OEB 2015 - Tomorrow's New World: Extending the Reach of Learning - Lia Commissar

(Lia Commissar) Hi! This morning

I'm going to talk about education and
neuroscience,

both generally as a field
that's developing

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

The Wellcome Trust -- OK --

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

is the second largest charitable
foundation globally,

with the aim of improving health.

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

by funding work in the social science
and humanities,

funding lots of education work,
doing lots of engagement work

and also lots of policy work.

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

Firstly, what has neuroscience got to do
with education?

What impact does it have on education
at the moment?

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

So, what has neuroscience got to do
with education?

Well, if education is about
learning something,

be it knowledge or a skill,

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

then they're pretty linked, in my opinion.

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

People have been discussing this,
critiquing it,

debating it for lots of years.

There is loads of research papers out there
with titles such as

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

"A two-way path is possible",
"Booting the bridge from by thence". (check)

So lots of people have been talking
about this bridge

but not many people have been building it.

And, this is kind of understandable

because its probably only really in
the last 10 years that neuroscience is,

the understanding from neuroscience
has evolved significantly

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

And this is really exciting
and there is lots of potential

and its really understanding,

you can understand why teachers,
why policy makers,

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

But my word of warning that will go
throughout this presentation

really is about waiting and doing
the research and finding out

whether these things are actually going
to be helpful and impactful

in the classroom.

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

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

and its going to solve all our problems

or can tell us everything
about the classroom,:

that's a very complex ecosystem.

But, neuroscience is
a kind of a new-ish field

where we can start using that
alongside psychology,

alongside educational research
and alongside teacher's knowledge

to build something really good
for the future

and see if we can start improving
learning in the class room. 2.51