Neuroscience for Teachers E-Book

Richard Churches

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Foreword by Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE. In Neuroscience for Teachers: Applying Research Evidence from Brain Science, Richard Churches, Eleanor Dommett and Ian Devonshire expertly unpack, in an easy-to-read and instantly useable way, what every teacher needs to know about the brain and how we really learn and what that suggests for how they should teach. Everyone is curious about the brain including your learners! Not only can knowing more about the brain be a powerful way to understand what happens when your pupils and, of course, you pick up new knowledge and skills, but it can also offer a theoretical basis for established or new classroom practice. And as the field of neuroscience uncovers more of nature's secrets about the way we learn and further augments what we already know about effective teaching this book advocates more efficient pedagogies rooted in a better understanding and application of neuroscience in education. By surveying a wide range of evidence in specific areas such as metacognition, memory, mood and motivation, the teenage brain and how to cater for individual differences, Neuroscience for Teachers shares relevant, up-to-date information to provide a suitable bridge for teachers to transfer the untapped potential of neuroscientific findings into practical classroom approaches. The key issues, challenges and research are explained in clear language that doesn't assume a prior level of knowledge on the topic that would otherwise make it inaccessible therefore enabling more teachers to better comprehend the lessons from neuroscience while the authors also take care to expose the ways in which 'neuromyths' can arise in education in order to help them avoid these pitfalls. Laid out in an easy-to-use format, each chapter features: 'Research Zones' highlighting particular pieces of research with a supplementary insight into the area being explored; 'Reflection' sections that give you something to think about, or suggest something you might try out in the classroom; and concluding 'Next steps' that outline how teachers might incorporate the findings into their own practice. The authors have also included a glossary of terms covering the book's technical vocabulary to aid the development of teachers' literacy in the field of neuroscience. Packed with examples and research-informed tips on how to enhance personal effectiveness and improve classroom delivery, Neuroscience for Teachers provides accessible, practical guidance supported by the latest research evidence on the things that will help your learners to learn better. Suitable for LSAs, NQTs, teachers, middle leaders, local authority advisers and anyone working with learners.

Leseprobe

Praise for Neuroscience for Teachers

I wish this book had existed when I was teaching! Neuroscience for Teachers is a wonderfully easy read, arming teachers with the most up-to-date research about learning from the fields of neuroscience and psychology.

Lia Commissar, Programme Manager of Education and Neuroscience, Wellcome Trust

A comprehensive and remarkably up-to-date account of the contributions that neuroscience and cognitive psychology are making to teaching practice.

Dr Tim Bliss, fellow of the Royal Society

Neuroscience for Teachers is one of those rare books that manages to blend academic theory with excellent practical advice for the classroom. A timely piece of work, considering the growing interest in applying the knowledge of what we know about the human brain to the field of education.

No stone has been left unturned in sifting through the wealth of evidence available on neuroscience and its implications for education as the authors explore a range of fields of study to deepen understanding of key areas – from memory and metacognition, to emotion, motivation and the enigma that is the typical adolescent brain. There are also a number of ‘next steps’ and suggestions at the end of every chapter, outlining how teachers might incorporate this evidence into their practice.

Both intuitive and informative, Neuroscience for Teachers fills an enormous hole in teacher education with depth, clarity and accessibility, and will satisfy both novice and expert alike. For educators, I’d do more than recommend it: I’d make it mandatory to their professional learning. Neuroscience for Teachers will change the way you teach.

Rachael Edgar, senior leadership team member, Latifa School for Girls

Neuroscience for Teachers provides a comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the key issues, debates, challenges, methods and research findings in the field of educational neuroscience. It is written accessibly and contains everything that a teacher needs to know about neuroscience, describing where this knowledge comes from. Most fascinating are the tips given to teachers, which are very clearly drawn from the evidence base as it currently stands. This has the added bonus of making Neuroscience for Teachers a useful resource for researchers who carry out related work but may be stumped when considering how their work impacts upon education.

Whether the reader is a teacher or a scientist, they will come away with a deep understanding of the educational neuroscience knowledge base, how we got there, and how we might use this information in the classroom.

Annie Brookman-Byrne, doctoral researcher in educational neuroscience, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London

I’ve read lots of books about teaching which love to tell you ‘how’ to teach, but very few – if any – which tell you the underlying reason ‘why’ each technique is effective. Neuroscience for Teachers tells you why effective teaching practices work with a clarity that makes it essential reading for everyone working in schools. The clear explanation of each neuroscientific study empowers teachers to take back control of their pedagogy from the incoherent advice peddled to schools for decades by consultants and/or politicians. The reflections provide an accessible bridge from quite technical neuroscientific findings to practical classroom approaches. I love that it tells you when and why scientific findings aren’t applicable to the classroom, and how it exposes the ways in which ‘neuromyths’ arise in education to help you avoid these pitfalls in the future.

Everyone working in education will find Neuroscience for Teachers valuable, and anyone invested in effective teaching and learning should read it.

Emily Giubertoni, Assistant Director, Bishop Challoner Teaching School Alliance

Written in a clear and engaging way, Neuroscience for Teachers avoids the trap of overgeneralisation which is so commonly observed when neuroscience is taken outside of academia. The authors introduce the key neuroscience topics relevant to education and describe in detail the evidence available in order to help teachers reflect on how this may benefit their practice. In addition to expanding their knowledge about the brain and cognition, it will also develop teachers’ research literacy and improve their ability to assess neuroscientific findings more critically.

I believe Neuroscience for Teachers may become a key reference for teachers desiring to better understand and apply neuroscience to their practice.

Dr Florence Ruby, Researcher, Nurture Group Network

The marriage of neuroscience and education is a partnership that is full of potential to improve young people’s learning and development outcomes. Drawing upon their experience of collaborating with educators, Churches, Dommett and Devonshire have produced a book that combines the very latest research with useful rules of thumb for teachers and provides examples of how these ideas might be converted into classroom practice.

Neuroscience for Teachers unfolds in such a way that newcomers can stay on the path with just the core ideas, while readers with more experience in neuroscience and education can take side roads and explore the research in more detail. The authors also help teachers avoid pitfalls by pointing out the common and newly emerging misinterpretations and ‘neuromyths’ that readers might encounter elsewhere.

I am sure that all educators will find some ideas in this book that are affirming, some that are challenging, and others that will inspire creative twists on their existing practice.

Martin Westwell, Director, Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century

Churches, Dommett and Devonshire offer a wonderfully comprehensive account of the developing relationships between neuroscience and education.

Using clear language with ample illustration, Neuroscience for Teachers is written with a keen eye on the professional relevance to teachers and is likely to become the definitive text on this topic.

Ian Menter, Emeritus Professor of Teacher Education, University of Oxford, former president, British Educational Research Association

Neuroscience for Teachers by Churches, Dommett and Devonshire is an invaluable exploration of the growing collaboration between neuroscience, psychology and education – and the potential this offers teachers and schools.

A fantastic introductory guide for teachers in the early stages of their careers, and those interested in evidence-based practice, it serves to develop teacher scientific literacy, negate ‘neuromyths’ about learning and the brain, and signpost key articles and research for further thought and discussion. The text is positive and accessible without being patronising: the scientific definitions and theoretical introductions are clear and are linked back to practical application to, and implications for, the teacher’s own classroom and students. With open questions to consider and a ‘Research Zone’ focus in every chapter, Neuroscience for Teachers helps improve literacy in the vocabulary of neuroscience and helps develop a better understanding of research methodologies.

The eight chapters provide particular insight into metacognition, the adolescent brain and working memory, combined with a focus on the implications and emerging questions for the teacher and classroom. What is particularly satisfying is the recognition that children are unique individuals and that the classroom context is significant: there is no simplification of research and evidence here.

Neuroscience for Teachers is exactly the kind of guide I wish I’d had available to me as a student teacher fascinated by the science of learning, and I can see it being profoundly useful to teachers and those designing CPD, curricula and initial teacher education everywhere.

Rachael Hare, Head of Teacher Training, Harris Federation

It is very clear that neuroscience must be relevant to all involved in teaching: understanding how we learn is fundamental to effective practice. To this end the authors’ clear emphasis on evidence-based approaches is highly commendable in recognising the importance of taking proper evidence seriously when seeking to understand what really works in the teaching and learning process. Neuroscience for Teachers is centred on that approach and enables any teacher to access the fundamentals of neuroscience easily. All explanations are clear and simple and do not assume a level of knowledge on the topic that would otherwise make it inaccessible.

I would certainly recommend Neuroscience for Teachers as a really useful book that would greatly benefit all teachers – at any stage of their career – who have an interest in neuroscience and its importance to teaching. It seems especially relevant to anyone who is training to teach, and it is hard to imagine why any trainee would not find this evidence-based, practical and interesting book highly relevant to their teacher training programme. Reading it would be a very good use of some of their scarce time.

Stephen Munday, Executive Principal, Comberton Village College, CEO, The Cam Academy Trust

Foreword by Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE

The school I went to was a very good place to be. It catered for girls from a very wide range of backgrounds and provided lots of opportunities for individuals to develop. Of all the lessons, the one I most looked forward to every week from about the age of 14 was Greek. My teacher, Veronica Lemon, was highly inspirational. She was fresh from university and only about 10 years older than my friends and me, which made her seem much more approachable than many of the more established mistresses. She was fun, lively and excited about the subject – it was totally infectious. Her abilities as a teacher, together with the ideas and philosophical issues of free will and individuality embedded in Greek literature, history and philosophy (together with her skill in teaching the language), put me on the journey towards the type of questions that I have tried to answer in 40 years of research as a neuroscientist. Questions like ‘What is the mind?’ and ‘What is it that makes us individual?’ I remain indebted to that inspirational teacher. Of course, you do not need to be a neuroscientist to have had experience of an inspirational teacher at school. But being a neuroscientist, it has been impossible to avoid getting involved in and feeling passionate about education and learning, and what neuroscience might one day offer teachers.

Bearing in mind that we neuroscientists spend so much time thinking about and studying the nature of learning, it has always surprised me that there has not been a deeper collaboration with teaching. So in 2008, with Estelle Morris, we inaugurated an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Scientific Research in Learning and Education to look at how neuroscience and education could begin to talk more to each other and learn from each other. At the end of the first session, I remember saying how I felt sad and frustrated that I had to curtail the discussion. A number of other such sessions took place and it became increasingly clear how important it was going to be that the two fields continued to collaborate.

Nine years on, I am pleased to say that many of the things that we debated have begun to be implemented, such as the wider use of randomised controlled trials in education and clarifying for teachers about what is, and what is not, supported by neuroscience. There are also a few dedicated courses for teachers and the steady growth in texts that help to explain some of the things we have discovered in laboratories about how people learn. Indeed, for the first time, a government minister in England, Nick Gibb, has recently begun to point to some of the available evidence about the science of learning and recommend that teachers engage with it.

This said, and on the communication of science generally, a big issue is always how the evidence gets communicated to the general public or to particular groups to whom it is highly relevant. Educational neuroscience is no different, and despite the fact that a number of excellent books and publications have emerged on the topic, these have mostly remained highly technical or focused on specific areas. The consequence of this is that teachers have been left, to some extent, with no alternative but to read books with a less robust evidence base and which do not survey the breadth of important areas.

What has been lacking until today is a text that provides a suitable bridge for the average teacher to engage with what is accessible, up to date and accurate and does not neglect to read across to education evidence where there is common ground. Richard, Eleanor and Ian’s book does exactly this, and represents a major step forward in collaboration between neuroscience and education.

A deeper and wider collaboration between neuroscientists and teachers can only be a good thing, and long may it continue – if only from the perspective of ensuring teachers have accurate information about the brain and what the research evidence actually says. However, far more is possible. The potential for the neuroscience of learning to form a foundation for teacher training is one area that offers further possibilities. As we look across the landscape today, it is clear that education stands on the brink of a great opportunity. This opportunity is not, however, a one-way street.

Neuroscience can also benefit from working with education. The laboratory and the fMRI scanner are not the classroom, and there is an urgent need to extend the range of classroom-based randomised controlled trials that test theories developed in laboratories and universities in real classrooms and with real teachers and children. It is heartening that work has already begun in this space between the Wellcome Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation. This said, there must be multiple replications in different contexts, in different schools and with different children if we are to ensure that we understand the complex world that is the classroom and exactly how this world interacts with our neurology. That teachers can support this journey with their own teacher-led randomised controlled trials (as the authors have already demonstrated in their wider work with teachers) opens the door to an exciting new era in education and neuroscience research.

Preface

Neuroscience, education and evidence-based practice – developing teachers’ scientific literacy

Never before has the question of evidence in education been so central to the discussions of teachers and school leaders (McAleavy, 2016). Frequently in these discussions the topic of learning and the brain emerges. Yet, if you had mentioned neuroscience and education 20 years ago, the response would probably have been, ‘What have they got to do with each other?’

Today, things have changed considerably and it seems impossible to imagine a future where there will not be a close relationship between the two disciplines. Indeed, it seems likely that neuroscience will one day contribute to education in a similar manner to the way that science has historically contributed to medicine (Thomas, 2013). It is also clear that ideas from neuroscience (accurate and inaccurate) in themselves have an important effect on both teachers and parents, as illustrated in a recent research report by the Wellcome Trust (Simmonds, 2014). Furthermore, as the field of neuroscience uncovers more of nature’s secrets about what it means to be human, and particularly the way we learn, we must accept that this burgeoning relationship between the two disciplines will not go away. Therefore, going forward it is imperative that this relationship is an effective one.

A brief review of the current landscape identifies some key foundations that will help to ensure this is the case – if we continue to nurture them. Firstly, several landmark publications (e.g. Blakemore and Frith, 2005; Howard-Jones, 2007, 2010; Geake, 2009; Royal Society, 2011; Deans for Impact, 2015) have helped to guide the relationship between neuroscience and education by pointing teachers to what the actual research evidence suggests and away from many of the myths about learning and the brain that have entered teacher training and popular literature.

“… it seems likely that neuroscience will one day contribute to education in a similar manner to the way that science has historically contributed to medicine.”

Building on this, and grasping the importance of the growing evidence, several English and international universities have now made specific postgraduate qualifications available (at MA, MSc and doctoral level). Some of these are based in education departments (such as the qualifications offered at Bristol University, Birkbeck and University College London), while others approach the subject from a neuroscience perspective (as in the qualifications offered by the Centre for Neuroscience in Education at Cambridge University). Internationally, there are programmes at Columbia University, Gallaudet University, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Vanderbilt Brain Institute, University of Alabama, University of Valencia and Wisconsin Educational Neuroscience Lab. Secondly, we have seen the more extensive deployment of research methods paralleling those used in medicine and clinical practice. Most importantly, a substantial growth in the number of education randomised controlled trial (RCT) programmes: over 800 university-based education randomised controlled trials in the last decade globally (Connolly, 2015) and over 130 commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in England alone. This is important because, given time and with the repetition of studies in different contexts (replication), such approaches open up the potential for us to develop a much deeper understanding of the effect of different interventions in different educational settings and with different pupil groups – in the same way that the sophisticated evidence associated with clinical practice has been developed with regard to different patient groups and treatments. In many cases, teachers have been actively involved in the trial process, taking on the management of protocols and testing, while collaborating at scale on multiple trials simultaneously. This was illustrated by the Department for Education’s Closing the Gap: Test and Learn Programme (Churches, 2016; Childs and Menter, in press). Teachers have also, and increasingly, become active researchers themselves with a school and/or public profile (see also Bennett, 2016; Riggall and Singer, 2016).

In turn, some teachers have learned and successfully applied scientific method in the same way that trainee doctors or healthcare workers may often design and implement a randomised controlled trial to understand the process (Churches and McAleavy, 2016). In one case, a randomised controlled trial protocol by James Siddle (a head teacher in Lincolnshire) is now being trialled at scale by the EEF. Being more research-informed allows individuals to critically assess other people’s research as part of their evidence-based practice, rather than rely on absorbing the evidence second hand. Such benefits appear to occur when teachers learn to conduct controlled research (Churches et al., in press). In addition, teacher-led randomised controlled trials usually take place over shorter timescales than larger trials and include ‘single lesson studies’. This form of trial offers the potential to more easily move across a laboratory protocol from neuroscience and psychology and to facilitate wider replication of a protocol either before being scaled or after conducting a large-scale trial.

Thirdly, meta-analytical data in a form accessible to busy teachers (see Hattie, 2009; Higgins et al., 2012; EEF, 2017) has begun to help us take the first tentative steps towards being able to talk about ‘what works’ in education with more certainty and in parallel ways to medicine (as illustrated in What Works Network, 2014). Of course, not all the controlled studies have grounded themselves in the existing neuroscience or established cognitive psychology evidence. Despite this, it seems inevitable that as the number of neuroscience-informed pedagogies that are trialled grows, it will become an increasing expectation that any new form of pedagogy should at least be able to ground itself in valid evidence from a current laboratory study.

As we write, six ground-breaking neuroscience-informed large-scale trials are underway in a partnership between the Wellcome Trust and the EEF (see Research Zone 1.1). These types of studies raise the bar for the question of ‘what works’, as they are both based on valid and reliable laboratory evidence and are being evaluated for efficacy in schools with real teachers and the children they teach on a daily basis. Being in this space for the first time, it also seems inevitable that one day all forms of pedagogy that are promoted to teachers through government materials and programmes, or sold to teachers by commercial providers, will be expected to establish their efficacy through some form of controlled and replicated research.

“… it also seems inevitable that one day all forms of pedagogy that are promoted to teachers will be expected to have had their efficacy established through some form of controlled and replicated research.”

Perhaps of most significance, however, is the fact that neuroscientists have started working directly with teachers in designing and conducting school-based randomised controlled trials in real teachers’ classrooms and in a way that has involved the teachers themselves in the design of aspects of the research protocol. Here we can perhaps find the two-way street that will result in a closer relationship between the two fields. Although conducted rigorously and with replication, neuroscience evidence comes largely from laboratory contexts, not classrooms; but for any form of applied neuroscience to have real meaning and true value to education, researchers will need to take the next step – collecting evidence from real classrooms. Chapter 1 will look at this area in more depth and the issues that can arise when attempting to transfer laboratory evidence to a classroom context.

Writing a book that aspires to help neuroscience and education interact more effectively and develop deeper levels of collaboration was a challenge. Neuroscience is one of the fastest growing areas of research in the world. At the same time, findings from educational neuroscience research are appearing almost daily in journals such as Educational Neuroscience, Trends in Neuroscience and Education, Mind, Brain and Education and a new journal, Science of Learning (from which you will find numerous citations here). Because of this, no book that attempts to survey the research evidence and direct teachers to the areas that might be most useful to them could ever hope to be completely up to date. Therefore, we have had to be selective rather than comprehensive and have aimed to include the evidence and information that we believe to be of most direct use to teachers, as the current evidence stands. Alongside this, it is going to be important for teachers to develop their scientific literacy both in terms of the vocabulary of neuroscience and an understanding of the research methods that are used – a point we will return to in Chapter 8.

What’s in the book?

Although we did not know it then, this book began in 2009 with a research project funded by the CfBT Education Trust (now the Education Development Trust). Central to the project was one of the first multi-factor randomised controlled trials in education in England (Dommett et al., 2013; Elwick, 2014), which involved giving workshops on neuroscience to advanced skills teachers from Gloucester. Oxford University’s Department of Pharmacology had submitted a grant proposal to run the project, and Susan Greenfield and Richard had just conducted a series of interviews that had not succeeded in appointing anyone to lead the study. It was at this point that Susan suggested Eleanor and Ian, then working in her lab, to run the project, and we (the three authors) first met. It was clear from the start of the project that the fields of education and neuroscience, although intuitively having something to offer each other, were still worlds apart – indeed, at that time getting across the idea of a controlled research study, even to science teachers, proved challenging and at times it felt like different languages were being spoken.

The chapters in the book evolved over time from our discussions above and in parallel with the work of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Scientific Research in Learning and Education at the House of Lords, organised by Susan, Ian and Eleanor and also attended by Richard. The opening chapter deals with many of the issues and important questions that arose from those discussions and debates, and tackles the question of the discrepancy between the level of evidence required in the two different fields (from the microscopic to the social). Chapter 2 focuses on the nature of learning, as understood in neuroscience and psychology, and covers areas such as attention and types of memory. Chapter 3 deals with the topic of metacognition and gives a neuroscience perspective on those aspects of this vast area of research that are probably of most interest, noting the fact that metacognitive and self-regulation approaches now have some good education evidence to support them. In Chapter 4, we explain the neuroscience evidence which shows that effective learning needs to be underpinned by the right emotional climate in schools and classrooms. In Chapter 5, in a chapter that looks at individual differences in the classroom, we give an up-to-date summary of the evidence base for important areas of special educational needs and what neuroscience has to say about talent. Chapter 6 explains what we know about changes that happen in the adolescent brain and their implications. In Chapter 7, we return to the important question of what neuroscience can offer in the development of more efficient pedagogies by looking into the so-called ‘desirable difficulties’ research. Finally, Chapter 8 begins by explaining why controlled research is important and then goes on to discuss how neuroscience-informed teacher-led research might be able to make a contribution to the development of a more evidence-led culture, paralleling evidence-based practice in medicine and healthcare.

Throughout the book you will find many academic citations (included in brackets with the authors’ names and date of publication). We will also talk about meta-analyses and effect sizes. Some of you will be familiar with these ideas and conventions. However, if you are not, then the next two sections will help you to understand what these are and how we have used them. Depending on your previous experience, just skip the bits that you already understand.

Meta-analyses and effect sizes

In various places we will cite meta-analyses and the effect sizes reported in these. Meta-analyses are scientific reports that analyse a number of individual studies to provide an overall picture of a research field or research area (‘meta’ has the same meaning as in metacognition and here highlights that the analysis is ‘beyond’ any simple single analysis). These reviews combine numerical data from a large number of studies in order to make an overall assessment of the effectiveness of a treatment in medicine (or, in education, an intervention).

There are lots of different forms of effect size but the commonest, and the ones referred to in this book, are Cohen’s d and its very similar counterpart Hedge’s g, both of which are interpreted the same way. An effect size is used to determine how important a result is, and does this by taking into account the difference between the mean for the two groups (often a control group and an intervention group) while also allowing for how spread out the scores are around the mean and across both groups (i.e. the combined, or pooled, standard deviation; see Figure 0.1). The effect sizes we quote in this book are generally from reports in the EEF’s (2017) online Teaching and Learning Toolkit.1 An effect size of 0.2 is considered a small effect, 0.5 a moderate effect and 0.8 and above a large effect. The EEF, Sutton Trust and Durham University (Higgins et al., 2013) suggest that in longer term studies (e.g. those that last for six months or more) which are measuring attainment, a 0.2 effect size equates to around three months’ gain in progress over a 12 month period and 0.5 a seven months’ gain. Statistically, a 0.2 effect size represents a difference in which 7.7% of pupils in one group have achieved scores that are above anyone else in the other group; with a 0.8 effect size this rises to 47.4%. Effect sizes can be a positive or negative number (e.g. -0.4). When an effect size is negative it usually indicates that a treatment has had a harmful effect, depending on the control and the intervention. The amount of change between the means and overlap illustrated in Figure 0.1 would equate to an effect size of approximately 0.5 (with around 33% of the intervention group scores not overlapping with the control group scores).

Figure 0.1. How the effect size Cohen’s d is calculated.

How we have used references in the text and the way in which we sometimes talk about the brain

You will also notice that there are a lot of references in the text, although we have not cited everything that we talk about as you might do in an academic journal. These references follow the Harvard system in which citations are included in brackets after a sentence or within it. This is known as an ‘in-text citation’ and involves giving the surname(s) of the author(s) and year in brackets to indicate where an idea or statement came from – for example:

As many writers note, when analysing your data it is essential to use the right statistical test to assess whether your findings are significant or not (Churches and Dommett, 2016).

Sometimes an older reference and an up-to-date reference are included in the same bracket. In these cases, the earlier reference is usually a seminal or important paper and the more recent reference a contemporary update, as illustrated in the following sentence:

From a psychology and neuroscience perspective, there are three stages in the memory process (Melton, 1963; Dudai et al., 2015).

In these instances, the citation in the brackets tells you where you can find the evidence to support what we have just said or where the idea we have referenced comes from. When you see such an approach the bracketed references are essentially short-hand for saying ‘as can be found in/at’. One final convention, also illustrated above, is this – where there are three or more authors we have used the abbreviation et al. (e.g. this book would be cited as Churches et al., 2017). This abbreviation is short for et alia in Latin, which means ‘and others’.

Another thing that you may notice is how we talk about how your brain is doing things in a voice that implies that your brain does these things without your conscious control or ‘agency’. There is a good reason for this: most of the time this is in fact the case! Conscious awareness is only triggered by the brain when it is needed because it places high energy demands on the brain. Furthermore, many neuroscientists (based on the volume of evidence to suggest this) increasingly question the extent to which we have any free will at all and propose that although consciousness produces a feeling of agency, in fact this is really an illusion – for the simple reason that conscious awareness happens too late in the process to be the controlling mechanism (Halligan and Oakley, 2000).

Chapter structure and glossary

Each chapter has a similar structure. Alongside the substantive text, we have included several other features. ‘Research Zones’ draw out particular pieces of research evidence that are of note and make an interesting or important point about the area we have been discussing. There are also ‘Reflections’ that give you something to think about or suggest something that you might try out in the classroom. In addition, there is a glossary at the end of the book covering many of the technical terms we use. After this preface, each time words covered by the glossary appear for the first time in the text we have indicated this in bold.

1 The Sutton Trust-Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit is led by Professor Steve Higgins at Durham University and involves the systematic review of quantitative evidence from specific areas and presentation of that evidence with regard to information about efficacy, robustness of evidence and an estimated per pupil cost. It is constantly being updated and is available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/resources/ teaching-learning-toolkit.

Contents

Title PageForeword by Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE Preface: Neuroscience, education and evidence-based practice – developing teachers’ scientific literacyWhat’s in the book?Meta-analyses and effect sizesHow we have used references in the text and the way in which we sometimes talk about the brainChapter structure and glossaryList of figuresList of tablesList of ReflectionsList of Research Zones1Neuroscience in the classroom – principles and practice: getting startedWhy would you want to know about this?What is neuroscience?How does the brain work?What techniques are used in neuroscience research?Neuroimaging in humansTechniques in laboratory animalsResearch into mathematics teaching illustrates what neuroscience can bring to educationMaths anxietyNon-symbolic and symbolic numerical representationMental rotation skillsThings that sometimes make collaboration between neuroscientists and teachers difficultA cautionary tale of what happens when things go wrongMisinterpretation of experimental resultsDistortion of scientific facts, normally through the over-simplification of resultsBelief in a previously held scientific hypothesisNext steps2Learning and remembering: attention, learning and memoryWhy would you want to know about this?A neuroscience view of learning and memoryMaking connections in the classroomPaying attention – what does this mean from a neuroscience perspective?Start with a good headline