In everyday life people receive stimuli from a large number of objects and events, all presented simultaneously. Our students are exposed to all these stimuli and it is important to emphasize that only a small part of them are relevant to them. They will seek to meet those that allow them to achieve the objectives or goals that have been set and ignore those that may be a cause of distraction or interference.
The stimuli we seek are called objectives and to those ignored are called distractors. Selective attention is the process by which we perform this differentiation.
Next, we share 4 key ways that will allow us to educate attention from neuroscience.
- Focus the objectives we wish to achieve.
It is essential to understand the objectives that we want to achieve and look for strategies for our students to internalize them, so that they can focus attention on them and avoid distracting.
- Focus on attentional networks.
Capturing student attention is a key process for teaching and learning. For this reason, it is necessary to know the different stimuli involved in their decisions in order to focus the classes in a more accurate way.
- Design visually stunning classes.
Learning experiences should cover as many senses as possible. When a student is exposed to smell, touch, see, listen and taste their learning becomes experiential and will always be present in their implicit memory.
- Look for links.
It is important that what is being studied is linked to other elements so that it is easier to remember and at the same time internalize it to reach consciousness.
Working attention in the classroom will allow us to have students with better behavior, focused thoughts and greater control of emotions, facilitating their academic goals and, more broadly, in their lives.
