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Ever wonder why your students aren’t “all there” sometimes?
Engagement in the classroom has never been lower. And here’s the thing…
Student disengagement is a measurable, validated phenomenon. 46% of teachers surveyed state student engagement has dropped since 2019. Nearly half of all teachers are watching their students lose interest right in front of them.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Educators just need to understand how the brain develops and which cognitive strategies work best to improve engagement. The secret sauce? Matching teaching to learning and cognitive development.
What you’ll learn:
- Why Engagement in the Classroom Is Important
- Cognitive Development: The Basics
- Cognitive Strategies that Work
- Using Brain-Based Learning to Increase Engagement
Engagement in the Classroom Is Important
Look at the data for a second.
Students who are engaged in their learning are 2.5 times more likely to report that they do well in school than those who are not. That’s a big difference. It gets better…
Students who are engaged in learning are also 4.5x more likely to report they have a positive outlook on their future.
Pause to let that sink in for a second. By simply increasing student engagement, educators can meaningfully transform student test scores and futures.
But here’s the hard truth…
Only one-third of administrators, teachers, and parents surveyed report that students are engaged in learning. That’s a major disconnect between where we are and where we need to be.
Cognitive Development: The Basics
Your students’ brains are never “finished” developing.
Students in different developmental stages are processing information, learning, and making decisions in dramatically different ways. Failing to recognize this reality is like trying to teach a child algebra before they understand addition.
What most educators fail to realize is:
Cognitive development is stage-based. Students in different cognitive stages require different teaching strategies. Methods that work for a 7-year-old might make no sense to a 14-year-old. That’s not a bug — it’s a feature.
Understanding students’ current cognitive stage and meeting them where they are is the first step to successful cognitive enhancement programs.
These programs are designed to help students build their learning capacity through strategic cognitive development. They focus on strengthening core cognitive functions, such as memory, attention, and processing speed. When these systems are optimized, engagement naturally follows, as students are better able to learn.
Cognitive Strategies that Work
Time for the good part.
Below are some of the best strategies to improve student cognitive function and engagement. Try a few and pick the one (or two) that work best for you — you will see a difference fast.
Active Learning: Emphasize Problem Solving
Passive learning is the enemy of engagement.
Listening for hours, staring at a screen, and taking notes is the complete opposite of how students want to learn. Active learning, on the other hand, is all about “doing.” Problem-solving exercises force students to think, experiment, and learn from their own experiences.
Active problem-solving is a foundational aspect of cognitive enhancement. The brain learns by doing, not from lectures, videos, or reading.
Scaffold Learning
Ever tried getting to the top of a skyscraper without an elevator?
That’s what learning is like without scaffolding. In the same way that scaffolding a building means constructing support systems as you go, so does learning.
Scaffolding for learning looks like this:
Start with the known. Introduce one new concept at a time. Provide support and guidance as students learn. Slowly take that support away as they develop mastery.
This method respects the cognitive stages of development, while also providing for student growth without overwhelm.
Connect to Real-World Applications
Students live in the real world. The real world is not school.
No matter how hard we educators try to make learning fun, important concepts are still academics. There are no long-term consequences of failing the next math test or not acing history quiz. That’s the problem. Students need to know there are real-world stakes to their learning.
Teachers with the highest impact are the ones who make clear and concrete connections between the classroom and real life.
Math isn’t just numbers. It’s budgeting their first car. Science isn’t facts. It’s understanding their favorite sports. History isn’t memorizing dates. It’s learning about today from the past.
Real-world connections activate different parts of the brain. They make learning purposeful.
Multisensory Teaching
The brain is a complex information processing machine.
Visual learners need to see it. Auditory learners need to hear it. Kinesthetic learners need to touch it. The highest-impact teachers in the world use all three methods.
Multisensory learning looks like this:
Include images and videos for visual learners and processing. Encourage discussion and questions for auditory learners. Provide hands-on activities for kinesthetic learners.
These simple multisensory methods ensure every student’s brain is engaged during learning.
Metacognition
Ownership of learning is the goal of every educator.
Yet the problem is students aren’t taking ownership, because they aren’t in the driver’s seat of their education. They are simply passengers being driven along. The way to change this? Teach them to be aware of how they learn.
Metacognition is the practice of helping students learn to reflect on and understand their own cognitive processes. Do they study better with music or in silence? Do they recall facts better by drawing or verbal repetition? What are their learning strengths and weaknesses?
Students who are aware of how they learn and grow take ownership of their own education.
Using Brain-Based Learning to Increase Engagement
Brain-based learning can sound high-concept.
But really, it simply refers to teaching methods that best align with how the brain actually learns and develops. Here’s how educators can start:
Developmental Readiness
Development matters.
If students are not developmentally ready for a given concept or way of thinking, don’t push it. Abstract math skills and concepts won’t “sink in” for students who aren’t cognitively mature enough to understand abstract vs. concrete thinking.
Instead:
Evaluate the cognitive developmental stage of each student and provide appropriately challenging concepts at each stage. Be patient with developmental timing and readiness.
Low Stress and Anxiety
Stress is the enemy of learning.
The minute students feel unsafe, threatened, or anxious, the rational, higher-order parts of their brain will shut down. Learning becomes impossible. This is why the highest-impact educators today all have one thing in common — psychological safety.
Make sure students know you’re on their team, that they can make mistakes, that there are no wrong questions. Create a low-stress environment and the cognitive parts of the brain will start working at full capacity.
Movement
Don’t just sit there!
Sitting in place for hours is terrible for brain function. This is a classic root cause of low engagement. Why? Sitting for long periods leads to less blood oxygen in the brain, impairing function. Solution? Movement.
Add some short movement breaks between lessons to refresh and reset the brain and engage hardwired needs in your students. Something as simple as standing up and stretching will make a big difference.
Spaced Repetition
Cramming doesn’t work.
We know that information is processed and retained in the brain through spaced repetition, which refers to the idea of learning and then reviewing over time at increasing intervals. Teaching a concept once and moving on doesn’t lead to long-term learning.
Instead, incorporate key concepts throughout the curriculum and revisit them repeatedly in different ways and contexts.
Final Thoughts
Student engagement isn’t just about fun learning activities.
Educators need to better understand student cognitive development and use that knowledge to improve engagement. When teaching and learning are better aligned with how brains work, engagement naturally follows.
The takeaways?
Match developmental stage, use active and multisensory learning strategies, create safe and low-stress environments, and show real-world application. These methods aren’t hard, they’re just different from traditional approaches which fail to consider the brain.
Pick one or two of these strategies from this article and start using them. You will see a big difference in your students when teaching methods match cognitive development.
