The brain science behind how to supercharge teen learning

A neuroscientist and developmental psychologist on the importance of emotions and ‘transcendent thinking’

Photo by freetime jam for Unsplash

How do teens become who they become?

This vast question fascinated and baffled us over the years we spent writing our book. The Disengaged Teen focuses on education, and we knew learning must be a big part of the science of becoming. But what part? We also knew this wasn’t just about science; that there is art and chance, accident and nuance in helping teens to become—as we surely all want them to—the best versions of themselves they can be.

It was clear from the moment we met Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, head of the Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education at USC that she would be pivotal in helping us to untangle the complexity of learning in adolescence. A psychologist and neuroscientist, Mary Helen has a unique insight into teen minds through her research, which includes asking them intentionally thought-provoking questions, over years, and also utilizing scanning technology to map what is happening in their developing brains.

When we first met her, we were in the process of creating a new model of thinking about learning. Kids show up for their learning in four Modes, we concluded: Resister, Passenger, Achiever, and Explorer. We read Mary Helen’s research and interviewed her, visited her at her lab and her home during the course of our work. She helped us understand the role of emotions in learning, the role of emotions and learning in becoming, and to think about the role of meaning-making in education. She gave us a term for the kind of thinking that helps young people become more satisfied adults with a better sense of self. It’s called transcendent thinking.

And, good news! Parents and educators play a key role in developing it.

What is transcendent thinking?

When young people ask abstract, big-picture questions in an attempt to make meaning of the world around them, they are engaging in transcendent thinking. Some kids develop this way of thinking more readily, often because they have had more opportunities or encouragement to practice it. Transcendent thinking is a skill, not an innate talent. But school systems based on the acquisition of facts and knowledge can miss this piece almost completely. “Schools spend all their time asking kids to do tasks but hardly any time asking them to reflect on the meaning they are making of their experiences,” Mary Helen says in our book.

For example, a teen asked about gang violence in their neighbourhood might say gang members get caught up in the moment or succumb to peer pressure. That might be true. But a teen employing transcendent thinking might say that violence is a cycle; that kids might have been susceptible to gang culture because of their upbringing, and that upbringing will have been affected by everything from income to systemic biases.

Mary Helen has tried to understand what transcendent thinking, and the absence of it, means for young people’s development. The questions she asks teens in her research delve into topics like how they choose their friends, think about their parents, and understand their ethnic identity. She asks them to reflect on real-world examples to find out both how they think, and how they feel (more on emotions below.)

In one set of experiments, she interviewed teens when they were 14, and then followed them for five years, including scanning their brains. Those who displayed transcendent thinking during mid-adolescence showed increased connectivity between different neural networks two years later. And these connections seem to enable a stronger sense of self. The adolescents who showed more transcendent thinking were more likely to say “I have developed my own viewpoint about what is best for me” and “I engage in self-exploration and discussion with others to figure out my views on life.” They were much less likely to say, “I just hang with the crowd” or “I sometimes join activities when asked but I rarely try anything on my own.”

The kids who were able to engage in more transcendent thinking in the original interviews also went on to have higher well-being and life satisfaction in their early 20s.* They reported better relationships with others, and enjoyed school and college more.

Getting kids to think transcendently

So what is actually happening when kids engage in transcendent thinking, why do some do it more than others and, crucially, how can parents and teachers promote it?

Firstly, Mary Helen’s researchers discovered, just about all kids have the capacity to engage in transcendent thinking, but only some do it regularly. Whether or not they did had nothing to do with IQ, income level, or other demographics. The skills of reflection are developed, she found, through relationships, discussion, being given feedback on ideas, and engagement with the ideas of others.

This is where teachers and especially parents come in. Rather than over-focusing on how a kid did on a test, or the checklist of activities that might help them get into college, as parents we can dive into issues they see around them: climate, inequality, technology, the gig economy. We can ask them to wonder, reflect, and debate on things they care about (fashion) and the world (how do we balance wanting new trainers with wanting to protect the climate?) This can happen during normal conversation over dinner or in the car, with open-ended questions like “What do you think about that?” or “How does that make you feel?”

The challenge is not assuming you have the answer (even if you do) and that they have to get to that same conclusion. It’s engaging them in the process of thinking. Convinced that one side of an argument is right? What might make the other side think it’s right? Less getting them to your way of thinking and more getting them to think; less interrogation, more curiosity.

Photo: Kit for Unsplash

The role of emotions in learning

Whether young people are able and motivated to do the work of reflecting and making-making has a lot to do with how they feel.

Mary Helen’s work is also deeply concerned with the role of emotions in learning. Anyone trying to learn anything, she points out, needs to care about it. This applies as much to teens as anyone else: We think most deeply about what we care about. On a recent episode of Hidden Brain Mary Helen said:

“Biology doesn't waste energy. We don't think about things that don't matter. Because that would be a waste of time and energy. Whatever you have emotion about is what you think about. Whatever you think about, you might be able to learn about. So we need to ask ourselves, as parents, teachers — what am I having emotion about?”

A big part of the disengagement crisis that we’ve identified in teen education is that schools aren’t set up to elucidate why kids need to learn algebra (in an age of AI) or French (since Google Translate exists) or about Ancient Greece, when the world they see through media and all around them is riven by disasters and wars.

When asking kids about real-world stories, the researchers on Mary Helen’s team would literally ask the question: "How did that story make you feel?" Evidence of transcendent thinking shows up when students move beyond the surface of any given story or problem to think about the people and broader connections.

The dance in the developing brain

Mary Helen’s research shows that when adolescents toggle between big, meaty, important and messy questions, and the more practical tasks of learning, they are building extraordinarily important connections in their brains.

This should not surprise us. To become an adult, teens shift from absorbing what we say to interrogating it deeply so they can become independent thinkers. The toggling is the key: it builds capacity in the brain, just like practicing serves builds the capacity to play tennis.

“As kids are actively, dynamically shifting themselves between those ways of making meaning, they build the neural muscles for mental health and good relationships,” Mary Helen says. They are learning, sure, but also building protective tissue for good mental health and foundations to help build healthy relationships.

When we talk in The Disengaged Teen about Explorer mode, we mean the state kids get into when they are fired up about something, and really flying. Transcendent thinking is one way of conceptualising how to help kids get into that mode. In neuroscience terms, two neural networks are being brought into play at once. One is the ‘default mode network’ or DNM; the imagining network. This is the part of the brain that lights up when our minds wander, when we daydream and even when we’re bored. It helps us think ourselves into the perspectives of others, contemplate the world at large, make up stories and come up with whacky, brilliant solutions to problems.

The other is the ‘executive control network’ (ECN); the taskmaster of the brain. This gets things done: homework, managing a schedule, understanding what’s happening around us.

It is the interplay between these two that makes transcendent thought strategic and meaningful. The DMN imagines possibilities, while the ECN helps select and refine them. Ultimately, we don’t want to train kids just to focus on meaningless tasks; we want them to learn how to make tasks meaningful (though getting through meaningless tasks is also an important life skill).

The DMN includes regions like the insula, which are deeply tied to feelings, body states, and empathy. Meaning-making is inseparable from emotion. It’s often emotion that drives the question ‘What does this mean for me?’

Engaged kids are those who are encouraged to do transcendent thinking, toggling between two brain functions and using them together. They are the ones who understand why they are learning what they are learning. And if they really understand the why and are able to care, that might just supercharge their ability to learn well.

Of course it’s a tall order, but it’s also not impossible. And it will help them become the best versions of themselves they can be.

*The measures were identity development, life satisfaction, relationship satisfaction and self liking.

---

Recommendations:

How Our Brains Learn episode of the Hidden Brain podcast with Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.

A beautiful, powerful piece on the power of parents and the limits, sometimes, of a therapy-first approach about a child who lived with high functioning autism before it had a name. Leland Vittert’s memoir Born Lucky is now top of my to-read list.

From John Bailey on LinkedIn, talking about new Gallup data:

A record-low 35% of Americans are satisfied with the quality of education that K-12 students receive in the U.S. today, marking an eight-percentage-point decline since last year.

Only 21% of Americans say K-12 schools are doing an excellent or good job preparing students for the workforce and 33% say the same about preparing students for college, underscoring weak public confidence in schools’ readiness efforts.

While the headlines focus on data centers and elite AI labs, the pursuit of AI super intelligence is fundamentally a human endeavor. It requires a generation of creative, resilient, and brilliant minds. That is why the crisis of confidence in our K-12 system is so alarming. We cannot win the AI race abroad if we fail to cultivate our single most essential resource - our talent -at home.

More takes on terrible NAEP scores:

Top students are struggling too. Why we need to worry about them as well.

Late to this, but ICYMI, the NYT’s Hard Fork takes on Alpha Schools, a bold new model that uses AI and its own tech platform to limit “academic” learning to three hours a day, freeing up the rest of the day for developing life skills (and having fun).

The president of Dartmouth defending universities as places that teach students how to think, not what to think

Will the Humanities Survive AI? A Princeton historian of science and technology argues the humanities as we know it are ending. But he’s oddly optimistic about the phoenix that might be rising. This article has stayed with me all week.

Google released Learn your Way, a research experiment to reimagine the textbook, among other things (including how GenAI can transform educational materials to create a more effective, engaging, learner-driven experience for every student.) Further evidence that Google is all in on AI in learning (no surprises there) and commissioning small-ish studies in learning science (this one of 60 students from the Chicago area, ages 15–18 and with similar reading levels).

TLDR: Google is testing “adaptive” AI powered textbooks so kids can get texts based on their interests (Jawoud can learn math through baseball) and make choices about how to take in the text (Leila can chunk her reading into mini podcasts). These are two things we talk about a lot in the book - the role of interests and the power of choice in autonomy supportive teaching and parenting.

However: is an all-tech approach here best? Even if I prefer hearing my reading, I should engage in (visual) reading to develop that skill? And while some personalization is wonderful, if every kid is learning about only their own interests, I wonder if it further weakens any sense of common experience and community in schools?

This is a big development and worth watching closely.

Jess Grose on phone bans. “The Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky this month announced a surprising unintended consequence of a new statewide cellphone ban. In many of the district’s schools, the number of books checked out in the first few weeks of class had skyrocketed compared with last year, before the ban was instituted.”