470 ENHANCING STUDENTS’ INTELLIGENCE THROUGH NEURO
EDUCATION INTERVENTION ACTIVITIES Santhi Achudan
SJKT Bandar Sri Sendayan, (Email: [email protected])
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Abstract: This action research is aimed, firstly to strengthen students’ readiness for learning and secondly to transform teaching and learning through neuro education intervention activities. Neuro education is a collaboration work between SJKT Bandar Sri Sendayan and Neuro Network Australia.
This collaboration has given added value in pedagogical method and in physical education especially for students with learning problems. The target group of this research involves 20 students with multiple problems from the same school. The basic and common problem faced by the remedial teachers are students forgets easily, being lazy, difficulties in reading and writing, very passive, do not show desire to learn, couldn’t concentrate and copy correctly. Physical activities in neuro gym and sensory scholastic learning method are two components in neuro education. The research instruments consist of tests, interviews and observations. Neuro education activities consist of six basic elements which help to improve students’ readiness level in learning and their intelligence holistically. The findings of the study demonstrated that students have improved in visualisation and mastered words, listening and understanding through auditory and became creative thinkers and very imaginative. Students also have more confident in communication and their storytelling skills has improved. The students too showed vast improvement in their consistency in concentration and competency. Students are motivated in learning process, have agility in soft skills and finally their critical thinking and problem-solving skills shows a lot of improvement. Neuro education activities offers enormous potential among students with learning difficulties. The implications after practising neuro education are that it has improved students’
skills holistically.
Keywords: SJKT, neuro education, visualization, listening, inderstanding
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1. Introduction
Achieving Brain Competency (ABC) in neuro education is a project which was introduced by Pn.Daya Bhagwandas Director of Neuro Network to Bandar Sri Sendayan Tamil School. The school chose this project to look at the intelligence of the students and improve the vision of the students and master some aspects. The program also serves to achieve the learning potential and readiness of the school. The common practice of teachers is to make improvements through methods that are generally carried out by most schools. According to the UNICEF Framework 2014, there are three main preparations for a child in the process of growth and learning, namely Children's Readiness, Family Readiness and School Readiness. The program focuses on the overall development of students in terms of social, intellectual, and physical excellence where it will improve student performance in the classroom as well as study skills. This intervention involved 6 types of physical movements performed for 30 minutes on a daily basis in the neuro gym and scholastic teaching methods (sight and pronunciation) in the classroom. The implications of this intervention are measured through five dimensions of student intelligence, namely vision improvement, auditory improvement, movement and coordination changes, communication and speech changes and behavioral well -being. (behavior & general wellbeing).
471 Neuro education aims at enhancing the development of the brain at an early stage to create a foundation of learning among students. Furthermore, the program is also able to address the basic problems faced by students who encounter a variety of challenges that interfere with classroom performance and academic outcomes. A pilot study for this ABC program was conducted for Year 1 students at SJKT Taman Permata, Dengkil, Selangor from 19 September to 21 October 2016. The program was facilitated by Pn. Daya Bhagwandas, Director of Neuro Network. The findings of the study obtained through reports from class teachers and subject teachers showed a very good change in learning readiness among students. Pupils also showed high morale as well as positive changes in their behavior at home as reported by parents.
Figure 1: School Readiness (UNICEF)
472 Figure 2: School Readiness Model (UNICEF)
Neuro education was conducted in Bandar Sri Sendayan Tamil school which situated 10 km away from Seremban 2, Negeri Sembilan. The school has 350 students with 22 teachers inclusive of the school leader. This school has all the facility in primary level. A famous school in Malaysia with outstanding facilities. The school is practising future school concept. The school being visited by foreign delegates such as China, Cambodia, India, Nigeria and also locally. The school closely working together with Board of Governors and Parent Teachers Association for the progress of the school. Parents are very committed towards student’s achievement. The school have been scoring with flying colours. Nevertheless, the school has 20 students with multiple problems. The basic and common problem faced by the remedial teachers are students forgets easily, less interest in studies, difficulties in reading and writing, very passive, do not show desire to learn, couldn’t concentrate and copy correctly. The tag line of the school is ‘NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND’. This desire has in every teacher at the school. The school has planned and implemented many intervention and strategies to curb student’s problem but not much progressive among these 20 students. The leader has to think out of the box to try on neuro education which is believed to enhance student’s intelligent through neuro education intervention activities. It is focused on student’s development in intellectual, social and physical with brilliantly to be focused on student’s achievement in the classroom. The consultation assisted in Achieving Brain Competency which was carried out by Pn.Daya Bhagwandas, Director of Neuro Network Australia whom was with the school for a month.
2. Literature Review
Neuro education is a genuinely new discipline which unites scientists in neuroscience, instructive brain science, and instructive innovation just as professionals, for example, teachers to sort out the connections among school and brain competency (Cunff, 2020). It's an incredibly intriguing field, with the driven objective to overcome any barrier for teachers in reality. Neuro education—which is some of the time called "educational neuroscience"— has been for the most part applied with regards to academic performance and in the classroom.
According to (Cunff, 2020), the main applications of neuro education includes:
473 Figure 3: Main Applications of Neuro education
In neuroscience, attention refers to the brain processes allowing us to focus on some aspects of our environment, excluding others. Memory means understanding how memory works and how you can make your learning more efficient can make the difference between good and great performance. There are science-based techniques to remember things better which everyone could benefit from applying, such as interleaving and chunking. Executive control is mainly about being able to plan ahead, creating a sequence of mental steps or actions, and to retain relevant and changing information for brief periods of time is crucial to learning and mental performance. While we know most of these happen in the prefrontal cortex and we have identified many of the mechanisms, lots of research still needs to be done to better understand how executive control actually works. Social Neuroscience which is dedicated to understanding how biology impacts on social behaviours. Learning can be a solo or a group experience, and neuroscience can inform which approaches are the best depending on the learning goals.
Understanding these various conditions and how best adapt the learning environment to meet people’s needs is also an important aspect of neuro education.
According to researchers in educational neuroscience investigate the neural mechanisms of reading, numerical cognition, attention and their attendant difficulties including dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD as they relate to education. The aim of educational neuroscience is to generate basic and applied research that will provide a new trans disciplinary account of learning and teaching, which is capable of informing education. A major goal of educational neuroscience is to bridge the gap between the two fields through a direct dialogue between researchers and educators, avoiding the “middlemen of the brain-based learning industry”.
These middlemen have a vested commercial interest in the selling of “neuro myths” and their supposed remedies.
3. Research Methodology
Figure 4: Project Framework
474 The Neuro Education Project begun with an initial assessment of students.
This assessment included 2 parts:
a. Physical - Balance / coordination
b. Intellectual - classroom / academic skills
c. Ongoing evaluation was conducted for all students to monitor and measure the effectiveness of the program.
d. Starting: 10 August 2019 e. Ends: 10 September 2019
The physical program was scheduled to begin in the second week of August for all 20 students. after initial preparation and pre-assessment have been conducted. The beginning of the Scholastic Program phase was introduced to remedial students. Feedback from staff, parents and students was included in the evaluation process. Instrument used to determine the effectiveness of this project are:
:
Figure 5: Instruments
For this research, four data gathering methods were used as stated above in Figure 5.
According to Jraffel (2012), data collection is the process of gathering and ensuring information on variables of interest, in an established systematic fashion that enables one to answer stated research questions, test hypotheses and evaluation outcome. The goal of all data collection is to capture quality evidence that then translates to rich data analysis and allows the building of a convincing and credible answer to questions that have been posed.
475 4. Results
The results obtained through observation by the teachers and parents showed that pupils achieved more than the targeted KPI. The descriptive analysis is shown as below:
Table 1: Descriptive Analysis
No Target Achievement
1. 20 pupils will be able to pass the end- year examination
17 pupils passed the end- year examination
2. 20 pupils will be able to improve their intelligence and vision
20 pupils improved their intelligence and vision in 30 days.
3. 4 pupils from remedial class will be able to improve their intelligence and vision
2 pupils started showing positive changes in their attitudes 4. Able to produce teachers who
can use scholastic methods in lessons
Teachers started using scholastic method (look & say) in lessons.
The chart below shows results obtained by pupils for the pre-test and post-test which were collected and analyze using descriptive analysis.
Figure 6: Analysis of Pre-Test & Post-Test
Data were collected through observation methods and ‘hands-on’ approach as well as questionnaires. Data analysis technique was performed with excel method. The impact of the project showed that the dimension of vision improvement increased from 50% to 85%, the dimension of auditory level increased from 20% to 70%, the dimension of movement and coordination increased from 50% to 80%, communication and speech changes increased from
476 30% to 70%, and behavioral and general well -being increased from 40% to 70%. Feedback from teachers indicated that there were significant changes in the dimensions of focus and active involvement of students. Meanwhile, feedback from parents showed that there were changes in students' behavior and health.
5. Discussion & Conclusion
The implementation of neuro education projects for specific observations to 20 students in the learning problem group found drastic changes. 360-degree reporting involving observational data, teacher feedback, parental feedback and overall student feedback has had a positive impact. The different approaches adopted to address learning have built ‘new strategies’ in approaching learning problems. In phase two of the implementation of this project will be extended to other schools through collaboration with corporate sponsorship and SJK(T) Bandar Sri Sendayan to be a neuro education centre in Malaysia.
Refrences
Allee-Herndon, K. R. (2017, November 30). Neuroeducation and early ELEMENTARY TEACHING: Retrospective innovation for promoting growth with students living in poverty. International Journal of the Whole Child. Retrieved September 15, 2021, from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1208839.
Cunff, A.-L. L. (2020, September 20). Neuroeducation: Exploring the potential of brain-
based education. Ness Labs. Retrieved September
19, 2021, from
https://nesslabs.com/neuroeducation#:~:text=Neuroeducation%20is%20a%20fairly%2 0 new,bet ween%20education%20and%20brain%20processes.
(2020, February 28). What is educational neuroscience? Centre for Educational
Neuroscience. From http://www.educationalneuroscience.org.uk/about-us/what-is- educational-neuroscience/