Educational neuroscience
Educational neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field that explores how brain function influences the learning process. By integrating insights from neuroscience, psychology, and educational theory, it seeks to understand the changes that occur in the brain as individuals learn. This understanding is particularly beneficial for developing effective teaching strategies, especially for students with learning difficulties such as dyslexia and attention deficit disorder.
The field has evolved significantly over the past few decades, particularly with advances in imaging technologies like electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These technologies enable researchers to observe brain activity during learning, identifying which areas are engaged as skills, such as reading, are acquired.
Educational neuroscience emphasizes the importance of a supportive learning environment, recognizing that factors like emotional well-being, physical activity, and rest significantly affect learning efficacy. As a result, educators are increasingly adapting their methods based on findings from this research to foster better educational outcomes. While there are calls to rigorously evaluate new educational practices using neuroscientific methods, the primary aim remains to enhance students' learning experiences and capabilities.
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Educational neuroscience
Educational neuroscience is a multidisciplinary study of the ways the brain functions during the learning process. It combines aspects of psychology, education theory (also known as education pedagogy), and neuroscience, or the study of the brain and nervous system. The purpose of educational neuroscience is to understand the ways the brain changes during the learning process and use this information to improve teaching methods and materials. The study has special implications for improving education techniques for students with learning difficulties such as individuals with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder.
Background
The field of educational neuroscience, also known as mind, brain, and education (MBE) or neuroeducation, has existed for a number of decades. Throughout the twentieth century, people attempted to study how people learn and developed new methods for teaching based on their new understanding and related theories. The first specific efforts to apply neuroscience techniques and methodology to the study of education began in the 1990s.
By that time, technology had been developed that provided new ways to study the brain before, during, and after the learning process. This technology included electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI or fMRI). Each helped scientists learn something about the ways the brain changes while learning occurs.
An EEG measures the electronic fields generated by the brain as it works. These fields create four main types of waves—delta, theta, alpha, and beta—which medical professionals can interpret to learn information about what areas of the brain are at work. An MRI uses the body's tendency to align with magnetic fields to reveal information about how the body and brain are functioning. The blood component hemoglobin reacts differently to the magnetic fields when it is oxygenated, or has oxygen in it. In the brain, neurons control whether the hemoglobin is oxygenated. The neurons increase oxygenation as they are activated by learning, so knowing which cells in the brain are oxygenated reveals which areas of the brain are functioning at a specific time.
The increased availability of these new ways to image the brain allows scientists to see what areas of the brain are affected by learning. For example, they can see what happens in the connections between the eyes and the brain as children learn to recognize letters and then to understand how they relate to words and sentences. They are able to measure changes in the brain before a child learns something new, while they are learning it, and after it has been mastered. They can also study differences between the brains of children who are learning these things in a typical time frame and those who have difficulties with learning.
Overview
The new understanding of how people learn gained from these imaging studies allowed researchers to develop different ways of teaching. They developed techniques that would take advantage of the way the brain works and avoid working against the brain's natural function. This emerging field of educational neuroscience includes aspects of developmental and cognitive neuroscience (scientific understanding of how the brain develops and learns), educational psychology (a branch of psychology that scientifically studies the factors involved in how people learn), education technology (a field that studies the technology that supports and enhances education), educational theory (the study of the practices and purposes of education), and other areas of study that delve into the ways the brain interacts with and responds to educational processes. Educational neuroscience examines both the normal educational process and how the brain functions in students with learning difficulties.
The field of educational neuroscience is an effort to bridge the gap between the experts in neuroscience who understand how the brain works and the educators who strive to help people develop the greatest potential of their brains. It helps to make the efforts of teachers more likely to succeed because they are supporting the work the brain does in learning. It also helps teachers understand why some students have a more difficult time learning, and allows them to adjust their teaching methods to accommodate this.
One area of learning that is particularly conducive to neurological study is reading and the skills that go with it. Educational neuroscientists are able to study each aspect of the reading process on its own, in succession, and after a child has mastered the process. For instance, MRIs can be used to study the brain before a child is exposed to letters, as they are mastering the way the letters look and how they sound, and after the child has learned how letters form words. Studying the ways the brain's neurons, or nerve cells, react as this material is learned helps researchers identify the areas of the brain that are involved in the learning process, how they change as learning progresses, and what might go wrong in the brain during that process.
Through these studies, researchers have determined that a number of factors affect how well the brain is able to perform in the learning process. One key factor is the learner's emotional state. Research has determined that the brain is negatively affected when the student is stressed or afraid, or when he or she does not feel safe in the educational environment. Studies have also determined the brain benefits from both the increased flow of oxygen that results from physical activity and from the ability to restore itself during rest. Research has also determined that learning naturally occurs at different rates regardless of external stimuli, and educational processes work better when allowances are made for this.
Educators have already made some changes based on the results of the early decades of study in educational neuroscience. For instance, new learning programs that allow students to take more time to master aspects of individual learning topics have been developed and are in use in some areas. Other school districts have used research into how the need for adequate rest affects learning to change the time and structure of the school day to better accommodate the rest students need for optimal learning.
Some experts caution against going too far with educational neuroscience approaches. For example, neuroscientists would be inclined to check the success of a new reading curriculum by testing that uses an MRI or other imaging scan. Others say that people should remember that the ultimate goal is to improve students' ability to read and that the success of the curriculum should be demonstrated by testing that measures the students' reading capabilities.
Bibliography
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