School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol.
Psychol Rev. 2016 Oct;123(5):600-12. doi: 10.1037/rev0000025. Epub 2016 Mar 3.
The core claim of educational neuroscience is that neuroscience can improve teaching in the classroom. Many strong claims are made about the successes and the promise of this new discipline. By contrast, I show that there are no current examples of neuroscience motivating new and effective teaching methods, and argue that neuroscience is unlikely to improve teaching in the future. The reasons are twofold. First, in practice, it is easier to characterize the cognitive capacities of children on the basis of behavioral measures than on the basis of brain measures. As a consequence, neuroscience rarely offers insights into instruction above and beyond psychology. Second, in principle, the theoretical motivations underpinning educational neuroscience are misguided, and this makes it difficult to design or assess new teaching methods on the basis of neuroscience. Regarding the design of instruction, it is widely assumed that remedial instruction should target the underlying deficits associated with learning disorders, and neuroscience is used to characterize the deficit. However, the most effective forms of instruction may often rely on developing compensatory (nonimpaired) skills. Neuroscience cannot determine whether instruction should target impaired or nonimpaired skills. More importantly, regarding the assessment of instruction, the only relevant issue is whether the child learns, as reflected in behavior. Evidence that the brain changed in response to instruction is irrelevant. At the same time, an important goal for neuroscience is to characterize how the brain changes in response to learning, and this includes learning in the classroom. Neuroscientists cannot help educators, but educators can help neuroscientists. (PsycINFO Database Record
教育神经科学的核心主张是，神经科学可以改善课堂教学。许多人强烈宣称这一新学科已经取得了成功，并具有广阔的前景。相比之下，我表明，目前没有神经科学激发新的有效教学方法的例子，并认为神经科学在未来不太可能改善教学。原因有二。首先，实际上，基于行为测量来描述儿童的认知能力比基于大脑测量更容易。因此，神经科学很少能提供超越心理学的教学见解。其次，从原则上讲，教育神经科学的理论动机是有误导性的，这使得很难基于神经科学来设计或评估新的教学方法。关于教学设计，人们普遍认为补救教学应该针对与学习障碍相关的潜在缺陷，而神经科学则用于描述缺陷。然而，最有效的教学形式可能常常依赖于发展补偿性（非受损）技能。神经科学无法确定教学应该针对受损技能还是非受损技能。更重要的是，关于教学评估，唯一相关的问题是孩子是否学习，这反映在行为上。大脑因教学而改变的证据是无关紧要的。与此同时，神经科学的一个重要目标是描述大脑如何对学习做出反应，这包括课堂学习。神经科学家无法帮助教育工作者，但教育工作者可以帮助神经科学家。
