Education goes far beyond the subjects we typically teach in school. Life skills like focus and perspective taking are essential to building human potential. Mind in the Making will be a powerful new resource for teachers and families.

— Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board

Making Connections

Making connections is at the heart of learning—figuring out what’s the same and what’s different—and making unusual connections is at the core of creativity.

In a world where information is so accessible,  it is the people who can see connections who are able to go beyond knowing information to using this information well. Think about your most recent “aha” moment—when you suddenly understood something that you didn’t understand before. Chances are this “aha” moment involved seeing a new connection.

Making connections involves putting information into categories as well as seeing how one thing can represent or stand for something else. Ultimately, it involves:

  • figuring out what’s the same or similar;
  • figuring out how one thing relates to another; and
  • finding unusual connections, often by being able to inhibit an automatic response, by reflecting, and by selecting something that is connected in a different way.

Making multiple connections is a skill that becomes possible during the later preschool and early school-age years and beyond as the prefrontal cortex of children’s brains matures. It calls on executive functions of the brain, including working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. Making unusual connections is the basis of creativity.
 

The following articles are about Making Connections:

The Moral Life of Babies: New York Times article

Featured article

May 05, 2010

 

Paul Bloom and his colleagues at Yale University are one of a handful of research teams around the world exploring the moral life of babies. In this forthcoming New York Times Magazine article, Bloom gives a fascinating account of this groundbreaking work. You can read the article online.
 
Click here to see one of our favorite experiments from Paul Bloom, Kiley Hamlin, and Karen Wynn: "Helpers and Hinderers."
 
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Skill: Making Connections
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Why I Am Concerned About Learning

Featured article

April 16, 2010

by Ellen Galinsky

Curiosity, according to Laura Schulz of MIT, is fueled by having two ideas that are at odds with each other.  Her research shows that when this happens, children typically will explore and experiment until they figure things out. That’s my story too. Having two images of learning that disturbingly conflicted with each other has led to eight years of exploration—so far.
 
The first image was from interviews I conducted with children a few years ago as background for a study we were planning on children and learning. In my travels around the country, I interviewed groups of children from the third through the twelfth grades, asking them about their experiences in learning—at home, in their neighborhoods, in school, in church, anywhere. Despite the fact that these children came from very different backgrounds and communities—they told me very similar stories.
 
They described learning as “learning stuff”—as the acquisition of facts, figures, and concepts. The learning experiences they described were primarily imposed—and their motivation was primarily extrinsic rather than also being intrinsic. 
 
I asked the children to finish this sentence: “It is important to learn so I can….”  And the children I interviewed all over the country said:
 
Get good grades.
Go to good schools.
Get a good job.
Support myself—have a good house—have a nice car.
 
Their reasons echo those of 81,499 students in a nationwide study conducted by the High School Survey of Youth Engagement from the University of Indiana. When asked why they go to school, 73% said because they want to get a degree and go to college, 69% said because of their friends, and 58% said because it’s the law. 
These are valid reasons, but there’s a major problem, too. In the High School Survey, only 39% said they go to school to learn. Likewise, I heard little connection to learning in the children I interviewed. Even worse, I found that there was little, if any, fire in their eyes when they talked about learning.
 
So I pushed. I asked children to finish the sentence, “When I am learning, I feel….” Those few children who had experienced a broader connection to learning said things like:
 

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Skill: Focus and Self Control
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Games that Help Children Make Connections

Quick tips

March 07, 2010

By Ellen Galinsky

Many of the tasks used by the researchers who are featured in Mind in the Making can be adapted as games you can play with your children. Remember, however, that executive functions are orchestrated by the prefrontal cortex of the brain, a part of the brain that doesn’t really begin to mature until kids are older preschoolers. So while you can play some of these games with younger children, it’s important not to push children beyond their developmental capacities— an experience that would be frustrating for you and even more frustrating for them.

Games must be fun in order to be effective, so if you find that your children don't want to play, stop and wait for a better time or a better age.

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Skill: Making Connections
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