Neuroscience for Teachers

Applying research evidence from brain science

Richard Churches, Eleanor Dommett, Ian Devonshire

• Publisher: Crown House Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781785831836
• eBook ISBN: 9781785832789
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Behavioural Management

Foreword by Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE. In Neuroscience for Teachers: Applying Research Evidence from Brain Science, Richard Churches, Eleanor Dommett and Ian Devonshire expertly unpack, in an easy-to-read and instantly useable way, what every teacher needs to know about the brain and how we really learn and what that suggests for how they should teach. Everyone is curious about the brain including your learners! Not only can knowing more about the brain be a powerful way to understand what happens when your pupils and, of course, you pick up new knowledge and skills, but it can also offer a theoretical basis for established or new classroom practice. And as the field of neuroscience uncovers more of nature's secrets about the way we learn and further augments what we already know about effective teaching this book advocates more efficient pedagogies rooted in a better understanding and application of neuroscience in education. By surveying a wide range of evidence in specific areas such as metacognition, memory, mood and motivation, the teenage brain and how to cater for individual differences, Neuroscience for Teachers shares relevant, up-to-date information to provide a suitable bridge for teachers to transfer the untapped potential of neuroscientific findings into practical classroom approaches. The key issues, challenges and research are explained in clear language that doesn't assume a prior level of knowledge on the topic that would otherwise make it inaccessible therefore enabling more teachers to better comprehend the lessons from neuroscience while the authors also take care to expose the ways in which 'neuromyths' can arise in education in order to help them avoid these pitfalls. Laid out in an easy-to-use format, each chapter features: 'Research Zones' highlighting particular pieces of research with a supplementary insight into the area being explored; 'Reflection' sections that give you something to think about, or suggest something you might try out in the classroom; and concluding 'Next steps' that outline how teachers might incorporate the findings into their own practice. The authors have also included a glossary of terms covering the book's technical vocabulary to aid the development of teachers' literacy in the field of neuroscience. Packed with examples and research-informed tips on how to enhance personal effectiveness and improve classroom delivery, Neuroscience for Teachers provides accessible, practical guidance supported by the latest research evidence on the things that will help your learners to learn better. Suitable for LSAs, NQTs, teachers, middle leaders, local authority advisers and anyone working with learners.

Chapter 1

Neuroscience in the classroom – principles and practice

Getting started

By the end of this chapter you will:

• Understand what neuroscience is and how the brain processes information.

• Understand what kind of research neuroscientists conduct.

• Understand current relationships between educators and neuroscientists.

• Know how to build bridges between the two fields.

Why would you want to know about this?

Have you ever wondered what is happening in the brains of your learners when you teach them and whether this information would be useful to you in developing your practice? Presumably you have or you would not be reading this book. You might be pleased to know that you are not alone in your curiosity about the workings of the brain. The Wellcome Trust recently published a report, entitled How Neuroscience Is Affecting Education (Simmonds, 2014), which contains data from a series of surveys with teachers and parents. In one of the surveys, which involved over 1,000 teachers, more than nine out of ten teachers said that their understanding of neuroscience influenced their practice (2014: 1). Furthermore, eight out of ten said they would collaborate with neuroscientists doing research in education (something that is now happening with increasing frequency – see Research Zone 1.1).

Despite this, only 25% of teachers report having a good or fair amount of knowledge about neuroscience, meaning that for many teachers their practice is being influenced by quite limited knowledge, some of which may be inaccurate (2014: 3). One of the reasons we wrote the book is to try to help in this area. Another reason is that our experience tells us that learning about the brain is one of the most exciting types of professional development you can have, and many teachers find it enthralling.

“Eight out of ten teachers said they would collaborate with neuroscientists doing research in education.”

We think there are two specific areas of your teaching that you can enhance by increasing your knowledge of neuroscience. Firstly, neuroscience knowledge can be a powerful way to inform how you teach and understand what happens when your pupils – and, of course, you – learn information and skills. Moreover, neuroscience is not limited to helping you understand learning. For example, it can also provide us with information about motivation, mood and the reason why adolescents sometimes appear to belong to a different species. Secondly, neuroscience knowledge can provide you with a theoretical basis for established or new classroom practice, and can help you to evaluate the so-called brain-based learning products that may be on the market. This is important because if you understand the neuroscience evidence, you can spot products that are making claims about being brain-based which are in fact just using neuroscience terminology to sound impressive. In addition, understanding how memory works can help teachers to plan the delivery of content in a way that does not overload the brain’s capacity to deal with new information – an area we will spend much time on in Chapter 2. Research Zone 1.1 gives an example of the way in which neuroscience theories have been used to develop classroom interventions and how research programmes can be used to explore their effectiveness.

Research Zone 1.1. The Wellcome Trust Education and Neuroscience Initiative

In 2014, the Wellcome Trust launched an initiative with the EEF to explore six areas of neuroscience-informed practice that show the potential to be scalable and affordable for schools. As this book goes to press, the researchers have yet to report the outcome of the studies because the trials are still taking place. Despite this, the topics are worth mentioning as they illustrate the range of areas that neuroscience can contribute to in education. The projects are:

• Fit for study – which is looking at how exercise could improve academic attainment (report due early 2018).
• Spaced learning – an approach in which intense periods of study are alternated with shorter sections of activity containing ‘distractor’ activities (like juggling); see Chapter 7 (pilot report available at EEF, 2017).
• Teensleep – this is testing the effect of sleep education on attainment (report due September 2017). The programme involves training teachers to deliver lessons to students about the importance of areas such as good sleep-related behaviours, routines and stress management techniques.
• Learning counterintuitive conception – which is applying techniques that may help children to ‘inhibit’ prior contrary knowledge when learning new ideas in maths and science (report due summer 2017).
• GraphoGame Rime – looking at a literacy improvement programme based on phonics which uses rhyme (report due spring 2018).
• Engaging the brain’s reward system – exploring reward strategies in secondary school science classes (report due autumn 2017). This research compares three approaches: game-based questions with uncertain rewards, test-based questions with fixed rewards and conventional teaching (the teacher’s usual practice).

The Wellcome Trust Education and Neuroscience Initiative is now being broadened and expanded to include the development of teacher training materials and a range of innovative teacher professional development opportunities. One of these projects involves a collaboration between us and the Wellcome Trust to carry out a series of neuroscience-informed teacher-led randomised controlled trials.1

What is neuroscience?

For you to understand how you can apply neuroscience evidence to your teaching, it is critical to understand first what neuroscience is exactly. This question is quite straightforward to answer because neuroscience literally means the science of the nervous system. Here, and from now on, we will use the word ‘science’ to refer to any knowledge acquired using scientific method. We will discuss scientific method later in this chapter. For now, you just need to know that scientific method is the name given to a process of designing and conducting research that involves making observations and interpreting them in the context of very specific research questions. Importantly, if you have a science background or can just vaguely remember science from your school days, you will already have some knowledge of neuroscience because it makes use of the principles and many techniques from the main science disciplines of physics, chemistry and biology.

Now we have the science part covered, we will look at exactly what we mean by the nervous system. Figure 1.1 shows a simple diagram of the human nervous system. As you can see, there is a central part, comprising the brain and the spinal cord, and then many branches that extend throughout the body. The central part is the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and everything else is the peripheral nervous system.

Figure 1.1. The human nervous system.

Although neuroscience is technically the study of the whole nervous system, much of the research neuroscientists carry out aims to investigate the brain. Because this type of research is of most relevance to education, the remainder of the book focuses on research about the brain rather than the whole nervous system.2

The appearance of the human brain is not unlike a walnut, with a wrinkly outer surface called the cortex. In vertebrates the whole brain can be divided into two cerebral hemispheres (illustrated in Figure 1.2). These cerebral hemispheres, sometimes referred to as the left and right brain, are separated by a fissure that runs from the front of the brain to the back. Beneath the cortex are hundreds of other structures, including the examples shown in the figure.

Figure 1.2. The human brain is divided into two cerebral hemispheres with an outer surface called the cortex.

Neuroscientists have divided the brain up according to structural details and the ‘job’ that is being done in the different areas. One of the simplest approaches divides each hemisphere into four different lobes (see Figure 1.3). The frontal lobes are immediately behind the forehead and include areas that are involved in behaviour, personality, learning and voluntary movement. The parietal lobes, at the top of the head, play an important part in the reception and processing of sensory information, while the occipital lobe is the brain’s visual processing centre. The temporal lobe is mainly involved in hearing and selective listening, but also has a role in other functions such as memory.

Figure 1.3. Division of the brain into four lobes.

A slightly more complex approach to distinguishing between different brain areas was undertaken by an anatomist called Korbinian Brodmann, who divided the cortex into 52 different areas which he believed to be distinct (Brodmann, 1909). Figure 1.4 shows some of Brodmann’s areas (note that not all 52 can be seen from this lateral view). Other divisions are ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title Page
• Foreword by Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE
• Preface
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of Reflections
• List of Research Zones
• 1: Neuroscience in the classroom – principles and practice
• 2: Learning and remembering
• 3: Metacognition
• 4: Emotions and learning
• 5: The individual in the classroom
• 6: The adolescent brain
• 7: Surprises from cognitive psychology and neuroscience
• 8: Concluding remarks
• Glossary
• References
• About the authors
• Copyright