 2007). Social studies
teachers can optimize this brain default. Teaching strategies fostering both collaboration and
competition should be used, developed, and enhanced. Assessment tools that veer away from
measuring individual achievement and performance may be explored.

6. Learning is aided by motion, novelty, challenge, scent, color, music, and aesthetics. Brain
research has established that physical movement makes the brain more ready for learning. The
brain is biased towards beauty and novelty. It does not like monotony. It looks for what is salient
to focus its attention on, otherwise the brain will disengage. The material that teachers use
should be challenging enough to keep the students interested but not to the point of students
giving up because they feel it is beyond them even with their best effort. Scent, music, and color
can be used as memory retrieval cues. Social studies lessons can be developed using scents,
music, and color to remind students what is being discussed.

7. The priority of the brain is to survive. Learning is inhibited by threat and enhanced by
challenge. The learning environment should be high challenge, but low threat. If the brain feels
threatened, any attempt at higher order thinking skills will fail. Stress consume much cognitive
resource.

IV. Some thoughts about innovating and reinventing the teaching of social studies

Neuroscience is a young field. Most of its findings are not yet conclusive. It cannot be denied, however,
that we know more about the brain now than ever. There is a need to have more dialogues among
neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and educationists to optimize the growing body of knowledge about
the brain which undeniably has far reaching impact on education.

Social studies teachers and educators and social scientists can very well benefit from the scientific
findings on how the brain operates. There are already attempts at using neuroscience to learn about
nationalism and patriotism (Takeuchi, et.al); racial and other prejudices and biases (Amadio, et.al,);
identity and sense of place (Lengen, et.al); political brain (Westen); moral psychology (Haidt); to name a
few. We can use these findings to innovate and reinvent social studies.

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