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(Lia Commissar) Hi! This morning

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I'm going to talk about education and
neuroscience,

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both generally as the 
field's developing

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but also, the specific work 
that we've been doing in this field.

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The Wellcome Trust -- OK --

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the Wellcome Trust, for those of you
who don't know,

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is the second largest charitable 
foundation globally,

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with the aim of improving health.

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And it does that by funding lots of
bio-medical research, but also

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by funding work in the social science
and humanities,

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funding lots of education work,
doing lots of engagement work

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and also lots of policy work.

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So I'm going to talk through a few things
this morning.

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Firstly, what has neuroscience got to do
with education?

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What impact is it having on education
at the moment?

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The work that we've been doing, and then
thinking about the future.

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So, what has neuroscience got to do
with education?

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Well, if education is about 
learning something,

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be it knowledge or a skill,

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and neuroscience is the study of 
the nervous system and the brain,

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then they're pretty linked, in my opinion.

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And it's not new to kind of talk about
the brain, in relation to education.

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People have been discussing this, 
critiquing it,

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debating it for lots of years.

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There's loads of research papers out there 
with titles such as

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"A Bridge too far", 
"Its a Prime time to build a bridge",

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"A two-way path is possible", 
"Buildng the bridge from both ends."

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So lots of people have been talking 
about this bridge

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but not many people have been building it.

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And, this is kind of understandable

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because it's probably only really in 
the last 10 years that neuroscience is,

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the understanding from neuroscience 
has evolved significantly

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that we can start to think about how 
it might have implications for the classroom.

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And this is really exciting, 
and there is lots of potential

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and its really understanding,

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you can understand why teachers, 
why policy makers,

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why technologists want to start applying 
some of these ideas to education.

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But my word of warning that will go 
throughout this presentation

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really is about waiting and doing 
the research and finding out

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whether these things are actually going 
to be helpful and impactful

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in the classroom.

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And the other thing that I must say 
just before I go on

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is that I am not saying in any way that 
neuroscience alone is the answer

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and is going to solve all our problems

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or can tell us everything 
about the classroom.

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That's a very complex ecosystem.

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But, neuroscience is 
a kind of a newish field

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where we can start using that
alongside psychology,

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alongside educational research,
and alongside teacher's knowledge

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to build something really good 
for the future

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and see if we can start improving 
learning in the classroom.

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So, what impact is neuroscience
having on education?

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So, we're at an education conference --

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I thought I'd wait and see
what you guys think.

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So, I'm going to put a few statements
up on the board, as any good teacher does.

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And what I would like you to do is
just simply raise your hand

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if you agree with the statement, 
if you think it's true.

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So: "We mostly only use 10% of our brain."

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Hands up if you agree.

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OK.
I will just show you this:

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These are some stats, I'll show you
the paper this comes from in a second.

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This was a survey of teachers 
in five countries

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and those are the percentages 
of the teachers that agree.

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Hum -- it's not really working, but
I can tell you that this is not true

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-- uh, there we go -- even sat there now,
you might think you're not doing very much

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but your brain is still in control
of your breathing,

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in control of your heart rate, keeping you
standing up, sitting upright,

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perhaps paying attention, maybe not,
maybe mind-wandering

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but it's all using your brain,
all parts of your brain.

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So that's one of these myths.

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Second one: "Individuals lean better 
when they receive information

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"in their preferred learning style."

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So visually, by seeing, 
auditory, by hearing,

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or kinesthetically, by doing things.

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Hands up if you agree with that statement.

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OK.

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You can see, across the board, teachers 
in lots of countries agree with this.

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(Laughter)
Yes. So (she laughs)

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It is true that people have a preference.

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You might prefer to learn something
in a particular way,

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you might feel that you are
a visual learner,

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and that you learn better in that,
by using stuff visually:

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you do have a preference; but researches
show that you don't learn any better

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if you are showing the material
in that particular way, believe it or not.

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One last one:

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"Differences in hemispheric dominance,
left or right brain, can help to explain

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"individual differences amongst learners."

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Hands up if you agree.

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We might start to see a pattern,
I don't know.

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(Laughter)
So, here is some stats.

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Really high in the UK.

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Again, it's not true.

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If you hear things about integrating
the right or left brain,

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or if you hear things about
one side of your brain is the logical side

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and the other side is more mathsy --
sorry, creative, it's just not true.

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And I'm going to skip the next one.

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["Regular drinking of caffeinated drinks
reduces alertness."]

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But this one is true.
(Laughter)

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OK, I can tell you a little more about that.

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If you want to see more 
about these neuromyths,

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This is a really good paper written by
Paul Howard Jones last year.

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It got a lot of interest on social media

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and it goes through lots of what
these common neuromyths are.

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So, neuromyths:
Where do they come from?

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Are they a problem?
And what to do about them?

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So, generally they often come from
some kind of science

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that's been over- or misinterpreted,
and they tend to stick around (excuse me)

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because they are easy to understand or

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easy to kind of implement 
in the classroom.

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Are they a problem?

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Well, if you think you only use 
10% of your brain, is that a problem?

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Possibly not, it's not accurate,

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but when I first started teaching
about nine years ago,

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and this was common in lots of schools
across the UK,

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I'm not sure about in other countries,

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students were asked to fill 
a questionnaire about how they learned,

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and did they like learning in this way.

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And teachers were given a spreadsheet
with students

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and which were their preferred
learning styles.

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And teachers were encouraged to make sure
that they were providing

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information for those students 
in that particular way.

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And I'd say that is a bit of a problem,

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because teachers were potentially 
wasting time

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or feeling that they should be doing
something

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that was not actually benefiting 
the students.

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A positive outcome was that lessons
became more diverse,

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............... (check) about a range of
activities

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but at the same time, students would say
things like:

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"Miss, I'm not doing this activity
because I'm a kinesthetic learner."

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And so students were themselves
limiting themselves

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and not getting the benefit of learning
in multiple modalities,

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which is the way you learn best,

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by using different ways of learning 
the same information. 7:19

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So, what to do about them?

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Well, I might come on to that a bit later
in what we're going to do.

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So, the research is carrying on, but 
lots of research in this area

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is still at the stage of it's 
about cells in a Petri dish

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It might be about finding out about 
what's going on in animals,

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or very small-scale trials of humans, 
but maybe in a lab.

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Not much is going on in the classroom.

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And so we set p this initiative, 
Education Neuroscience Initiative

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with the Education Endowment Foundation,

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who are the What Works Centre of 
Education in the UK.

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And we did it for two reasons:

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we wanted to build the evidence of 
what works in education,

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informed by neuroscience,

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and we also wanted to help support 
teachers and general educators

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with what we do and don't know. (check)

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So, we firstly launched a funding round,

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to get people to apply for money 
to do research in the space,

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and all the projects had to have some 
evidence that they will -- that they work,

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some pilot data.

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But they also had to be scalable 
and affordable,

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so that if we find that 
these things worked,

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that they could be rolled out, 
that they could lead to policy changes,

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that they could be available to everybody.

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And there is particular emphasis as well 
around disadvantaged students.

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We want to do something 
that would benefit all,

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and try and close the socioeconomic gap.

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And all of our projects are also paired 
with an independent evaluator.

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So, you have your project team 
and you also have an evaluation team.

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And that evaluation team helps to shape 
the methodology that's used,

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make sure it's robust, educationally.

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They also collect some of the first data 
and they also report on that data first.

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So there is no chance for the project team
to maybe overstate claims

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about what they found.

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So we funded these projects 
and these are all taking place

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in around 50 to 100 schools, 
each in the UK.

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I won't talk about all of them, 
but I'll just whiz through a couple.

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Fit to Study is looking at great research 
around how more vigorous activity

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can influence learning, 
short- and long-term.

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We know this from lots of research 
in animals and from small-group studies,

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but nobody has done anything in the UK 
on this scale.

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And so we're looking at changing 
what happens in P.E. lessons,

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and then measuring the short- and 
long-term outcomes of those students.

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Teen Sleep has had a certain media coverage.

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And that's looking at we know, 
researchers know,

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neuroscientists will tell you,

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we know that teens have 
a different sleep-wake cycle,

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their circadian rhythm is altered 
by a couple of hours.

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So they don't feel tired in the evenings,

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it's really hard to get them up 
in the morning,

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they are not fit and ready 
to start learning early in the morning.

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So we're studying, at a late school start 
time against a sleep education program,

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where we just teach them about 
the importance of their sleep,

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how to get good sleep, about 
using technology just before bed

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and about how that might affect 
their sleep -- not in a positive way --

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and looking again 
at their academic outcomes.

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These are two projects
which are both in primary schools.

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They're training very young children:
one, a different way to learn reading,

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one, about training their inhibitions
that they're better equipped

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when they learn science and maths,
when they come across

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these kind of counter-intuitive ideas.

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Engaging the brain's reward system
from Paul Howard Jones.

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This one is maybe of particular interest
because it's taking ideas from gaming,

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the idea of why games are so engaging
and motivating.

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Neuroscientists have discovered
it's this idea of uncertain rewards,

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so not the consistency that we
see in schools around the world

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of you get something right,
you get a point,

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but you get something right
and you can game that point.

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You might double it.
You might get nothing.

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And they've shown that
that ramps up dopamine

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in your brain and the rewards system
makes it very engaging, motivating,

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and hopefully, a very teachable moment
for students.

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And the last one is spaced learning,
and this is being actually led by

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a school in collaboration 
with neuroscientists and psychologists.

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And they're looking at ideas from
neuroscience and psychology

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and trying to work out what really
works in the classroom

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in terms of repeated learning and what
the spaces are between that learning.

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So that's just a quick oversight.


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If you want more information,
I'm happy to talk about it.

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Um, very quickly I'll mention 
the Education Endowment Foundation

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has a very useful toolkit that
talks about different interventions.

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It talks about the cost of those 
interventions

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and the level of the evidence
and how effective it is.

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And they've got a set of projects
all around digital technologies

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which you might be interested in.

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So, that's the research.

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We have to sit and wait now
for four years

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to find out how some of the outcomes
of some of those studies,

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what they'll be.

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And we're just as interested to find out 
if they're effective as if they're not,

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because we'll then know to say
to teachers, "Don't bother changing

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"your school start time.
It has no impact."

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So what we're doing.

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We're trying to support teachers
with what we know

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because we don't want these 
neuro-myths being perpetuated.

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We think teachers need to be empowered
with really what we do know.

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So we did something earlier this year,
a very quick, set up very quickly.

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And it was an online event where
we had neuroscientists

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and psychologists online.

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And teachers could log on and
ask them any questions

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about the brain or learning.

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And we had about 7,000 people
engaged with it,

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but we know that that's not enough.

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So what we're doing is we're currently
crowdsourcing information

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from neuroscientists, psychologist,
educational academics across the globe.

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And we're going to develop, hopefully,
some really good resources

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for teachers that give them a summary
of the research area,

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be it reward, motivation, about 
learning differences.

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But it will also give them an idea
of how developed that research is.

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Is it just in cells in a lab or is it
being tested in the classroom?

243
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And finally, it gives them also some
other reputable sources of information

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to go to, so that people are 
finding out about research

245
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and scientific findings are factual, 
hopefully.

246
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And then we're gonna do another
online event where we get

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neuroscientists, psychologists,
educational academics.

248
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And hopefully, by enabling this
conversation,

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scientific findings won't be over-
or misinterpreted.

250
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People can ask the questions
about the research.

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If you want to be involved in that,
follow us on Twitter.

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Find out what we're doing.

253
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So, the future, very quickly.

254
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There were a couple of journals
already in this space:

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Mind, Brain, and Education and 
Trends in Neuroscience and Education.

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Two more are coming out
this and next year.

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This is very much a developing,
building area of research.

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The Education Endowment 
Foundation did a lit review,

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so this paper gives lots of ideas 
about all the bits of areas

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of neuroscience that could be
applied to education,

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the distance from the classroom,
and how solid that evidence is.

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So you can find out a bit more there.

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We also had a phone call
with the White House earlier this year.

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They're very interested.

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They're working out what they
should be doing in this space.

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So it's very exciting but early stages.

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Um, so more about the future.

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Quickly flipped to my notes 
cause I can't remember all of this.

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There's lots of interesting areas
that are very promising

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in this field of research:

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things about stimulation 
of young children

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and how that actually has
a huge impact on their development.

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And that might have big implications
in lower and middle income countries.

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Recognizing that teenagers and
adolescence is a very distinct time,

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and they might need different 
things in terms of

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to support their learning
compared to adults.

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We are learning lots more about
reward, motivation, attention,

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about neuroplasticity, 
how our brains are very plastic

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and how they can continue to learn
throughout life,

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00:15:32,697 --> 00:15:36,524
and how that actual cognitive demand
on your brain might be good

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at staving off neurological
degenerative diseases later in life.

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00:15:42,963 --> 00:15:45,726
There's work around fostering 
better creativity,

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around specifics in maths, English,
and science,

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the impact of stress on learning,

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earlier screening for learning disorders,

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and hopefully also, this will become
something that is much more embedded

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00:15:58,738 --> 00:16:02,243
and ingrained in teacher training.

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00:16:02,243 --> 00:16:07,292
So very quickly, the issues I think,
are that research takes time.

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00:16:07,292 --> 00:16:10,225
We shouldn't over-interpret 
in individual studies.

290
00:16:10,225 --> 00:16:15,731
And this translation is a new
work-in-progress.

291
00:16:15,731 --> 00:16:19,851
But there's loads of potential,
lots of exciting opportunities.

292
00:16:19,851 --> 00:16:22,874
But we need multi-disciplinary 
teams working on this,

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including educational technologists.

294
00:16:26,135 --> 00:16:28,409
We need to get good information
out to teachers.

295
00:16:28,409 --> 00:16:31,214
We also need to give them the tools
to ask the right questions

296
00:16:31,214 --> 00:16:34,367
so that they can ask what 
things are based on,

297
00:16:34,367 --> 00:16:37,066
of their studies, has research been done.

298
00:16:37,066 --> 00:16:40,837
And we might end up with some
things that lead to

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00:16:40,837 --> 00:16:42,897
some very interesting policy changes.

300
00:16:42,897 --> 00:16:44,852
But that's a few years down the line.

301
00:16:44,852 --> 00:16:48,304
So I'll just leave you with this quote
which I quite liked.

302
00:16:48,304 --> 00:16:52,329
I won't read it.
I'll let you read it.

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00:16:57,120 --> 00:16:58,928
Thank you very much.

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00:16:58,928 --> 00:17:01,594
(applause)