Learning, Knowledge and Human Development MOOC’s Updates
Potential strengths and weaknesses of neuroscience
Neuroscience is the study of what the brain is and how it works in order to understand how learning happens. A benefit of focusing on how people learn is that it helps bring order to a seeming cacophony of choices. There is no universal best teaching practice. Focusing on how people learn will also help teachers move beyond either-or dichotomies that have plagued the field of education. Students’ abilities to acquire organized sets of facts and skills are actually enhanced when they are connected to meaningful problem-solving activities, and when students are helped to understand why, when, and how those facts and skills are relevant. One fundamental problem that limits the evidentiary utility of neuroscience-based claims is reverse inference and group-to-individual inference, which leads to reasoning errors and brain overclaim syndrome.
I agree that focusing on how people learn brings order. This definitely lets the teacher know what areas the student does well in and which ones they do not. Problem solving also brings about real world issues which helps them understand in a meaningful way.
You hit on a good point about relevance. Memorizing a list of facts does not, I believe, connect a student to learning in a meaningful way. If those facts are connected to an activity that helps the student understand how those facts are meaningful they learn much more.