What Can Neuroscience Bring to Education?

Abstract

Educational neuroscience promises to incorporate emerging insights from neuroscience into education, and is an exiting renovation of cognitive science in education. But unlike cognitive neuroscience—which aims to explain how the mind is embodied—educational neuroscience necessarily incorporates values that reflect the kind of citizen and the kind of society we aspire to create. Neuroscience can help fulfill the mandate of public education, but only as a tool that is part of a broader conversation about what schools should strive to achieve for the millions of students who attend them. I propose that educational neuroscience must advance our understanding of how knowledge is embodied in light of efforts to promote personal learning and development.

Keywords:

• autism
• ADHD
• personal development
• culture