 Hi, this is Tracy Tokahama-Spinoza and this is a video to explain the differences between educational neuroscience, the learning sciences, and mind, brain, and education science. I think it's really important to define these terms because basically the subtle differences that we find between them explains the audiences, the purpose of the existence of the field, what types of collaboration can exist as well as the funding sources, and especially the overall goals of each of these fields. So despite what good old Shakespeare would have said about a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet, it is important to share and understand the different professional vocabulary that's involved in each of these different fields. So in looking at what is similar and what is different about these three terms will help us determine exactly where the focus is of each of these fields and it also helps us interpret the information that comes out of the journals that are produced by those different fields. So full disclosure, I am very partial to this little sweet spot here in the very center of mind, brain, and education science, but I do very much appreciate all of the information coming out of the learning sciences and out of educational neuroscience and I'd like to explain why I do find these slightly different and I'll begin with some just core linguistics. If I ask you what is the difference between educational neuroscience and neuroeducation, think about that for a second. Now it's this intersection here between neuroscience and education so it could be either of these two terms but the main point is that the first term is actually a sub or secondary field of the second term. So the second term is actually the primary field. So when we talk about educational neuroscience, education is a sub element of neuroscience. When we talk about neuroeducation, neuroscience is a sub field of education. So even within this smaller sub element you see that there's a kind of a turf war for which is the primary field and which is the secondary field. When we talk about the learning sciences though that's a much broader concept. The learning sciences looks into the life and neural sciences, natural sciences, it looks into education, pedagogical sciences and the social sciences and psychology. All of these different fields fall under this umbrella of the learning sciences. The learning sciences are basically any field that helps explain and I would say in this case human learning. Now this great umbrella term is very very useful because it does help us understand the main focus here of all of these different fields when we look into cognitive psychology or if we look into biology or nutrition or if we look into the psychological sciences or pedagogy the key here is to understand how humans learn best. Now this is slightly different than when we talk about mind, brain and education science. The very conscious decision to name the field mind, brain and education science does two different things that help us understand the subtle differences between educational neuroscience and learning science. The first one is that there is no such thing as a subfield or a primary field. When you have the words mind, comma, brain, comma and education science you're actually saying that all of those fields that neuroscience psychology and education are all on an even keel. There's not a difference between which field is a subfield of the other. They're actually all treated equally. And the second thing that mind, brain and education does that the learning sciences doesn't do for example is that the focus is not just on learning. The focus is on the teaching and learning dynamic and how this iterative process actually creates understanding in the human mind. And this is really key because Sarah, Jane, Blakemore and Udufrith have pointed out you know we know a little bit about how the human brain learns and we know hardly anything about how we teach to take advantage of how the human brain learns. So this is a very big difference and I think it's worth pointing out when we look at the field and when we talk about this dynamic of the teaching and learning process it's not just that what might occur in a lab right where you have a stimulus and you get a response and you think okay so we've taught something and that is actually learned. The key idea within mind, brain and education science is that there's an appreciation for this very complex and iterative process which goes back and forth a little bit of teaching, a little bit of adjusting, we tweak our lessons and then finally that kid will understand something. So it's not something that just can be found in a simple lab experiment of you know one thing causes another one thing creates the conditions for the other but rather that we appreciate this very complex understanding that teaching has a lot to do with a teacher's ability to diagnose a problem to plan a lesson to put this into the right context to reflect and get the students to reflect on their own learning moments and what they already know about the context or the information then to apply that new lesson and then to motivate that kid to do something to give them feedback so that then there can be this interpretation on the part of the student and then their general understanding and then they can build on their own knowledge and rehearse that information so it really sticks so it can be reinforced and then it can be consolidated and we can then say yeah he really learned something. So this kind of messy complex situation of the classroom is something that's very much deeply appreciated within the mind brain and education sciences. So this means that within mind brain and education you can actually look at data on very different levels. Mind brain and education really appreciates changes at the molecular level so understanding you know the basic neuroscience of learning. How does your brain actually learn? How are neural networks created? What does it mean that the brain is plastic throughout the lifespan or that you've enhanced white matter tracks or whatever it is? This molecular level is something that's understood by all of the participants in the field but it also appreciates this very individual and oftentimes psychological perspective on the individual. How is that individual taking in the information? How does his or her own context change the way that that information is interpreted and used and sometimes built upon to create new knowledge and sometimes just lost? But mind brain and education also very much appreciates the classroom context and the messiness of the situation and the fact that we're not just talking about a particular synapse or a individual but how the dynamics of kids interacting actually changes their learning experiences. And this has even grown to a greater level where we can look at greater societal comparisons to the extent that there is this field now of cultural neuroscience. What are the things that are generally true for all human brains and what are the things that are highly culturally bound? So one of the reasons that I appreciate membrane education science is because it tries to look at all of these different levels of understanding of human learning and how to teach to take advantage of that. So this means that we're no longer just looking at neuroscientists trying to educate teachers on what the best way is to approach teaching and learning but rather teachers helping neuroscientists understand real life context and the messiness of the classroom. And it's not just confirming psychological theories with neuroscientific tools that we now have but also that neuroscientists can actually suggest new theories or psychological theories to the field based on new information that's emerging. And it's not that education just serves as a platform or a space for psychological interpretation but rather that the psychological theories can be adapted to the classroom context or to educational context in general. So this means that there is this general back and forth between all of the different fields. It's a mutually beneficial relationship. There is a balance there. And the real focus of membrane education has to do with usable knowledge. How does this then turn into something I might do differently in the classroom tomorrow? It's very much based on this general idea that to know is not enough. Just having the knowledge about how humans learn isn't enough. It has to be taken that next step further to understand how we benefit the teacher and student relationship or that dynamic that leads to human learning in the end. So in some of this means taking what we know about how the brain learns to teach better. I believe that mind, brain and education science is now needed more than ever. Basically because we there's now a greater acceptance that any problem a human being is going to face in the world cannot just be approached with a unifocal vision of solutions. So there's nothing no problem that you can face in the world that is better resolved with just you know a mathematical mind or just a language mind or just a history focused mind or an artistic mind. This transdisciplinary vision is almost always superior in finding better solutions. I also think it's important because after about 125 years of formal education we have not figured it out you know just as teachers. We haven't figured out the right way to teach all kids and maximize the potential. So we really need to be nurturing ourselves with the other learning sciences that will help contribute to better student learning outcomes and human learning as a whole. And finally I think that the world is pretty much ready for mind, brain and education because the brain is complex and I think we are getting to a stage where teachers do appreciate this complexity and do understand the urgency of improving our practice as teachers as what I believe is the most important job in society using all the tools possible and available to us to improve our practice. So one of the ways that I have done this personally is to take this idea of mind, brain education science but I've done this backwards. I've taken the work of John Hattie and his visible learning and what really influences student learning outcomes and I've tried to explain how and why those things do impact student learning looking at it with a mind, brain, education lens. This means beginning with you know really core basics. What are your key attitudes? What are the things that you think influence student learning outcomes? How do you think intelligence is formed? How do you think the brain learns? Many of these things are just purely attitude and all you grow up with them. You have certain beliefs that sometimes can be very wrong and those are neural myths. For example that intelligence is fixed, people are born either smart or not smart and there's nothing that school can do about it. Well that would be a myth, right? So getting those things out of the way is a key part of improving student learning outcomes by helping teachers understand this core information about the brain and learning and then advancing to higher order concepts. So this means that the emergence of the field of mind, brain and education science which really began just you know around the turn of the century around 2001 we started to have or even the hints of the creation of society around this idea. So it is a new idea but it's something that's really catching on I believe and it does have a lot of merit and it should be separated out from educational neuroscience for example or just the learning sciences because it does have this element of pedagogy, of teaching, of didactics, of understanding how you actually operationalize the information. It does have this huge element now of additional basics of the human brain so we want teachers to understand the core elements of the nervous system, the brain, you know what our synapses, how do neurotransmitters influence learning, what is the role, the key role of memory and attention in learning but also understand the general psychology you know how do emotions or how does affect influence cognitive abilities and what is the role of consciousness in learning and how do interpersonal relationships influence those learning dynamics within our classroom. So a new curriculum focus for mind, brain and education specialists or for teachers in general would be much broader than what is currently taught in our teacher education schools and hopefully this will change pretty quickly. This has also been echoed by the OECD a new publication that just came out in February 2017 which really does lay down the groundwork and recommends to its 35 member countries to the ministries of education of these countries there has got to be a shift in teacher education the way we cultivate teachers in in our profession has to be modified by this new information that comes from mind, brain, education science from educational neuroscience and from the learning sciences. So this means teachers you know will need to know a bit more about how neuroimaging really shows or doesn't show information about how humans can think and learn what are neurotransmitters or the chemicals that are in the brain, what is this concept of plasticity and how learning actually can be physiologically shown through changes in the human brain, theories of consciousness, beliefs about intelligence, what are new learning theories that are coming out of this, the general concept of neuroethics and this key idea of human variability even though we might have general concepts about how the human brain learns humans are so interesting and unique and thanks to this great combination of what they inherit in their genes and what happens to them in their environment there will be very very different and we also want to have teachers have a clear understanding even though they might not have a direct influence on improving things understand the role of sleep and learning and memory consolidation understand the role of physical exercise and learning or how good nutrition influences learning all of these things are important new topics to enter teacher education program so new teacher formation will not only include you know better understanding of just to you know how is it the brain is learning language or math or art or creativity or how is it that interprets symbols, orders, patterns, categories or relationships but also in a broader sense and probably responding better to what is the overall demand of schools these days understand how does the brain trigger emotions that actually impact the way we feel about our environment and how we learn how does motivation develop how do intention and memory influence what we can learn understanding social contagion how one person can influence another's general emotional state and therefore cognitive potential in that particular setting how does the brain manage time and space all of these are topics that you know most teachers find really fascinating but they have not yet worked their way into the general curriculum structure so understanding the research that's out there now the current research that's occurring in mind brain education is really key to new teacher education in a recent study that I conducted over the summer of 2016 I found a wonderful level of agreement of experts in the field about what are core principles that can be taught to teachers and also acknowledged some very key impediments to the growth of the field including the lack of integration into general teacher training programs including the persistence of neural myths in teachers thinking and including the lack of opportunities for true collaboration between neuroscientist psychologists and educators and the panelists also mentioned that it would be very very important for mind brain education to take a more active role in actually influencing educational policy based on scientific evidence whereas all policies should always be based on evidence it's very important to show that there's a lot of rich new research that's coming out that is not available yet to many politicians they just aren't aware of some of the very important findings that could influence educational policy that could have an impact on whether or not a nation rises to the top as far as student learning outcomes is concerned so at the core of this research this basically leads us to a couple of really key steps the first is to help teachers eliminate these neuro myths that plague their general understanding about how humans learn about how intelligence is formed and that will give us some solid foundations upon which we can say okay here are some truths now obviously in science there are no truths there's just a more evidence or less evidence but there are a handful of things that we can say are true about all human brains and then there's some things that we know are still true about human brains but there's huge human variability what are those things teachers need to know these things from that we can actually build on instructional guidelines so the key here is to take the information that we have and grow with it to develop better and more modern methods of how to teach and learn in our classrooms so this brings us back to the definition of the terms while I deeply appreciate the information coming out of educational neuroscience or neuro education and very much recognize that without the learning sciences there is no mind brain and education science so understanding those subtle differences gives me reason to to feel that mind brain and education science holds a lot of the keys to better policy decisions better interactions in our classroom but most importantly for every single kid in our classroom being able to personalize and understand the complexities of the teaching learning dynamic will help that individual reach his or her own potential thanks for your attention keep in touch