Educational Neuroscience Michael Thomas
Summary
TLDRThis script discusses the relevance of educational neuroscience, which aims to apply brain learning mechanisms to improve classroom education. It highlights the importance of understanding how the brain works and the potential for translating neuroscience findings into effective teaching strategies. The speaker emphasizes the need for educators to grasp the underlying mechanisms of learning, rather than relying solely on psychological constructs, to foster better educational outcomes.
Takeaways
- 🧠 Educational Neuroscience seeks to apply new findings from neuroscience to improve educational outcomes for children.
- 🔍 Psychology aims to understand the mind by inferring hidden mechanisms from observable behavior.
- 💡 Historically, psychological theories have been influenced by the technology of the day, such as the steam engine, telephone exchange, hologram, and desktop computer.
- 🚫 The limitation of using computer metaphors is that they don't accurately reflect the brain's specialized circuits and mechanisms.
- 🌐 Neuroscience is influencing various societal areas, including economics, law, and security, as well as education.
- 👩🏫 Teachers are the experts in the classroom but often lack training in the neuroscience mechanisms that underpin learning.
- 🤔 Teachers are enthusiastic about neuroscience but may sometimes embrace misconceptions about brain function.
- 🔄 The translation from neuroscience to education is complex, involving many steps from research to practical classroom application.
- 📚 Neuroscience can provide insights into learning phenomena that are not explained by computer-based psychological models, such as phobias, sleep, and aging.
- 🏫 Educational Neuroscience has made strides in understanding specialized brain circuits for skills like reading and mathematics.
- 🌍 Learning about the Earth's shape involves inhibiting intuitive knowledge and activating scientific knowledge, a skill that can be taught in the classroom.
Q & A
What is the primary goal of educational Neuroscience?
-The primary goal of educational Neuroscience is to use new findings from Neuroscience about the mechanisms of learning in the brain to understand how they can be translated into implications in the classroom to improve educational outcomes for children.
Why is understanding the mind important in Psychology?
-Understanding the mind is important in Psychology because it helps predict and potentially change human behavior, which is crucial in settings like classrooms where the focus is on teaching children skills, knowledge, and preparing them to be good citizens.
What is the drawback of using technology as a metaphor for the mind?
-The drawback is that it doesn't accurately reflect how the brain works, focusing more on the technology of the day rather than the actual mechanisms and processes that the brain finds easy or hard to do.
How does Neuroscience influence other areas of society?
-Neuroscience influences other areas of society by affecting understanding in fields such as economics, law, and security, showing a broader impact beyond just educational settings.
What is the role of teachers in the field of educational Neuroscience?
-Teachers are the experts in the classroom with years of experience and an intuitive feel for what works with children. However, they often lack training in the mechanisms that underpin learning, making the integration of Neuroscience findings into their practice an important but challenging task.
Why is it beneficial to bring a deeper understanding of learning mechanisms to teachers?
-Bringing a deeper understanding of learning mechanisms to teachers can help them make more informed decisions about teaching techniques, potentially avoiding educational fads and ensuring that their practices are based on evidence.
What misconceptions about the brain might teachers embrace due to their enthusiasm for Neuroscience?
-Teachers might embrace misconceptions such as the idea that some children are left brain thinkers and others are right brain thinkers, or that drinking lots of water is necessary for attention in class, which are not supported by scientific evidence.
How does the specificity of learning relate to the idea of the mind working like a desktop computer?
-The specificity of learning, where training in one area doesn't necessarily improve performance in others, contradicts the idea of the mind working like a desktop computer, which is characterized by general mechanisms that process all types of content.
What is the significance of specialized circuits in the brain for learning?
-Specialized circuits in the brain are significant because they are responsible for specific functions, and strengthening connections in one circuit doesn't transfer to other circuits, highlighting the need for targeted learning approaches.
How can understanding brain mechanisms help in teaching science to children?
-Understanding brain mechanisms can help in teaching science by focusing on techniques that help children inhibit irrelevant intuitive knowledge and activate scientific knowledge, which is crucial for learning counterintuitive scientific concepts.
Outlines
🧠 The Relevance of Educational Neuroscience
This paragraph introduces the field of educational neuroscience, which aims to apply insights from neuroscience to improve learning outcomes in the classroom. It discusses the broader goals of psychology to understand the mind and how educators, lacking formal neuroscience training, can benefit from a deeper understanding of the brain's learning mechanisms. The speaker highlights the historical tendency of using technology as a metaphor for understanding the mind, such as the desktop computer model, and argues for the importance of considering actual brain function in educational practices.
🤔 Bridging Neuroscience and Education
The second paragraph delves into the challenges and potential of integrating neuroscience with educational practices. It acknowledges teachers' enthusiasm for neuroscience but also their susceptibility to misconceptions, or 'neuro-myths.' The speaker addresses skepticism about the feasibility of translating complex neuroscience findings into practical classroom strategies, emphasizing the significant gap between understanding brain cell activity and managing a dynamic classroom environment. The paragraph also raises questions about the specificity of learning and the limitations of the computer metaphor in explaining cognitive processes.
📚 Specialization and Control in Brain Function
The final paragraph focuses on the specialized nature of brain circuits and the importance of a control system that activates the appropriate neural pathways in context. It contrasts this with the general mechanisms of a desktop computer, suggesting that enhancing one skill does not necessarily improve others, unlike the CPU of a computer. The speaker discusses the implications for education, including the need for emotional stability and the potential benefits of understanding and training inhibitory control skills. The paragraph concludes with an example of how educational neuroscience is being applied to teach scientific concepts that contradict intuitive knowledge, such as the Earth's round shape.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Educational Neuroscience
💡Psychology
💡Working Memory
💡Neuromyths
💡Brain Mechanisms
💡Inhibition
💡Cognitive Processes
💡General Mechanisms
💡Specialized Circuits
💡Control System
💡Emotion Regulation
Highlights
Educational Neuroscience aims to apply new findings from Neuroscience to improve educational outcomes in the classroom.
Psychology seeks to understand the mind's workings through observable behavior and infers hidden mechanisms.
The limitations of using outdated technology as metaphors for understanding the mind.
The influence of Neuroscience on various societal areas, including economics and law.
The importance of understanding brain mechanisms in learning for educators.
Teachers' enthusiasm for Neuroscience and the risk of embracing neuromyths.
The challenge of translating Neuroscience findings into practical classroom techniques.
The specificity of learning and the brain's specialized circuits.
The role of the control system in the brain for activating the right circuits in learning.
The emotional aspect of learning and its importance in the classroom environment.
Early days in Educational Neuroscience with potential for future classroom applications.
Understanding brain circuits for learning skills like reading and mathematics.
The development of specialized brain areas for reading and their cultural influence.
The process of learning scientific knowledge and its conflict with intuitive understanding.
Expert scientists' ability to inhibit intuitive knowledge in favor of scientific knowledge.
Training children in the suppression of irrelevant knowledge to learn science effectively.
The evaluation of techniques to improve children's learning of counterintuitive scientific ideas.
The potential link between high intelligence and effective inhibitory control skills.
Transcripts
so educational Neuroscience is an
attempt to use new findings that are
emerging from Neuroscience about the
mechanisms of learning in the brain and
to understand how they may be
translated uh into implications in the
classroom to improve educational
outcomes of children now to understand
why educational Neuroscience is relevant
or important or new I think we have to
step back a bit and think about what
we're trying to do in Psychology in the
field of
psychology so in in Psychology we're
we're basically trying to understand how
the mind works uh and uh there's a a
bunch of reasons we might want to do
that we might want to predict how people
are going to behave change how they're
going to behave definitely in the
classroom we want to understand uh how
to teach children how to give them
skills how to give them knowledge how to
turn out uh good citizens for the
economy how do we understand how the
mind works when all we can see is
people's behavior from the outside we
have to figure out what's going on
inside their minds all we can see is
behavior well what we do is we use a
standard scientific approach we try and
infer hidden causal entities uh uh
mechanisms that we can't see based on
the avert Behavior Uh that we see in
adults and
children and so we've been pretty good
at doing doing that we uh uh come up
with things like uh working memory and
attention and perception and emotions
and things like that the drawback is
that as scientists it turns out that we
don't have very good
imaginations when it comes to thinking
about what might be going on uh inside
uh um people's heads what we tend to do
is think about the technology of the day
and think about that that might be a
good kind of metaphor for what's going
on inside our head so you can trace this
back through history uh you can look at
the idea that the mind works like a
steam engine was a Freudian idea or that
the mind works like a telephone exchange
or that memory works like a
hologram I think the most recent version
of of this type of uh uh uh mechanistic
metaphor of the mind is the desktop
computer we think that maybe the mind
works like a desktop computer uh and if
if you think about that just the the
phrase working memory that's exactly the
same phrase that we talk about keeping
things in mind and we talk about a
computer that it has working memory I'm
upgrading my computer to 10 gigabits of
working memory the problem of thinking
of the Mind in terms of the workings of
a desktop computer is that's not really
paying attention to how the brain works
and and what the brain finds easy to do
and what it finds hard to do and this is
part of a broad Brer picture as as we
are getting a a deeper understanding of
brain function we're beginning to see
the influence of Neuroscience in
multiple different areas so uh in areas
such as uh uh affecting understanding of
Economics or understanding of law
understanding uh uh security these kind
of things there's a range of wider
influences of Neuroscience so with the
uh Rising understanding of how the brain
functions uh and the emergence of the
field of Neuroscience we're beginning to
see a wider influence of Neuroscience on
different areas within Society including
uh how Neuroscience impacts on economics
how Neuroscience impacts on law now the
area I work in is the impact of
Neuroscience on education trying to
understand how uh brain mechanisms of
learning constrain how children learn
what they learn how quickly they can
learn and what things we can learn at at
different
ages so as I work in this field and I'm
trying to do this this transfer of
Neuroscience research to education and
to be guided by Educators and what the
key questions are in
Neuroscience some things strike me about
teachers so uh first off uh teachers are
the experts in the classroom they've got
years of experience they have an
intuitive feel for what works uh with
children but they don't have a training
in the mechanisms that underpin learning
in children and that's an interesting
comparison say to to doctors who would
have a extended training in how the Body
Works before they sit down with a
patient and and diagnose a uh disease
now there's been a long history of
accumulation of knowledge uh in teachers
about what works in the classroom but
that kind of trial and error
accumulation of practice what it
sometimes leads to is is fashions in
education techniques that that are used
one year but a decade later your using
something different and it also lets in
the possibility of techniques in
education that really don't have any
evidential base so the idea of bringing
in a deeper understanding of mechanism
underpinning learning and conveying that
to teachers uh is an attractive one the
other thing that strikes me about
teachers uh at least in the UK is that
they're very excited about Neuroscience
they're enthusiastic about it and
implicitly that suggests they understand
the importance of of mechanisms of
learning is one aspect of knowledge that
should uh inform their practice indeed
they're so enthusiastic that that
sometimes they Embrace what's called
neurom myths misconceptions about how
the brain works for instance that some
children are left brain thinkers and
some children are right brain thinkers
or that you can't pay attention in class
unless you're drinking lots of water so
uh some people say this attempt to
translate from Neuroscience into
education can't be done that those two
disciplines are too far apart that that
we're taking activity of brain cells and
looking at the connections between
neurons or perhaps we're using magnetic
resonance imaging to see what parts of
the brain are more active uh and at the
other end we've got a classroom full of
children who are running around and the
teacher is trying to get them to sit
still and learn something how can those
two things uh match up with each other
well certainly the translation between
the low level of Neuroscience and uh
actual effective techniques that will
work in the classroom that's a big
translation there are a lot of steps
between it about taking new findings
from neuroscience and seeing whether
they have educational implication uh and
then seeing if there is an apparent
implication say for how many times you
might repeat material in certain ways to
to make sure that it's best learned can
we actually put that in a form that it's
going to be useful to teachers but there
are people who say it can't be done that
really the proper academics a proper
scientists that that teachers should be
talking to are psychologists and and not
neuroscience and I think there there are
some risks about that approach if you
ignore how the brain works and you just
stick with psychology and these
constructs we've come up with
particularly those based on the way a
computer works I think you can there are
things that that just make no sense let
me give you some examples so why is it
that uh I can forget I'm trying to learn
French vocabulary and I I learn learn
French vocabulary and I forget it a few
months a few years later but I don't
forget that I'm scared of
spiders why is that uh why is it that uh
after a good night's sleep I seem to be
able to remember what I learned
yesterday better why is that why is it
the teenagers all of a sudden start
making risky decisions and and uh uh
trying to impress their friends what
happens
there uh why is it that I seem to be
able to learn a new language better when
I'm 5 years of age than than when I'm 50
years of age all all of these things
have no basis in in understanding what a
computer does another example why is it
that I do lots of learning on my topic I
sit in an exam and I'm really stressed
and suddenly my mind goes blank uh all
of these aspects uh things like uh
phobias things like uh sleep things like
puberty things like aging these have no
basis in uh uh how a computer works
computers don't get stressed so there's
a lot of aspects that that appear within
Children's Behavior children's learning
that we won't get any insight into
unless we understand how the brain is
working so here's one of the the big
puzzles in teaching when you teach a
child an adult a given
skill they just seem to get get better
on that particular skill it's really
hard to find activities that you can do
that will make people better at
everything in fact sometimes people seek
these like like they're a Holy Grail
like you'll hear uh work that says um
meditation may make you better at
everything uh learning a musical
instrument May improve your intelligence
but these are very much the exceptions
and mainly when you learn something you
train on something you only get better
on that skill so the question is why is
teaching why is it so specific in its
effects and this is something again that
really makes no sense uh in terms of of
of the idea that the mind is working
like a desktop computer the desktop
computer is characterized by General
mechanisms General mechanisms in terms
of a central processing unit in terms of
a hard disk in terms of the working
memory or these days in terms of the
cloud these are mechanisms that process
all the kind of content and you would
have thought if you trained your central
processing unit you would get better at
all the processing you do well the brain
doesn't work that way its content is
built into specialized circuits specific
circuits and that's why if you improve
if you strengthen the connections
between the neurons in one circuit it
doesn't transfer to the strength of the
connections in other circuits of course
youve got to think how a system like
that is going to work with all these
specialized components this one for
vision this one for hearing this one for
decision making what you also have there
is a control system one that will
activate the right circuits in the right
uh context and inhibit the wrong ones so
the goal of Education in that framework
is to try and see how we can put the
right specialized content into the right
systems but also uh to train the
controlling system the controller to
make sure that the right parts of of the
system are activated in the right
context and of course we have to uh bear
in mind that the brain is the seat of
the emotions as well and it's important
for children in the classroom to have
the emotional stability and security and
behavioral regulation to be ready to
learn in the classroom so the big
message of educational Neuroscience is
it is early days the brain is a very
complicated thing education is very
diverse in its goals but as we
understand more about brain mechanisms
there uh strong hints that we will be be
able to transfer that into lessons for
uh learning in the classroom so uh some
of the areas where educational
neurosciences has made the the biggest
strides is understanding the the brain
circuits and the functionality of skills
such as learning to read uh such as
mathematics such as doing arithmetics
these areas are interesting because uh
children raised in an environment
without education just wouldn't learn
those brain structures so we have have
this extended special environment of
exposing children to uh letters and
written forms and pronunciation and
reading and the comparison of reading to
pictures and scenes and scenarios that
gradually cause our brain structures to
build parts of parts of the brain that
will be specialized for reading words so
there's a visual word form area in the
brain and that has certain properties
and that's only come about by spending
weeks and weeks training children in
these culturally determined environments
and the same goes for mathematics we're
understanding about how we represent
size how we represent symbolic number
and what happens in children with
developmental disorders like dyslexia or
disc calcula that may limit their
ability uh to learn those aspects a good
example of of how you might uh transfer
from an understanding of of Neuroscience
to what it might mean in the classroom
uh is the example of of learning about
Science Now what's interesting about
science is in many cases scientific
knowledge overwrites our intuitive uh
knowledge about how the world Works
let's take a six-year-old boy uh he
learns in class that uh the world is
round it's a sphere it's a curved
surface uh but for all of his six years
he's been running out around and for the
maybe two years he's been playing
football on the football pitch that
doesn't look curved that looks flat so
how does that child go about learning
that the the Earth is a sphere where his
his everyday experience says it's
flat well one way you might think is you
just overwrite that old knowledge and
you put in the new scientific knowledge
Neuroscience studies of expert
scientists when you put them in the
brain scanner and see what's happening
in their brain it turns out that what
they're doing is actively inhibiting
their intuitive knowledge and activating
their scientific knowledge and what
makes them an expert is they're better
at inhibiting irrelevant intuitive
knowledge so that gives us a hint that
one of the skills that might help
children learn science is helping them
with this suppression or inhibition
skill and there's there's actually a a
technique that we're evaluating here at
the center of educational Neuroscience
in London where we're training children
in the area of science these are 8 n 10
year old children to learn about uh
these counterintuitive ideas in science
and and to suppress the irrelevant
counterintuitive knowledge and we
believe that this will help them acquire
the broader topic of science uh and it's
a technique we're currently evaluating
so one possibility about very
intelligent individuals is that they
have very good inhibitory control skills
the ability to to really shut off
knowledge intuitive knowledge everyday
knowledge that is not relevant to the
very technical Fields where they're
becoming
expert
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