Introducing Neuroeducational Research

Neuroscience, Education and the Brain from Contexts to Practice

Paul Howard Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135270285
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Amongst educators, scientists and policy-makers there is a growing belief that the field of education can benefit from an understanding of the brain. However, attempts to bring neuroscience and education together have often been hampered by crucial differences in concepts, language and philosophy. In this book, Paul Howard-Jones explores these differences, drawing on the voices of educators and scientists to argue for a new field of enquiry: neuroeducational research.

Introducing Neuroeducational Research provides a meaningful bridge between two diverse perspectives on learning. It proposes that any such bridge must serve two goals that are critically related to each other: it must enrich both scientific and educational understanding. This challenge gives rise to unique conceptual, methodological and ethical issues that will inevitably characterise this new field, and these are examined and illustrated here through empirical research. Throughout the book, Paul Howard-Jones:

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• Explores 'neuromyths' and their impact on educational research

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• Highlights the opportunities to combine biological, social and experiential evidence in understanding how we learn

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• Argues against a 'brain-based' natural science of education

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• Introduces clearly the concept of an interdisciplinary neuroeducational approach

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• Builds a methodology for conducting neuroeducational research

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• Draws on case studies and empirical findings to illustrate how a neuroeducational approach can provide a fuller picture of how we learn.

Presenting a blueprint for including our knowledge of the brain in education, this book is essential reading for all those concerned with human learning in authentic contexts: educators, scientists and policy-makers alike.

Part I

Contexts

Chapter 1

What has neuroscience got to do with education?

Many teachers, policymakers and scientists now believe neuroscience is providing insights about the brain that are relevant to education and, as the number of these grow, so do the calls for education to take note of them. This belief is driving the new field of intellectual enterprise to be explored critically in Part II. First, however, it is important to understand the scientific evidence underlying this enthusiasm. What insights appear, at least on the face of it, to have something to do with our efforts to improve teaching and learning?

In this chapter you will encounter some of the ‘low-hanging fruit’ that may be most accessible to interdisciplinary researchers, i.e. where understanding in neuroscience is most closely approaching topics of educational interest. But this review is by no means exhaustive and, with the number of new findings in neuroscience each year increasing, it will soon be out of date. Nevertheless, it provides some idea of why the idea of ‘neuroscience and education’ is generating excitement, and an impression of the breadth and diversity of its potential impact in our educational institutions and beyond.

Note: in this chapter, and all others, you will encounter some jargon, such as technical names for brain regions and processes. Readers who are not specialists in the brain may wish to read Appendix 1, which provides a brief tutorial that explains these terms, and also see Appendix 2 which provides a glossary.

Brain development

Our brains are plastic, which means their structure and connectivity can change with experience; but the most drastic changes occur during childhood and into adolescence. There has been considerable interest in understanding these aspects of brain development, not least because they may suggest changes in readiness to respond to environmental stimulus,¹ including the type provided by formal education. So, this chapter begins with a brief review of how our brains develop with time.

Early years

The vast majority of the neurons we possess as adults arrive within three months of our conception. There are two regions, the hippocampus and cerebellum, where neurons continue to be produced after birth. In the hippocampus, there is evidence that neurogenesis, the birth of neurons, continues even in adult life, although the full significance of this in terms of learning is still unclear. Learning is chiefly associated less with the birth of neurons and more with synaptic plasticity – changes in the connectivity between neurons. These changes appear to occur in waves. After birth there is a massive increase in synaptogenesis, i.e. there is a huge blossoming of connections, such that an infant's brain is more connected than an adult's. Then follows a wave of synaptic pruning, in which connections are cut back. These changes occur at different rates in different parts of the brain. For example, in the visual cortex the number of connections peaks at about 8–10 months, whereas in the frontal and parietal cortices the decline begins around the beginning of puberty, reaching adult levels at around 18 years or later (Huttenlocher and Dabholkar, 1997).

Described in this simple way, these changes may sound genetically programmed but the situation is more complex than this. Views on the role of genetics in development vary across different fields of science. It has been said that the instructions encoded in DNA have acquired a unique causal status in developmental outcomes due to their unidirectional influence (Plomin et al., 2007). It is true that some specialist genes, such as those linked to reading disability, have been identified (Paracchini et al., 2007), as well as a set of so-called ‘generalist genes’ that appear largely responsible for genetic influence across domains of academic achievement and cognitive ability (Plomin et al., 2007). Such valuable insights make it likely that genetic indicators can contribute to devising personalized learning approaches for children of all ability, in much the same way as personalized medicine is moving away from the ‘one size fits all’ treatment (Abrahams et al., 2005). Such indicators will, however, only indicate probable rather than certain outcomes. In molecular biology, a unidirectional formula of DNA→RNA→protein is often assumed, in which the proteins that go on to form biological structures, including those found in the brain, are translated from the intermediary ribonucleic acid (RNA). However, modern neuroconstructivist theories, currently favoured within developmental cognitive neuroscience, reject this maturational unfolding of pre-existing information in the genes (Johnson, M.H. 2004). Instead, they assume this process of protein synthesis is bidirectional, since it is known that proteins can act on RNA and DNA and, in exceptional cases, RNA can even transform DNA in a process called reverse transcription (Gottlieb, 2004). Furthermore, these processes are affected by normally occurring environmental influences. So, even at the level of gene activity, interaction with experience and the environment is likely to play a crucial role in normal brain development. Our genes contribute to, but do not define, who we are.

Periods of both increased synaptogenesis and synaptic pruning can be considered as indicating increased sensitivity to learning, and may explain so-called sensitive periods when we are more able to learn particular things. In the future, it may be possible to determine sensitive periods for particular aspects of cognitive function relevant to different educational areas but, at present, our knowledge of sensitive periods for human development is quite limited and is restricted to basic perceptual functioning. A famous example includes our inability to distinguish new speech sounds if we are not exposed to them before the age of 6 months (Kuhl et al., 1992). However, the idea that environments enriched with copious amounts of stimulus are needed by children in their earliest years to promote the development of their brains cannot be supported by neuroscientific evidence. This neuromyth is explored more fully in the next chapter.

Brain development in adolescence

The frontal lobes, more than other region, are associated with the types of higher-level processing fostered by education and these, together with parietal regions, are still undergoing radical structural changes until the late teens. Thus, the science suggests that all of childhood, including adolescence, can be considered as a special time for learning. Apart from synaptic pruning, a second type of change occurs in these brain regions during puberty called myelination. This is the process by which the axons, carrying messages from and to neurons, become insulated by a fatty substance called myelin, so improving the efficiency with which information is communicated in the brain. In the frontal and parietal lobes, myelination increases considerably throughout adolescence and, to a less dramatic extent, throughout adulthood, favouring an increase in the speed with which neural communication occurs in these regions (Sowell et al., 2003). For these reasons, one might expect the teenage brain to be less ready than an adult brain to carry out a range of different processes. These include directing attention, planning future tasks, inhibiting inappropriate behaviour, multitasking, and a variety of socially orientated tasks. Indeed, psychological testing has even shown a ‘pubertal dip’ in some areas of performance, such as matching pictures of facial expressions to descriptors. In this task, 11–12-year-olds performed worse than younger children (McGivern et al., 2002). Discontinuities have also been shown in abilities underlying social communication, such as taking on the viewpoint of another person, or so-called ‘perspective-taking’(Blakemore and Choudhury, 2006; Choudhury et al., 2006).

Just as linguistically sensitive periods have been linked to synaptic pruning in very young children, continuing synaptic pruning in adolescence suggests the possibility of sensitive periods here too. For example, research has shown that teenagers activate different regions of the brain from adults when learning algebraic equations, and this difference has been associated with a more robust process of long-term storage than that used by adults (Luna, 2004; Qin et al., 2004). However, an important point here is that, while young children's development in areas such as language is advantaged by biological start-up mechanisms specific to these language skills, no such start-up mechanisms for adolescents are likely to exist that are specific to the KS3 curriculum. Thus, formal education, as well as social experience, may have a particularly important role in moulding the teenage brain.

Teenagers often tend to perceive risks as smaller and more controllable than do adults, and they are generally more vulnerable than adults or children to a range of activities which are inappropriately risky, such as gambling and drug taking. Appropriate decision making appears to require a balanced engagement between harm-avoidance and reward orientating processes that is regulated by processes associated with the prefrontal cortex, where development is thought to lag during adolescence (Ernst et al., 2005). An imaging study comparing adults and adolescents showed reduced activity in these prefrontal regions when making risky decisions, and that this reduced activity correlated with greater risk-taking (Eshel et al., 2007). Such studies are providing new insights into adolescence that may influence educational perspectives on teenage behaviour and help understand a potentially problematic, and sometimes even dangerous, period of children's development (Baird et al., 2005).

Brain development in later adulthood

Although the changes are less radical than during childhood, the brain continues to change and develop through adulthood. Reductions in grey matter volume are detectable in the thirties in some regions of the brain but not in others, and this reduction continues with age (Good et al., 2001). Although some neural atrophy has been reported, such changes are unlikely to be explained in terms of losses of neurons (Morrison and Hof, 1997). There appears little evidence for developmental changes in connectivity beyond 60 (Scheff et al., 2001) and, in at least one region of the brain, the hippocampus, new neurons are produced in adulthood that are associated with new memories (Shors et al., 2001). It may be wrong, therefore, to expect an inevitable general decline in mental functioning with aging. Indeed, older adults are generally slower to process information and have reduced working memory capacity, but show improved general and verbal knowledge, and an accumulation of sophisticated social expertise (Leclerc and Hess, 2007).

The brain's continuing plasticity suggests it is well designed for lifelong learning and adaptation to new situations and experiences, and there is clear evidence that such adaptation can bring about significant changes even in its structure. In a recent study of juggling, the brain regions of adults activated at the beginning of a three-month training period increased in size by the end of it (see Fig. 1.1 in colour plate section). After three months of rest, these regions had shrunk back and were closer to their original size (Draganski et al., 2004). This graphic example of ‘if you don't use it, you lose it’ demonstrates the potential importance of education in mediating brain development throughout our lives. Further evidence of the effects of education on brain structure comes from research into Alzheimer's disease, which is associated with the death of brain cells due to deposits (or plaques) and development of dense bundles (tangles of fibrils) within cells. Despite the biological basis of the disease, it is becoming increasingly clear that the risks of developing Alzheimer's in later life are reduced not only by previous educational attainment (Elkins et al., 2006), but also by the level of challenge encountered in one's working life (Wilson, 2005). Even after the onset of Alzheimer's, there is evidence that the progress of some symptoms can be diminished by training (Acevedo and Loewenstein, 2007).

Brain imaging has increased understanding of how older brains process information, and also provided additional evidence for continuing plasticity. These studies have often contributed to notions of ‘successful aging’, rather than adding to a deficit model of growing old. For example, one study has shown that older adults produce more bilateral frontal activity than younger adults. This result was observed in tests of episodic memory at which they performed equally well, suggesting compensatory changes in brain functionality (Rossi et al., 2004). The plasticity of the brain is also illustrated by the positive effect of exercise on the ageing brain's capacity to learn (Cotman and Berchtold, 2007; Hillman et al., 2008; Colcombe et al., 2004).

Strategies for teaching and learning

Commercial ‘brain-based’ educational programmes

This section will briefly review some of the key findings that may be relevant to enhancing mainstream teaching and learning. It excludes consideration of the many educational programmes that have been marketed in the last two decades that claim to have a ‘brain basis’. The misconceptions and neuromyths promoted by many of these unscrutinized ‘brain-based’ programmes will be explored in Chapter 2. Leaving these aside, we find neuroscientific understanding is only just approaching the point where some limited educational implications and applications can be made that are of general significance to mainstream education. Here, we examine present progress in developing these scientific insights and their genuine potential significance for mainstream education.

Memory

It has been known for some time that presenting material in both visual and textual form can enhance memory (Paivio and Csapo, 1973). This type of finding has provided an important basis for the design of multimodal educational approaches. Such results are now joined by more recent evidence showing that multimodal stimulus produces additional brain activity over and above that produced by experiencing each mode separately (Beauchamp et al., 2004). The additional activity was observed in the posterior superior temporal sulcus and middle temporal gyrus. The location of this region suggests it has an important role in making links between visual and auditory features. Such automatic recruitment of additional processing may account for our improved memory for multimodal stimuli.

Neuroimaging has also helped provide insights into a study of individual learning strategies (Kirchhoff and Buckner, 2006). In this investigation, the brains of adult participants were scanned while they tried to memorize images of pairs of objects for a test. They were then asked to complete a questionnaire about the strategies they used. There are many reasons to be sceptical about such self-report approaches, but the brain images confirmed that self-reported use of visual and verbal encoding strategies predicted activity in distinct regions of the brain associated with visual and verbal processing. These strategies had an additive effect on memory, such that participants who used multiple strategies showed improved memory performance.

Research into the effects of stress on memory has produced apparently conflicting results. Most of us might feel we need a little stress to stay alert when learning, although too much stress can be unhelpful. It is also true that many people are unable to forget some very stressful experiences (Olff et al., 2005), yet the details of such events can be unreliable (Christianson, 1992). Physical or psychological stress appears to facilitate learning and memory of an event when it occurs in the same context and at the same time as the event. Additionally, neuroscientific studies demonstrat...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Introducing Neuroeducational Research
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Contexts
• PART II Neuroeducational research
• PART III The future
• Appendix 1: Some neuroanatomy
• Appendix 2: Glossary
• Notes
• References
• Index