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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

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So, what impact does neuroscience
have 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