Does Neuroscience Matter for Education?

As the brain sciences make advances in our understanding of how the human brain functions, many educators are looking to findings from the neurosciences to inform classroom teaching methodologies. This paper takes the view that the neurosciences are an excellent source of knowledge regarding learning processes, but also provides a warning regarding the idea that findings from the laboratory can be directly transposed into the classroom. The article proposes a model of five levels which describe different types of knowledge that must all contribute to new teaching methodologies. These include the levels of neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, educational theory and testing, and finally the classroom.

ADVANCES IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE, 2010

8 : ADVANCES IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE SUMMER 2010; 12(2 (46)):83-100. CRITICAL EXPLANATION OF THE PLACE OF NEUROSCIENCE IN THE FIELD OF EDUCATIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE NOURI ALI*,MEHRMOHAMMADI ...

| Cognitive neuroscience is making rapid strides in areas highly relevant to education. However, there is a gulf between current science and direct classroom applications. Most scientists would argue that filling the gulf is premature. Nevertheless, at present, teachers are at the receiving end of numerous 'brainbased learning' packages. Some of these contain alarming amounts of misinformation, yet such packages are being used in many schools. What, if anything, can neuroscientists do to help good neuroscience into education?

Philosophy of Education 2013, 2013

Recent research in neuroscience has a seductive appeal for quick applications to many everyday phenomena. 1 This research has also attracted educational entrepreneurs, who often create commercial programs that turn neuroscience into classroom practice. 2 Phrases such as "brain-based education" give them an air of respectability and authority, enticing educators to adopt them. However, basic brain research is often superficially understood, and thus translated too quickly into educational practices. 3 The large gap between neuroscience and practice is ignored too often by entrepreneurs selling their programs. They often end up making inflated claims about neuroscience's direct benefits in day-to-day teaching practices. Problematizing this is a good public service for philosophy of education.

Curriculum Inquiry, 2012

The burgeoning knowledge of the human brain generated by the proliferation of new brain imaging technology from in recent decades has posed questions about the potential for this new knowledge of neural processing to be translated into "usable knowledge" that teachers can employ in their practical curriculum work. The application of the findings of neuroscience to education has met a mixed reception, with some questioning its relevance for educational practice. Simplistic generalizations about neuroscience's application to education have been dubbed as neuromyths, and regarded as being at best irrelevant to or at worst counterproductive in bringing about good educational practice. In recent times, expansive literature generated in the area of educational neuroscience has drawn attention to a range of epistemological and conceptual issues pertinent to the attempt to translate neuroscientific research findings into usable knowledge that has the potential to improve curriculum practice. Issues involved in such a process include the place of neuroscience among the corpus of disciplines constituting the educational foundations; the conceptual framework required to translate knowledge between neuroscience and education; and, whether usable knowledge can be generated from neuroscientific information, so to be applied in curriculum work. These curriculum questions have direct bearing on curriculum work as the issue of usable knowledge relates directly to the teacher's role in the curriculum process. This article will consider the expectations and constraints in relation to the contribution of neuroscience to the production of usable knowledge for curriculum work.

Springer briefs in education, 2019

This chapter reviews findings from neuroscience and discusses how Student Centered Cooperative Learning can facilitate application of these findings on behalf of learning. Firstly, on a physical level, neuroscience tells us that human brains need water and nutrition. Secondly, on an affective level, students need the right level of challenge, support in the face of bullying and other threats, and motivation. Thirdly, insights from neuroscience confirm that cognitive learning benefits when new learning connects with students' background knowledge in order that students can construct networks of knowledge. Next, that chapter focuses on insights from social neuroscience, in particular why and how to promote mutual concern, encourage students to believe that collaboration can be beneficial, help students develop and deploy cooperative skills, and manifest altruism. Advances in science have greatly added to our knowledge of how the brain works. No longer do we see the brain as the behaviorists did, an impenetrable black box into which we cannot look, or as the early cognitivists did, as something that can only be described via metaphors, as in the computer metaphor of the mind (Crowther-Heyck, 1999; see Chap. 4). Instead, researchers in education and related fields use newly developed neuroscience tools to look at actual brains thinking in real time, as these researchers search for insights into what strategies promote learning. Indeed, brain-based education has become a popular term (Jensen, 2008; Kumar & Yap, 2010; Shaughnessy, 2016). This chapter presents findings from neuroscience and their implications for education, in particular how Student Centered Cooperative Learning (SCCL) provides many ways to apply this research. Perhaps surprisingly, or maybe comfortingly, findings in neuroscience support the overall thrust of SCCL. Education Applications from Neuroscience At an accelerating rate, neuroscience provides new information about how the human brain, all 1300-1400 g or three pounds of it, works (Jan, 2017). Actually, much of what has been learned about the brain fits well with what people in the overlapping

The relationship between education and cognitive neuroscience is an old issue from which the idea of the ‘neuroeducators’ was proposed 25 years ago. The premise of this idea is that the knowledge about how the brain operates our learning could help teachers in the classrootm. Despite of being an old issue, there are yet some unsolved matters. Firstly, how neuroscience and education could integrate biological understanding about learning cerebral process has not been yet clearly discussed. The present paper presents the results from Enscer–Teaching the Brain Project – that has been developed in Brazil for five years. During that time educators attended to neuroscience courses conducted by researches involved in the project, and were taught about brain learning mechanisms, language and arithmetic neural circuits and how this knowledge may be used for teaching the brain. On the other side neuroscientists were informed by educators about social and cultural demands for optimized learning. Good results came from this mutual relationship making us to believe that neuroeducation is atwo-way traffic.

Formazione & Insegnamento, 11, 1, 43-49

Paul Howard-Jones è un esperto di neuroscienze applicate alla pedagogia; insegna presso la Graduate School of Education, dell"Università di Bristol. Nell"intervista che segue, rilasciata nel mese di maggio del 2013, condivide con il lettore alcune riflessioni attorno a temi sui quali da tempo la sua ricerca è impostata. In primis insiste nel definire i limiti e il perimetro nelle neuroscienze, nel loro dialogo con il mondo dell"educazione (celebre è la sua pars destruens dei "neuro-miti", operata nel saggio Introducing Neuroeducational Research, pubblicato da Routledge nel 2010). In seconda battuta interviene sugli ambiti di più recente indagine: la valutazione dell"impatto di strategie didattiche che comportano movimento, gioco, creatività. A suggello dell"intervista, e a ridimensionamento del ruolo di supremazia assegnato da molti alle neuroscienze al confronto con le scienze dell"educazione, valga questo suo appunto: "Alla fin fine, le neuroscienze ci possono solo dire cosa facciamo, non cosa dovremmo fare. Decisioni di questo tipo, riguardo all"equilibrio da raggiungere tra le esperienze degli alunni e il curricolo, devono essere fatte dagli educatori -idealmente, educatori che abbiano nozioni di neuroscienze". In sostanza al concetto di Neuroeducation va corrisposto, secondo Howard-Jones, il riconoscimento di un mutuo dialogo tra il laboratorio e l"aula, senza che un ambito si debba appiattire alle istanze del secondo. Così, se le neuroscienze si muovono agevolmente sul campo della dimostrazione, alle scienze dell"educazione va riconosciuto ampio dominio sul terreno della progettualità.

Educational Neuroscience is an exciting and timely new discipline. It brings together individuals from diverse backgrounds, including cognitive brain scientists, learning scientists, medical and clinical practitioners, and those in educational policy and teaching. These individuals are joined in their mutual commitment (a) to solve prevailing problems in the lives of developing children, (b) to understand the human learning capabilities over the life span (both in brain and in behavior), and (c) to ground educational change in the highly principled application of research that employs both behavioral as well as a multitude of modern methodologies, including brain imaging. This discipline provides the most relevant level of analysis for resolving today's core problems in education. Educational Neuroscience draws its empirical strength from its sister discipline, Cognitive Neuroscience, which combines decades of experimental advances from cognitive, perceptual, and developmental psychology with a variety of contemporary technologies for exploring the neural basis of human knowledge over the life span.