Hot Topics: Neuroeducation: Realistic or Idealistic?

In this week’s top topic blog, Dr Fiona Holmes explores the challenges and realms of our minds in her blog on neuroeducation.

“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” – Albert Einstein

I’ve spent most of my career so far as a neuroscientist, but more recently my role and research interests have an education focus. So, in this blog I’m combining both and discussing neuroeducation: the application of neuroscientific evidence to pedagogy to understand and enhance learning.

Since learning happens in the brain, the link between neuroscience research and educational research should be a no-brainer – right? Well, it’s rather complex and controversial and so far, neuroeducation research has not yet revealed a magic strategy to make geniuses of us all – but it’s relatively early days!

The idea of brain-based learning

Caine and Caine (1990)¹ proposed the following 12 basic principles, extrapolated from the neuroscience-derived ideas at the time:

1. The brain processes multiple things in parallel therefore teaching should orchestrate all the dimensions of parallel processing by teaching in complex multi-sensory environments;
2. Learning engages the entire physiology so teaching must incorporate stress management, nutrition, and exercise;
3. The search for meaning is innate so teaching should incorporate a stable and rich environment to facilitate this;
4. The search for meaning occurs through patterning so teaching should incorporate thematic teaching, curriculum integration, and life-relevant approaches to learning;
5. Emotions are critical to patterning so ensure a supportive emotional environment and co-operative learning;
6. The brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts (details) and wholes (global concepts) so learning is cumulative and developmental;
7. Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception therefore utilise the entire sensory context of the learning through appropriate visual and emotional stimuli;
8. Learning involves conscious (remembering) and unconscious (priming) processes so incorporate active learning and reflection in teaching;
9. There are at least two types of memory: spatial memory system (strongest) and rote learning memory, so avoid just fact memorisation;
10. The brain understands and remembers best when facts and skills are embedded in contextual (spatial) memory therefore use a multisensory experiential learning approach;
11. Learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat so maintain an environment of relaxed alertness;
12. Each brain is unique and uniquely adaptable therefore use multifaceted teaching to address diversity.

But are these principles really novel and does a neuroscience-focused approach to evidencing, understanding and advancing these ideas provide strategies to improve educational practice?

A key aim for neuroeducation is to work out what happens in the brain when it learns and then how to best stimulate this in an educational environment. It has been shown that neuroeducation research may help inform, refine, select, and support aspects of pedagogy, alongside other methods.

There have been numerous studies over the last 20 years or so which support a neuroeducational strategy, including the identification of brain areas involved in reading – and the proposed neurobiological basis of dyslexia; the neural circuitry of numerosity; the neural substrates of attention, emotion and social cognition, relevant for further understanding of e.g. attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autistic spectrum disorder.

It has potential for neuroprognosis (i.e. predicting educational intervention outcomes); assessing the effect of educational, genetic and/or environmentally induced changes on neurophysiology and cognition; engagement, motivation, and risk to potentiate learning. Furthermore, neuroeducation could influence curriculum design and educational reform.

Neuromyths

However, such principles and popular brain science may over-simplify and over-interpret complex and incomplete neuroscience research and may contribute to the establishment and perpetuation of neuromyths – misconceptions generated by a limited or misunderstanding of data from brain research, albeit based on a kernel of truth, e.g. the learning styles myth^2,3.

Despite its widespread acceptance, research fails to support the idea that teaching which aims to fit an apparent learning style enhances learning. So, is ‘a little knowledge a dangerous thing’? There is concern that significant resources may be invested in policies, training, research, and practice based on half-truths. This has emphasised the importance of bidirectional education, mutual cultural understanding and shared experience of each other’s environments between neuroscientists and teachers and students.

Useful advances in the field can come from reciprocal training in relevant knowledge, concepts, and research methods, ensuring robust, relevant and practically applicable research findings through co-constructing research projects; and using neuroscience to distinguish between educational theories rather than drive them. An appreciation of each other’s knowledge and perspectives through co-education and collaboration will facilitate increasingly beneficial outcomes for education and help to bust neuromyths.

Neuroeducation-informed practice

It will come as no big surprise that we should be designing teaching that engages mental activities that enhance the acquisition, processing, storing and use of knowledge in a diversity of learners, as well as promoting meta-cognition – thinking about thinking. So… we must be aware of cognitive diversity and use a variety of teaching methods to accommodate and engage all our students. Lets think about afew ideas and examples:

Active experiences linked to positive emotions are critical for learning: Provide student-centred, active and adaptive learning-by-doing memorable experiences such as problem-based, project-based and co-operative in a supportive environment. Simulation and gamification places students in an environment where they can experience how to be, how to do, and has been shown to increase concentration and reduce tension.  Get students to use the learning at different times in different contexts. Include repetition, retrieval, and association tasks to enhance efficient memory systems.

Memory acquisition relies on attention: Engage and motivate students by starting a session with something provocative and relevant to contextualise the teaching and learning process. It could be an anecdote, an image or question that affects and connects with the lives and interests of your students. This will enable reflective discussion and critical analysis to help them acquire knowledge through their own conclusions.

Encourage students to be active in their own learning journey: This can be achieved through reflection, problem-solving and critical thinking as well as providing them with specific, meaningful, actionable, and timely feedback.

Implement mental and/or physical activities at the beginning of a session: A puzzle or meditation can aid concentration and therefore assimilation of knowledge. Include games, fun, social interaction, and reward to foster interest and pleasure, ensuring the learning objective is clear so that the students will be able to appropriate and transform the acquired knowledge.

Educational Neurotechnology: Brain scan to lesson plan

Exciting advances in the technologies to study the neurophysiology of learning in an education environment are continually developing. This will be the topic of my next blog.

Further reading:

1. Caine R and Caine G (1990). Understanding a brain-based approach to learning and teaching. Education Leader 48(2): 66-71.
2. Howard-Jones P A (2014). Neuroscience and education: myths and messages. Nat Rev Neuro 15: 817-24.
3. Newton P M et al (2021). The learning style neuromyth is still thriving in medical education. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 15: 1-5.