12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles in Action: Teach for the Development of Higher-Order Thinking and Executive Function

Raise the bar with the best of what is known about how the brain/mind learns

Higher-order skills such as critical thinking, planning, decision-making and persistence are the key to success for today’s stud

Renate Nummela Caine is a principal of Caine Learning LLC and consultant to districts, schools, teachers, administrators, and communities to implement brain-based learning. She is the senior author, with Geoffrey Caine, of the groundbreaking Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain. She has worked with countless educators in the U.S. and around the globe. Recently, Renate and Geoffrey Caine worked with a low-income, underachieving K-5 elementary school in California to help teachers design more innovative teaching strategies using the brain/mind learning principles and district standards.

Caine is professor emeritus of education at California State University in San Bernardino, where she was also executive director of the Center for Research in Integrative Learning and Teaching. She has taught every level from kindergarten to university. She earned her PhD from the University of Florida in educational psychology.

Geoffrey Caine, a director of Caine Learning LLC, is a learning consultant and process coach. Caine has been published extensively and is co-author of six books, including Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain. His work carries him throughout the United States and abroad. He works in the worlds of education, business, and government, where he capitalizes on his prior experiences as a professor of law, an education services manager of a national software company, a state manager of a national publishing company, and national director of the Mind/Brain Network of the American Society for Training and Development.   

He has given keynote addresses or made presentations to the Campaign for Learning in the United Kingdom, the World Conference on Education for All, the Eighth International Conference on Thinking, the Whole Schools Institute sponsored by the Mississippi Arts Commission, and numerous other national and regional organizations and associations. Caine′s major interest is in how best to improve the ways in which people learn together. He directs his attention to the arts of deep listening, dwelling in the question, and processing experience for the lessons it has to offer.

Carol Lynn McClintic is an educational leader with diverse experience as a teacher at numerous levels, including preschool, elementary, middle, high, and university. She is a master teacher (over eighteen student teachers, plus BITSA and peer coach), a mentor teacher, and a model teacher. She has led and co-led many workshops for her district, taught numerous education extension classes for teachers at local universities―including co-creating a certificate program for conflict resolution―been a coordinator for university and district grant programs, and consulted with Caine Learning since 1995, participating in workshops throughout the United States.

McClintic has co-authored the book Wouldn’t It Be Wonderful: A Guide to Teaching in the Twenty-first Century and co-written an article with Geoffrey and Renate Nummela Caine. She has received several awards and retired from active teaching in 2002 after thirty-five years.

Karl Klimek is the Executive Orchestrator of the Square One Education Network, a nonprofit organization that incorporates brain/mind learning theory and practices in schools, with special focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics projects (www.squareonenetwork.org). He is lead author of Generative Leadership: Shaping New Futures for Today’s Schools (2008, Corwin Press), co-author of 12 Brain-Mind Learning Principles in Action: Developing Executive Functions of the Human Brain (2004 / 2008, Corwin Press) and has taught in Washington, Wyoming, and Michigan at both the public school and university levels. His school administrative experience includes service as a principal and as assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in a suburban Detroit, Michigan district. Karl is President of 2 Perspectives: Learning Through Leadership (www.2perspectives.us.com) and has worked extensively in career and technology education developing state and federal programs. He is a Senior Associate of the Caine Learning Institute, Idyllwild, CA and is Board Vice President of the Natural Learning Research Institute. Karl received his undergraduate degree in education from Central Washington University and his master’s in educational leadership from Eastern Michigan University. He is recognized for his practical and enthusiastic presentations as a speaker and project development/design facilitator.