Neuroscience and Education:
the new dialogue
Jeremy Dudman Jones
Assistant Head Teacher - Greenford High School
It was standing room only at the Learnus presentation on Neuroscience in Education at the second London Festival of Education on Saturday the 28th February. It seemed quite clear that Learnus and its Council of teachers, academics, neuroscientists and psychologists had hit on a very topical, current and profoundly important element of current educational thinking as over 110 Educationalists squeezed into the Blue Zone's first presentation to hear Richard Newton-Chance and Professor Michael Thomas lay out their ideas on Educational Neuroscience. After an introduction by Jeremy Dudman Jones laying out the origins of Learnus and its explicit aim of joining together the various communities currently engaged in Educational Neuroscience the audience were then treated to a couple of fascinating presentations laying out two perspectives on current thinking.
Richard's position as former Principle at Queen Elizabeth school in Devon, currently working as a consultant for ASCL, gave him a unique insight into what Educational Neuroscience could give to a school. He set out his points as part of a presentation titled "Zen and the art of teaching" pointing out that actually as classroom practitioners teachers were constantly working with the brain. Schools were about relationships between people from students to teaching staff, parents and support staff at every juncture, brain behaviour was key to understanding relationships and to ultimately ensuring progression and development for every pupil. Given that there is so much information out there already regarding neuroscience, schools and school leaders in particular should really take an interest, embrace the knowledge that is currently available and use it to enhance the art of teaching. Richard reminded us all that Neuroscience was not reductionist, taking everybody down to biological machines, rather it was providing some useful insights into motivation, changes to adolescent brains, rewards and how the environment can frame the person through changes to the brain. He left us with the clear understanding that teaching was both an art form and to a certain extent a science, as such educationalists should join in the Neuroscience debate with the academics so that they can continue to direct the inevitable changes in such a way that will benefit schools and their students.
Professor Michael Thomas had been invited as part of the Learnus council to provide the audience with the Academics point of view, providing a brief tantalising insight into where Educational Neuroscience was at the moment and where it might be in a few years' time. Michael as director of the Centre for Educational Neuroscience is in the unique position of working with a number of academics in the field from cognitive psychologists to geneticists all currently working on a huge range of Neuroscience led research. Michael took the view that Neuroscience was a relatively new discipline and in some regards as a community we were rather like the medical community at the turn of the 20th century. Here was a chance for all interested parties to join in the debate and have some say in the future direction of Educational Neuroscience. Michael also reminded the audience of predominately teachers that the brain was no longer really seen as being akin to a computer but that it was clearly more complex, flexible and nuanced than that. He reminded us of the problems associated with quick fix answers or neuromyths, "there were no silver bullets" able to reduce teaching to an automated science but there were insights into behaviour, memory, motivation and many others that would enhance teachers skill set and lead to even better teaching practice. Michael saved his best slide to last as he produced his view of what a brain actually was, very impressive given that he managed to squeeze it onto a single slide; the twitterers shared it all on social media.
The presentation finished with a brief question and answer session allowing the audience to fire some interesting questions and understandable concerns at both Michael and Richard. The most heartfelt was the concern that "scientists" were attempting to introduce Biological determinism to the Art of teaching and ignoring the complexities of being a skilled teacher dealing with real humans. As both Michael and Richard said in their responses though this is certainly not the case, if anything Educational Neuroscience was showing researchers just how important the environment was in shaping the person and just how important the Art of Teaching had become in defining educational outcomes for all students.
As Michael said we are currently at the start of the new and exciting Neuroscience polemic taking our first steps and looking at potential applications. We can only make real progress by working together to better understand the workings of the human brain and as teachers who work to try to change brains on a daily basis we too should get involved in the discussion in some way. This is where Learnus comes into play, an organisation that joins the interested parties together and if the reaction of the audience was anything to go by and the social chat after the event Educational Neuroscience is part of the new zeitgeist and is here to stay.
Jeremy Dudman-Jones
