Best Practice

Neuroscience in education: Unpicking the helpful and the harmful

Pedagogy In the classroom
Neuroscience has so much to tell us about how children learn and how we should teach, but we must be aware of the neuromyths, says Daniel Sobel. He considers the challenges and offers six pointers for using neuroscience in education


Gather around, we’re starting with a pop quiz: who can tell me what the following all have in common?

If you said: they are all false and misleading then you are correct! I think a lot of the love for neurology and psychology that has seeped into education is not only rubbish, it can actually be harmful.

I spoke with a very experienced teacher colleague Sarah Halter, who undertook her undergraduate study in neuroscience and Master’s in psychology at Cambridge and helps me with research in this field. This article is a summary of our discussion. Time to sort the fact from the fancy – our own version of fact-checking the neuromyths…

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