When and How Neuroscience Applies to Education

Abstract

I AGREE WITH Eric Jensen on several important points, among them: that neuroscientific data are relevant to educational research, that these data have already proved useful, and that neuroscience alone should not be expected to generate classroom-ready prescriptions. I sharply disagree with him, however, on prospects for neuroscience to make frequent and important contributions to education. I set two criteria for a contribution to education: data must tell us something that we did not already know, and that something must hold promise of helping teachers or students. For example, I expect that most teachers know that students do not learn well if they are hungry or uncomfortably warm. What then does an understanding of neurobiology of hunger and its effect on cognition add to a teacher's practice? One might argue that teachers should understand why they do what they do, for example, why they ensure that room is comfortable. I disagree. All of us make use of technologies that we do not understand, and we do so without concern because understanding or ignorance wouldn't change practice. I don't understand what my computer hardware is doing as I type this reply, but if I did, that knowledge would not change how I typed or what I wrote. Thus, while it might be rewarding for a teacher to understand some neurobiology, I argue that education has not moved forward unless that knowledge improves his or her teaching. So under what conditions do neuroscientific findings improve education? How do we integrate neuroscientific data with educational theory and practice? It's not enough to say that the brain is intimately involved in and connected with everything educators and students do at school, which is Jensen's premise. That statement is true, but trivially so, because brain is intimately involved in anything related to human affairs. The question is how we leverage what we know about brain to help us better understand processes of education. Jensen relies too heavily on his intuition that, because education relies on brain, knowledge of brain is bound to help. But knowledge of brain is not bound to help. This is where problem of levels of analysis proves vital. Let's set neuroscience aside for a moment and consider how levels problem plays out in cognitive psychology, using a simple example. We know that memory is more enduring if you overlearn material--that is, continue studying it after you've mastered it. (1) So why not apply that knowledge to classroom? Why not have students rehearse important facts (for example, multiplication tables) and not quit even when they have mastered them? Any classroom teacher knows that it's not that simple, because continuous practice will be purchased at considerable cost to motivation. So here's rub: for sake of simplicity, cognitive psychologists intentionally isolate one component of mind (e.g., memory or attention) when they study it. But in classroom, all of components operate simultaneously. So a principle from cognitive lab might backfire when it's put into more complex classroom environment. That's problem of levels of analysis. Cognitive psychologists study one level--individual components of mind--but educators operate on a different level--the entire mind of child. (Or, better put, mind of child in context of a classroom, which complicates things still further.) Now, how can we add neuroscientific data to this picture? Parts of brain don't map onto cognitive system, one for one. There is not a single part of brain for learning and one for attention. Each of those cognitive functions is served by a network of brain structures. Memory relies on hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, thalamus, and frontal cortex, at least. Suppose I take an observation about hippocampus--which I know contributes to memory--and try to draw a classroom application from that. …