Goodbye to Neuromyths

Being able to collect data in digital form has been profound for Neuroscience.  It has led to a rapid increase in knowledge about brain processes. Realising the potential of this knowledge for education i.e. what the brain might be doing while we learn has been bedevilled by neuromyths (interventions that claim to be informed by neuroscience but do not have any scientific provenance). Although these interventions have been challenged by both Neuroscientists and Educationalists they haven't always been dispelled. Yesterday, at the annual conference held by BERA http://www.bera.ac.uk/ Steven Spence from university of Derby and colleagues provided recent evidence (collected from NQTs, and also more senior practitioners) that supports this assertion.

Two other presentations,  one in the context of enabling social interaction for children with autism, the other on virtual social interaction, provided examples of how multidisciplinary work can progress in a principled way and be of value to learning.  There were some notable  similarities between them

•   Iterative development of procedures based on a true synergy between education & neuroscience

•   A pragmatic approach to method

•    Data collected in the wild, i.e. the classroom, the online forum, without compromising the complexity of these contexts.

As the presenter for one of these, virtual social interaction, it was exciting (and reassuring!) to find other researchers subscribing to this approach. Although I have attended a great many events on EdNeuroscience, starting with the TLRP seminar series 2005-2006 http://www.tlrp.org/users/cs5.html

the presentation by Jackie Ravet & Justin Williams, University of Aberdeen, was a first experience for me; a 'hard core ' neuroscientist and practitioner focused drama specialist demonstrating so clearly how they work together to test out the value of a Neuroscience knowledge base in an formal education context.

Presenting to an audience of educationalists, many of who have extensive practitioner experience and also a wide research interests, was a great opportunity to have our  work interrogated. There is real hope that we can say goodbye to the discourse of neuromyths and get on with the business of making neuroscience knowledge useful for Education.