5 Steps by the University of Birmingham

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Bridging Neuroscience and Education

An interesting article was published in 2010 by University of Birmingham researcher Jodi Tommerdahl.

Is neuroscience useful to educators?
- Yes.
Tommerdahl argues that there is great potential in how neuroscience research can benefit teachers and students in schools.
- However, she warns that we need to be careful when translating the laboratory findings into the classroom.
Brain sciences are the initial step in improving learning in the classroom, but there are several other steps in between.
Neuroscience findings need to be linked to social, political, and historical factors.

We need to distinguish between neuroscience and cognitive neurosciences. The first is concerned with the pure biological factors in the brain - the synapses and the cells.
The latter tries to relate neural activity that underpins cognition and cognitive processes, such as memory, emotional processing and decision making.

We also need to distinguish between cognitive neuroscience and psychological mechanisms.
The distinction being that the first studies the physical brain, whereas the latter studies “the mind".
This differentiation, however, is arbitrary and historical and more related to how the two fields see the same phenomenon of cognition.

Then, we have educational theory. Researchers here will develop learning theories based on the neurological and psychological findings from the previous steps.
Here, learning will be segmented into more functional areas related to skills and knowledge that students learn.
- For example, learning vocabulary of a foreign language will have a different educational theory than learning science in someone’s native language.

Tommerdahl says that it would be unreasonable to expect that all teachers base their teaching in the first two fields.
However, she argues that it should be expected that teaching and learning in schools derive from recent findings in educational theory.

Lastly, we have the classroom step. Here, teachers and schools will implement research to their classroom and closely monitor the effects that these new strategies have on pupils.
All feedback should, then, return to the early steps so the hypothesis can be revisited and improved.