clair073

In recent years, the growing public concern over deficiencies of schools has led a growing number of educations to embrace neuroscience. Neuroscience is a discipline that integrates anatomy, physiology, psychology, psychiatry, pathology as they relate to function of the nervous system, particularly the brain. In 1969, I was one of 500 charter members of the society that formalized the discipline, the Society for Neuroscience. But only in the last decade has there been much interest in the potential for neuroscience to influence educational policy and practice. In educational circles, this interest has been expressed with such terms as "brain-based learning," "educational neuroscience," and "neuro-education." The latter term is used for my Linked-in group. Whatever it ends up being called, a new discipline is growing. So far, both good and bad effects are manifest. Numerous critics have pointed out that neuroscience has not had much impact on education, and...

If we learn anything about educational policy, we should learn that what we have tried over the last couple of decades to improve student achievement doesn’t work very well. I won’t bore you with all the statistics showing that academic ability of U.S. students lags that of most other developed countries and our ranking is not improving. I would like to explore one reason for lack of progress besides faulty federal policy. And that reason is research funding. We don’t know enough about how brains learn and remember, nor how to apply what we do know to educational policy. The recently announced winners of the Nobel Prize included nine from the U.S. In a recent joint interview by leaders of the American Association of Science, the winners spent little time discussing their research achievements, preferring to expound on some serious concerns about how research is now funded in the U.S. Of course, some of these concerns could be considered whining. Like much of the general public, the sci...

I began beating the drums for applying neuroscience to educational practice in a 9/28/11 blog post (see archives). Now I am delighted to announce that Elsevier publishers has started a new scholarly journal, Trends in Neuroscience Education. The title is a little misleading because it implies that articles will focus on teaching of neuroscience. On the contrary, all seven articles in the first issue dealt with applying neuroscience information to the practice of teaching and learning. Two of the first issue articles deal with movement feedback and its affect on cognitive development. These have particular relevance to the teaching of handwriting. The present emphasis on keyboarding and the elimination of penmanship in the curriculum are apparently educationally unwise. This is particularly destructive in schools that are dropping cursive altogether. I will blog about these findings soon. For now, reader should know that this neuro-education movement is well under way, that I will follo...

              BASED      In an earlier post, I explained the new trend of “neuro-education.” Science is discovering many things about learning and memory that have not yet been incorporated into school programs. Schools are so focused on teaching kids what to know to pass government-mandated tests that they don’t seem to get around to teaching students how to develop their capacity to learn and remember. On-line Universities.com has just posted a very nice item on how “neuroscience is changing the classroom.” The post explains nine neuro-education interventions: 1.       Cognitive Tutoring . There is a current system for algebra that  employs computer-based AI to adjust to student needs as well as to track student progress and thought processes so teachers can better help them learn. 2.       High School Starts Later in the Day . Because adolescents don’t get enough sleep and are...