Mind, Brain and Education
Week 1 | Introduction to Mind, Brain and Education
Lecture 1
Teachers need to know about the brain, because the brain provides the machinery to learn.
Learning disorders also go together with subtle changes in the brain. Education is connected
with the brain.
Also, education changes the brain (reorganizing the brain’s connections and networks).
The third point is that you can prevent miscommunications (neuro-myths).
What you see in this picture is that what works in education depends on the brain. For
example, young kids learn better with repeating. So the brain decides what effective education
is. But effective education also has influence on the brain. It changes the networks in the
brain.
Neuroscience can not be applied in the classroom directly for 2 reasons:
1. Neuroscience methods have limitations. The highly controlled lab conditions are
completely different from the complex situation in a classroom. Also, brain images are
less exact than they may appear.
2. There’s a complex translation. Neuroscientists are not teachers and teachers are no
neuroscientists which makes it hard to understand each other and can lead to
miscommunications.
,As you can see in the picture there are a lot of steps that have to be taken and in all these steps
there can be miscommunications.
We only use 10 percent of our brain is a false statement. Our entire brain is active at all times.
Even when we sleep.
We can diagnose ADHD on the basis of an fMRI scan. This is a false statement. fMRI scans
are not reliable enough at a individual level, most studies show group differences.
Your brain can still change after your 25th. This is a true statement. There’s not a lot of gowth
after a certain age, but there is always capacity to reorganize.
Your brain will shrink if you drink less than 6-8 glasses of water per day. This is false. There
is no scientific proof for this. It is good for your brain if you’re hydrated, but there is no proof
that your brain will shrink.
Brains of boys and girls are more similar than they are different. This is true. The brains of
boys and girls are only (slightly) different on average.
Academic achievement increases when teachers present material in the student’s preferred
learning style. This is false. It doesn’t improve learning and it leads to using less strategies, so
it limits self-regulated learning.
There are 3 arguments to conclude that something is a myth:
1. It looks like the idea comes from neuroscience, but actually it’s not. It has never been
tested. An example for this is Brain Gym (certain movements activate the brain. It’s
, claimed to improve the cognitive abilities. It is problematic because it is taught with
pseudoscientific explanations, it undermines science and it misleads children how their
bodies work).
2. The evidence is being misinterpret or is being inflated. Sometimes there is research
but it’s being misinterpret like the idea of giving a diagnosis based on a brain scan.
3. There are studies that prove that it’s not true.
Before we could do brain scans there was something called ‘phrenology’. This theory
talked about bumps in the skull that were related to talent. That area in the brain has
grown because of your talent.
People also looked at brains from people that had passed away. There were also lesion
studies from people that got in a car accident. They looked at things that people couldn’t
do anymore after the accident. They also looked at brains form animals.
The brain scanners from today are much better. We can look at the human brain in action.
Because brain scans are not hamrful, you can do longitudinal studies. And we can
understand more about the “black box”.
There’s a long discussion going on about what we can do with brain research and
education. There are 2 sides. Some people are too optimistic about this. What happens
here is that brain myths appear and that people get unrealistic expectations. On the other
hand you have people that are too skeptic about it. They think that brain research has
nothing to offer education. As a result you see that useful insights get ignored and that
oppertunities are being missed to improve teaching. Educational neuroscience is the
middle road. They want to reject myths, support promising directions and connect brain
research to education. It is a transdisciplinary field. It combines biology, neuroscience,
psychology and education. The results are more than what these fields offer seperately. It
is also a translational field. It wants to translate scientific evidence into educational
practice. This requires dialogue.
Tutorial 1
The main message of the TED talk that we had to watch is that teachers should have
knowledge about the brain. If teachers know how the brain works and how their students learn
than they can use methods that truly engage the brain and help the students learn in this way.
In the tutorial we had a debate about the following statement: neuroscientists cannot help
educators, but educators can help neuroscientists.
, Here is a list of the counterarguments:
1. EN is research that can be focused on topics like education. It’s main goal is not to
directly improve classroom teaching, but in the long term it can may help education.
2. Psychology alone is not enough. Some aspects of learning can only be explained using
educational neuroscience. It can give more deeper and unique insights than behavioral
studies do alone.
3. Neuroscience and psychology work together. Brain data can help with hypothesis that
have been created from behavioral data.
4. Brain imaging has revealed new ways and insights that could not be predicted from
behavior alone.
5. EN has helped us to understand the biological basis of learning disorders.
6. EN can often predict individual learning outcomes. EN does this better than behavioral
tests.
7. EN shows early identification for children that are at risk for dyslexia. This is
important because early interventions are better than later ones.
8. Neuroimaging has shown that poor readers have similar brain differences regardless of
IQ.
9. Understanding brain plasticity can help teachers to change their mindset from a more
fixed to a more changing one.
These are the supporting arguments:
1. Neuroscience adds nothing beyond psychology.
2. There are no clear cases where EN has improved the classroom teaching.
3. EN brings trivial (recommendations are obvious), misleading (claims are already
established by behavioral studies) or unsupported (claims mispresent neuroscience or
draw conclusions that don’t follow from the data) claims.
4. It’s not clear if interventions should be focused on a deficit that has been identified by
neuroscience (restitutive approach) or to strengthen other skills (compensation
approach).
5. Behavior is the key measure. Brain changes can not confirm if the child learned
something.
6. There are no good examples where neuroscience improves early diagnosis.
7. Teachers can help neuroscientist by providing natural learning conditions that allow
brain changes that can be studied.
Week 1 | Introduction to Mind, Brain and Education
Lecture 1
Teachers need to know about the brain, because the brain provides the machinery to learn.
Learning disorders also go together with subtle changes in the brain. Education is connected
with the brain.
Also, education changes the brain (reorganizing the brain’s connections and networks).
The third point is that you can prevent miscommunications (neuro-myths).
What you see in this picture is that what works in education depends on the brain. For
example, young kids learn better with repeating. So the brain decides what effective education
is. But effective education also has influence on the brain. It changes the networks in the
brain.
Neuroscience can not be applied in the classroom directly for 2 reasons:
1. Neuroscience methods have limitations. The highly controlled lab conditions are
completely different from the complex situation in a classroom. Also, brain images are
less exact than they may appear.
2. There’s a complex translation. Neuroscientists are not teachers and teachers are no
neuroscientists which makes it hard to understand each other and can lead to
miscommunications.
,As you can see in the picture there are a lot of steps that have to be taken and in all these steps
there can be miscommunications.
We only use 10 percent of our brain is a false statement. Our entire brain is active at all times.
Even when we sleep.
We can diagnose ADHD on the basis of an fMRI scan. This is a false statement. fMRI scans
are not reliable enough at a individual level, most studies show group differences.
Your brain can still change after your 25th. This is a true statement. There’s not a lot of gowth
after a certain age, but there is always capacity to reorganize.
Your brain will shrink if you drink less than 6-8 glasses of water per day. This is false. There
is no scientific proof for this. It is good for your brain if you’re hydrated, but there is no proof
that your brain will shrink.
Brains of boys and girls are more similar than they are different. This is true. The brains of
boys and girls are only (slightly) different on average.
Academic achievement increases when teachers present material in the student’s preferred
learning style. This is false. It doesn’t improve learning and it leads to using less strategies, so
it limits self-regulated learning.
There are 3 arguments to conclude that something is a myth:
1. It looks like the idea comes from neuroscience, but actually it’s not. It has never been
tested. An example for this is Brain Gym (certain movements activate the brain. It’s
, claimed to improve the cognitive abilities. It is problematic because it is taught with
pseudoscientific explanations, it undermines science and it misleads children how their
bodies work).
2. The evidence is being misinterpret or is being inflated. Sometimes there is research
but it’s being misinterpret like the idea of giving a diagnosis based on a brain scan.
3. There are studies that prove that it’s not true.
Before we could do brain scans there was something called ‘phrenology’. This theory
talked about bumps in the skull that were related to talent. That area in the brain has
grown because of your talent.
People also looked at brains from people that had passed away. There were also lesion
studies from people that got in a car accident. They looked at things that people couldn’t
do anymore after the accident. They also looked at brains form animals.
The brain scanners from today are much better. We can look at the human brain in action.
Because brain scans are not hamrful, you can do longitudinal studies. And we can
understand more about the “black box”.
There’s a long discussion going on about what we can do with brain research and
education. There are 2 sides. Some people are too optimistic about this. What happens
here is that brain myths appear and that people get unrealistic expectations. On the other
hand you have people that are too skeptic about it. They think that brain research has
nothing to offer education. As a result you see that useful insights get ignored and that
oppertunities are being missed to improve teaching. Educational neuroscience is the
middle road. They want to reject myths, support promising directions and connect brain
research to education. It is a transdisciplinary field. It combines biology, neuroscience,
psychology and education. The results are more than what these fields offer seperately. It
is also a translational field. It wants to translate scientific evidence into educational
practice. This requires dialogue.
Tutorial 1
The main message of the TED talk that we had to watch is that teachers should have
knowledge about the brain. If teachers know how the brain works and how their students learn
than they can use methods that truly engage the brain and help the students learn in this way.
In the tutorial we had a debate about the following statement: neuroscientists cannot help
educators, but educators can help neuroscientists.
, Here is a list of the counterarguments:
1. EN is research that can be focused on topics like education. It’s main goal is not to
directly improve classroom teaching, but in the long term it can may help education.
2. Psychology alone is not enough. Some aspects of learning can only be explained using
educational neuroscience. It can give more deeper and unique insights than behavioral
studies do alone.
3. Neuroscience and psychology work together. Brain data can help with hypothesis that
have been created from behavioral data.
4. Brain imaging has revealed new ways and insights that could not be predicted from
behavior alone.
5. EN has helped us to understand the biological basis of learning disorders.
6. EN can often predict individual learning outcomes. EN does this better than behavioral
tests.
7. EN shows early identification for children that are at risk for dyslexia. This is
important because early interventions are better than later ones.
8. Neuroimaging has shown that poor readers have similar brain differences regardless of
IQ.
9. Understanding brain plasticity can help teachers to change their mindset from a more
fixed to a more changing one.
These are the supporting arguments:
1. Neuroscience adds nothing beyond psychology.
2. There are no clear cases where EN has improved the classroom teaching.
3. EN brings trivial (recommendations are obvious), misleading (claims are already
established by behavioral studies) or unsupported (claims mispresent neuroscience or
draw conclusions that don’t follow from the data) claims.
4. It’s not clear if interventions should be focused on a deficit that has been identified by
neuroscience (restitutive approach) or to strengthen other skills (compensation
approach).
5. Behavior is the key measure. Brain changes can not confirm if the child learned
something.
6. There are no good examples where neuroscience improves early diagnosis.
7. Teachers can help neuroscientist by providing natural learning conditions that allow
brain changes that can be studied.
