Paving the way towards meaningful interactions between neuroscience and education

This is a commentary on Blakemore and Frith (2005). When one consults medical professionals, one assumesthat their diagnoses will be informed by scientiﬁc evidence.The interactions between medical practice and medicalscience are well established and facilitate bidirectionalprogress. In contrast, few people would expect a particularmathematics or reading curriculum to be based on thelatest scientiﬁc research. Unlike in the medical sciences,there are currently only few established frameworks forcollaborations between practitioners and researchers ineducation. Unfortunately, the history of scientiﬁc researchin education has been problematic, marred by ideologicaldissent, and troubled by difﬁculties in establishing guide-lines and standards for a science of education (CondliffeLagemann, 2000). Against this background and in view ofthe importance of education there have recently been numer-ous calls to encourage more scientiﬁc research in educationand greater communication between scientists and teachers(McCandliss, Kalchman & Bryant, 2003; Shavelson T Slavin, 2002). In this context the potential con-tribution that the cognitive sciences and neurosciences couldmake towards scientiﬁc research in education and educationalpractice has received ever-increasing attention (Bruer,1997; Goswami, 2004; Ito, 2004; Posner & Rothbart, 2005).While there have been essential debates over the relevanceof neuroscience research in education, there have alsobeen tendencies to over-generalize research ﬁndings andto commercialize them, leading to the proliferation ofmisconceptions and so-called ‘neuromyths’. Given thepotential importance of neuroscience research foreducational science and practice, it is essential to provideaccurate, critical and, most importantly, accessibleinformation for interested scientists and educators. Thelearning brain: Lessons for education by Blakemore andFrith, does all of this and much more. This succinct andclearly written book is an outstanding example of how tosynthesize complex scientiﬁc literature, making it accessibleto readers of different levels of expertise, while at thesame time reporting scientiﬁc ﬁndings comprehensivelyand accurately. In the short space of just over 200 pages,Blakemore and Frith provide a timely and thorough over-view of research into core domains of learning such asmathematics, reading and language, while at the sametime discussing neuroscientiﬁc research relevant to educa-tional practice as a whole such as memory, sleep, emotionalmediators of learning and individual differences. Blake-more and Frith are very clear about what their book isand what it is not: an information resource for educatorsconveying what is currently known about the learningbrain, but not a recipe book describing how to translateneuroscience research into educational practice. The authorsare particularly careful not to set up false expectationsfor the promise of neuroscience for the ﬁeld of education,calling on both educational practitioners and scientiststo be cautious in generalizing research ﬁndings to theclassroom. Particularly useful are their descriptions ofmethods to study the learning brain and a glossary deﬁn-ing key terminology. At last, students and educators have attheir disposal a trustworthy, highly readable and compre-hensive resource to inform them about the learning brain.Blakemore and Frith’s book challenges us to considerfuture avenues for interaction between neuroscience andeducation. While the information it provides is an essentialﬁrst step towards increased communication betweenthese ﬁelds, there is now a great need for infrastructureto formalize such interactions. Teacher training programsneed to provide trainees with greater access to neuroscientiﬁcresearch. In turn, research centers should open theirdoors to teachers who want to gain experience conductingresearch and enable them to share their professionalexperiences with scientists who are typically isolatedfrom the realities of the classroom. The pathway betweenneuroscience and education cannot be a one-way trackfrom the research laboratory to the classroom, but needsto be bidirectional so that both educators and researchers