Neuroscientific Research & Education
Author: Nicole Marie Sartin
12/2/13
Ashford University
EDU673: Instructional Strategies for Differentiated Teach & Learn (MRF1348B)
Education & Neuroscience
The potential of educational neuroscience has received varying degrees of support from both cognitive neuroscientists and educators. Shortly after the brain awareness initiative in the 1990’s enthusiastic educators sought to make relevant connections with the research and classroom practice in spite of rigorous criticism.
The critics said that educators had crossed “a bridge too far” and that the concept of brain-based learning was “oversold” or as notable early researcher, John Breur described in his article, ”A Bridge Too Far”: “Neuroscience has discovered a great deal about neurons and synapses, but not nearly enough to guide educational practice. Currently, the span between brain and learning cannot support much of a load. Too many people marching in step across it could be dangerous.” (Bruer, 1997)
However, the current prevailing opinion seems to be that the link between education and neuroscience has yet to realize its full potential. Besides whether through a third research discipline, or through the development of new neuroscience research paradigms and projects, the time is right to apply neuroscientific research findings to education in a practically meaningful way. Additionally, a bridging discipline, such as cognitive psychology, social psychology or educational psychology may provide a neuroscientific basis for educational practice.
But how can understanding cognitive psychology, social psychology or educational neuroscience help educators? Certainly, teachers cannot expect scientists to create the “ultimate lesson plan.” However, because educational policies and practices are focused strongly on the product of learning mainly through standardized testing, teachers often tend to be more concerned with the process of learning. In fact, public attention is focused on external factors such as content standards, school governance, age/grade configurations, curricula, data-based decision making, and accountability for student test scores, while teachers are seeking to better understand the needs of their learners.
On the other hand, teachers are looking to neuroscience for help understanding the developing brain and how it processes information—how knowledge is acquired, maintained, retrieved, and applied to solve problems. Specifically, teachers want to know more about typically and atypically-developing pathways for learning so that they can better serve the needs of students at all points along the achievement spectrum. Thus, academic institutions all around the world are beginning to devote resources and energy to the establishment of research centers focused on educational neuroscience research.
Neuroscience and Learning
It is often said that one of the most essential factors which may drive a young student’s success is the connection they build with their teachers. Reports have existed for many years that describe how learning was stimulated by the assistance of an involved and supportive teacher. But how is this systematically done? We now have the neuroscientific technology to begin to understand why and how this happens. In fact, recent advances in neuroscientific technologies, new collaborative initiatives, and the establishment of specific funding opportunities have contributed to recent drives to bridge the neuroscience–education gap which include the emerging field of social neuroscience linking learning to a form of social psychology. (2009)
Social psychology is the scientific study of social behavior, with an emphasis on understanding the individual in a social context. (2000) Accordingly, social psychologists study a diverse range of topics ranging from intrapersonal processes shaped by or in response to others, such as the self, attitudes, emotions, social identity, normative beliefs, social perception, social cognition, and interpersonal attraction; to interpersonal processes such as persuasion and social influence, verbal and nonverbal communication, interpersonal relationships, altruism, and aggression; to group processes such as social facilitation, cooperation and competition, equity, leadership, out group biases, group decision making, and organizational behavior.
The fundamental ability a teacher must have to orchestrate differentiated instruction day after day, hour after hour, by assessing his/her students and adjusting strategies and tactics moment by moment, requires sophisticated knowledge and skills. There are six interactive components of the human learning process: attention, memory, language, processing and organizing, graph motor (writing) and higher order thinking. These processes interact not only with each other, but also with emotions, classroom climate, behavior, social skills, teachers and family. Thus, in many ways social and cognitive psychology provide a useful medium to connect neuroscience research to the wider community of learning. In fact, scientific support is claimed by the architects of the Revised Curriculum by reference to neuroscience.
In a brief section of the rationale entitled The Learning Challenge, the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) (2003) notes that recently neuroscience has established a number of factors which are critical to learning and to motivation, about how our brains process information:
“We now know that the human brain creates meaning through perceiving patterns and making connections and that thought is filtered through the emotional part of the brain first. The likelihood of understanding taking place is therefore increased significantly if the experience has some kind of emotional meaning, since the emotional engagement of the brain on some level is critical to its seeing patterns and making connections. Learning is particularly effective when we have opportunities to apply what is being learned and when we can transfer learning from one situation to another.
Neuroscience, therefore, highlights the need for learning to be emotionally engaging to the learner, particularly during the 11–14 age range when so much else is going on with adolescents to distract them from school.” (CCEA, 2003)
Neuroscience and Learning
Although there is general agreement that neuroscience contributes to the knowledge of the biological parameters of learning, there is disagreement on the question of whether this knowledge can be successfully translated into usable knowledge that will assist teachers in their curriculum work. Furthermore, the process of applying neuroscience to education is one that requires collaboration and dialogue between the neuroscientist and the educator, and that such a process is iterative and that results are by no means guaranteed. The need for checks and balances is illustrated by those instances where attempts to apply neuroscience have been made with little regard for the fuller picture supplied by collaboration with other disciplines.
However, a number of prominent scholars have suggested that a reliable route for the translation of neuroscience for educational ends from neuroscience to education is provided via cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology (1997). The suggestion that cognitive psychology is best placed to serve as a bridge between neuroscience and education has obvious merits because of the ties between cognitive psychology and educational theory and practice. In such a model, neuroscience would serve the purposes of refining cognitive models built upon behavioral observation in a collaborative fashion. Furthermore, notable researcher John Geake (2009) proposes a ladder spanning the different levels of a continuum between the polarities of educational outcomes and genetic profiling, with direct connections being possible across the different levels, contingent, of course, on the integrity of the research design. Later, several other researchers suggest that knowledge of biological concepts can aid investigation of educational thinking, for example, those involved with learning differences, especially for those students with limitations owing to special needs.
Neuroscience and Differentiated Learning
According to Tomlinson in “The differentiated classroom,” (1999) to successfully use differentiated instruction, a teacher must first have a firm understanding of each of the cognitive components of the learning process, what they look like when they are working, and what the specific subcomponents of each look like when they are breaking down.
Next, a teacher must develop a rich repertoire of strategies and tactics from which to pull the exact strategy or tactic that will address a specific breakdown for a specific task, at the right moment. Using a great strategy at the wrong time, or mismatching a strategy with breakdown for which the strategy will yield no gains, will frustrate students and teachers alike when the strategy fails to produce the desired result.(1999)
Finally, in order to engage, motivate and teach all learners at optimal levels, teachers must understand the learning process in general, understand and respond to students’ individual emotional and cognitive profiles and select instructional strategies and tactics that are effective for diverse learners.
A potential application of neuroimaging highlighted by notable researcher, Usha Goswami on differentiating between delayed development and atypical development in learning disorders. For instance, is a given child with dyslexia developing reading functions in a totally different way from typical readers, or is he/she developing along the same trajectory, but just taking longer to do so? Evidence exists to suggest that the development of the language system is delayed rather than fundamentally different in nature for children with specific language impairments and dyslexia.
Other researchers, such as Katzir & Pareblagoev have pointed out that neuroimaging methodology as it stands may not be suitable for the examination of higher level cognitive functions, because it relies primarily on the ‘subtraction method’. (2009) By this method, brain activity during a simple control task is subtracted from that of a ‘higher order’ cognitive task, thus leaving the activation that is related specifically to the function of interest.
In disorders such as autism however, brain development may be qualitatively different, showing a lack of development in brain regions associated with a "theory of mind". Goswami suggests that neuroimaging could be used to assess the impact of particular training programs, such as the Dore, an exercise based program based on the cerebellar deficit hypothesis that aims to improve reading through a series of balance exercises. (2009)
Some brain imaging research is beginning to show that for children with dyslexia who receive targeted educational interventions, their brain activation patterns begin to look more like those of people without reading disorders, and in addition, that other brain regions are acting as compensatory mechanisms. Such findings may help educators understand that, even if dyslexic children show behavioral improvement, the neural and cognitive mechanisms by which they process written information may still be different, and this may have practical implications for the ongoing instruction of these children.
Conclusion
Researchers highlight the example of dyslexia results as a model of how bidirectional collaboration might be achieved for neuroscience and education. Furthermore, such theories need to suggest empirically testable connections between educationally relevant behavior and brain function. Researchers also point out that "teachers must be aware of and act on the science within the art of teaching". They suggest that educators must become aware of other methods and incorporate them into their practice.
Furthermore, teachers who are adequately trained in both pedagogy and the neuro- and cognitive sciences move us beyond “a-bridge-too-far” thinking by steering a clearer course between what people believe, what is actually known, and what is likely to be useful in the classroom. We thought the brain never changed. And we thought it was useful to categorize children according to their individual “learning styles.” Though it may not be possible (in the short-term at least) to reach a national consensus regarding the goals of our education system, the emerging field of neuroeducation—with help from neuroethics—can and should broaden everyone’s perspective of an effective school and a properly educated child.
References
Bruer, J.T. (1997) Education and the brain: a bridge too far; Educational Researcher.
Grande-García, I. ( 2009). Social neuroscience: The marriage between social psychology and cognitive neurosciences. A review and an introduction to a new discipline. Anales de Psicología, 25, 1– 20.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Bruer, J. T. ( 2007, September7). The brain/education barrier;
Science, 317, 1293. doi: 10.1126/science.1148983
Tomlinson, C.A. (1999). The differentiated classroom; Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Willingham, D. T. (2009). Three problems in the marriage of neuroscience and
Education; Cortex, 45, 544–545.
