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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 a field 
that'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 does it have 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 is 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", 
"Booting the bridge from by thence". (check)

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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 its 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 may 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 its 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 new-ish 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 class room. 2.51