Annual Research Review: Educational neuroscience: progress and prospects

Educational neuroscience is an interdisciplinary research field that seeks to translate research findings on neural mechanisms of learning to educational practice and policy. There are equivalent fields that seek to translate neuroscience findings to law (e.g. Royal Society, 2011a), economics (e.g. Glimcher & Fehr, 2013) and social policy (e.g. Royal Society, 2011b), drawing on research in behavioural regulation, decision-making, reward, empathy and moral reasoning. The field is also a basic science that studies how education changes the brain, and what the mechanisms are that lead to behavioural change (or the absences thereof) through education. The relevance of neurobiology to education was recognised throughout the 20th century (e.g. Thorndike, 1926), but it was not until the 1990s and the “Decade of the Brain” (Jones & Mendell, 1999) that technological advances in in vivo imaging of brain function led to the theoretical advances that made educational neuroscience viable as a field (Varma, McCandliss, & Schwartz, 2008).

Despite strong critics (Bishop, 2014; Bowers, 2016a; Bruer, 1997) and vigorous ongoing debate about the merits of bringing knowledge from neuroscientific research to bear on educational problems (Gabrieli, 2016; Howard-Jones et al., 2016), the potential connections between neuroscience and education are being actively explored across the globe. Different labels have been used to describe such efforts, such as Neuroeducation, Educational Neuroscience and Mind, Brain and Education. The growth of the field has led to the establishment of new societies and groups: the International Mind, Brain and Education Society (IMBES; www.imbes.org) was founded in 2004; in 2009, the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) founded a Special Interest Group called ‘Neuroscience and Education’ which has been holding biannual meetings since 2010. New journals have been established, such as ‘Trends in Neuroscience and Education’, ‘Mind, Brain and Education and ‘Educational Neuroscience’, which attract theoretical and empirical work that explores the intersections of neuroscience, psychology and education. There has been a growth in postgraduate courses in educational neuroscience at leading international universities such as Harvard and the Universities of London and Bristol. Moreover, there have been reports commissioned by high profile organisations, such as the Royal Society (“Neuroscience: implications for education and lifelong learning”; Royal Society, 2011c) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (“Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science”; OECD, 2007).

Nevertheless, translation from neuroscience research to education is difficult. As Howard-Jones (2010, p. xi) comments, no classroom-ready knowledge from neuroscience is ever likely to exist. Translation is an extended process and it begins with a foundation of basic science. The complexity of learning in the brain and the state of current scientific knowledge mean that there is a risk of premature translation before the foundation is established. The risk is heightened by the legitimate desire of policymakers to use scientific evidence to inform their education policies (e.g. Willetts, 2018), the enthusiasm that educators have to inform their teaching with insights into how the brain works, and the desire of commercial companies to sell new techniques to schools using the latest neuroscience findings as window dressing (Brookman-Byrne & Thomas, 2018; Goswami, 2006; Howard-Jones, 2014a). Moreover, the interaction of the disciplines of neuroscience, psychology and education has sometimes been characterised by competition rather than collaboration, and education researchers remain suspicious of the hype surrounding educational neuroscience. Two recent comments from leading education researchers illustrate these views: “There seem to be three times as many articles considering the promise of neuroscience being brought to bear on education questions as there are actual empirical articles on the subject”; “Here's my challenge. Can anyone name one neuroscience study that provides insights into teaching that are likely to be useful before being confirmed by cognitive science?”.

In this review, we indicate why neuroscience should have a role in education (and vice versa). We assess progress in the field of educational neuroscience and then outline major criticisms and future prospects.