So much talk about ‘the brain’ in education is meaningless
September 7, 2015
You may have noticed a steady increase in the use of brain-based language in education recently. You may also have noticed that, beyond the creation of some lucrative learning tools, this language hasn’t done much to meaningfully add to the teaching/learning discourse.
The reason for this is simple: although impressive sounding, the majority of educational references to the brain are devoid of any original, unique or prescriptive value. They are what we have come to call “neurosophisms”.
“Neuro” meaning neuron or nerve, and “sophisma” meaning “clever device”, a neurosophism is a sophisticated but fallacious application of neuroscientific language. To get a sense of what we mean, here are a few of the more common types of offences.
The first type we’ve termed the Sleight of Hand: when someone coyly sneaks an ultimately meaningless neuroscientific term into a phrase in the hope it will add prestige and weight. Here’s an example:
I'm not the first academic commentator to be critical of the rapid infiltration of classrooms by so-called "neuroscience". Indeed some teachers at the coalface are also sceptical of this latest education movement, though it is not always easy for them to speak out against the zeitgeist when a charismatic presenter spruiks the virtues of teaching to the "whole brain". I say "so-called neuroscience" because in the main, this is neuroscience-lite at best, and neuroflapdoodle at worst. Either way, it comes packaged in an over-simplified box and is promoted to teachers via equally over-simplified sound-byte messages.
I think it's fair to say the average classroom teacher has limited-to-zero knowledge of neuroscience. That is not a criticism of teachers, nor of teacher training. Teachers need to understand factors that promote good learning and positive behaviour. They also need to learn to apply skills in the classroom that increase the likelihood of good learning and positive behaviour occurring. Knowing something about the inner workings of the human brain may or may not be useful in these endeavours, I really don't know. The question is akin to whether I need to know about the inner workings of a carburettor in order to be a good driver. Maybe we should devote time in the pre-service teacher education curriculum to neuroscience and maybe we shouldn't. However I am quite certain that we should not be feeding teachers (at any stage of their careers) a diet of pseudo neuroscience, and dressing it up as "research-based".
Education has a long history of loving its fashions and fads, and one of the more recent skirt-lengths is so-called "Brain-Based" (or "Whole Brain") learning.
There's a large number of Youtube clips demonstrating this approach in action. If you're not familiar with it, I suggest you have a look and decide for yourself...
