I recently attended a workshop on neuroscience, education, psychology and technology. And what strange bedfellows those four topic areas are; it made me yearn for a time when delineations between subjects were not as stark as those we seem to impose on ourselves in contemporary times. Some thoughts emerged, which I hope will provide some food for thought.

1. There is a considerable amount of 'neuromyth' within the education system, that teachers cling to because it feels as though it provides an aura of authenticity or credibility to their practice. The word 'neuromyth' itself I find unhelpful because of multiple meanings of 'myth', and this was one of the semantic/constructual difficulties that arose during the workshop. 'Myth' in the Levi-Straussian sense is about developing shared languages that reflect patterns in mind and practice that we all share. Jung tried to understand myth from a psychological perspective, using it to explain shared 'archetypes'. The neuroscientists at the meeting were using the term in a more pejorative sense, to describe inaccurate or banal ideas with a faux neuroscientific basis that seem to find traction in the classroom. Examples include 'right brain left brain' (known as 'hemisphericity'), or game-based 'brain training'. (For more on this see Howard-Jones, 2009).

Beyond the semantic debate lies a deeper question about the role of science in educational contexts. Equating this to a medical context, it is easy to see how inaccurate use of science could lead to serious physical consequences. I would argue that similarly, inaccurate use of science in the classroom could lead to equally damaging, although perhaps less obvious, consequences for learners. One might counter-argue that any theoretical framework that encourages more reflective, considered or creative teaching practices is to be welcomed, but it seems to me the risks outweigh any short-term benefits.

2. Once we agree that, regardless of the language we use, inappropriate application of scientific theory to educational contexts is less than ideal, we can begin to think of ways of a) combating ignorance and b) propagating more mutually beneficial research contexts to yield genuinely useful research for educational contexts. Preferably technology-enabled in some way.

a) Most texts for teachers that broach neuroscientific topics do so in an obvious way.

Step 1: show a labelled diagram of the brain.

Step 2: give a brief summary of what we think each part of the brain relates to.

Step 3: make large leaps from the diagram to suggestions for classroom practice, relying on the value our society places on science to carry through the practical suggestions without much reflection.

After attending the workshop I've become convinced that this is not a helpful way of trying to bring neuroscientific evidence into classroom practice. It is patronising, and stifles professional conversations. Rather, we should be encouraging trainee teachers to understand the techniques behind neuroscientific research; for example, knowing that a subject (and I use that word advisedly) cannot move during an fMRI or EEG experiment would encourage some much-needed scepticism on the part of teachers who would otherwise perhaps believe the research had taken place in a more naturalistic context.

The next issue to address would be to help trainee teachers understand the kinds of questions that neuroscience can, and cannot, answer. I learnt that neuroscientists are excellent at dividing big questions into smaller problems, each to be solved, and then brought back together into a whole. Some intriguing examples of this sort of work was shared by Dan Schwartz, and I'd strongly recommend a glance at the papers emerging from the AAA Lab at Stanford. This is quite different from teachers' daily practice, which necessarily moves rapidly from big picture to individual child and back to the whole (e.g. classroom management). The opportunity to break down the stages and steps required to reach an understanding of a topic, for example positive and negative integers seems a helpful one to me. And what the neuroscience crucially offers that is genuinely new and exciting is the opportunity to not just understand those steps superficially, but to understand what affects those steps most meaningfully. Early days, though...

b) The task of creating more propitious atmospheres for multi-disciplinary work across these diverse fields felt quite far away from one another, even after the workshop, despite some fascinating examples of where this work is already taking place. Where it seems to be succeeding, this is because of:

- a genuinely open attitude towards the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of inquiry across all the disciplines (there was significant scepticism from all quarters during the event, some of it clearly felt over long and illustrious careers and thought about very deeply), and a willingness to move towards shared languages. Some constructs and terms seemed anathema to the neuroscientists, and similarly some of the neuroscientific language seemed anathema to the educationalists. The technologists were acutely aware that neuroscience relies almost totally on effective technologies, but in quite different ways to the day-to-day technologies learners use. The psychologists were a much more widespread spectrum of opinion. I'd be most interested to know how representative of the fields the group actually way)

- early conversations between educationalists and neuroscientists about the right questions to work on together. For example, during the workshop I raised the perennial issue of learning to 'tell the time' experienced by teachers across the English-speaking world. This sparked some interesting conversation, and seemed a topic quite ripe for further exploration. It serves as an example of a real-life teaching challenge, where neuroscience might provide insights into routes to understanding, that might be meaningfully represented in a technology-based application for classroom learning. This would not work without constant deep conversation between all parties in such a study.

All in all, I'm not sure whether I came away from the event feeling more or less convinced that neuroscience and education have a path that they could travel along together, facilitated or enhanced by technology. Certainly there were some impressive and encouraging examples. This was contrasted with some entrenched conservative positions that seemed a considerable distance from collaboration to me. Perhaps we're at the beginning of something new in methodological and practice terms. I would certainly hope that educational research and practice could be actively involved in any change from the beginning, learning together. This must surely be better than trailing behind, feeding off inaccurate seeds that fall out of the neuroscientific seed-mixer.


Further reading:
Howard-Jones, P., 2009, Introducing Neuroeducational Research
http://royalsociety.org/brainwaves-education/