Neuroscience and Education: Issues and Challenges for Curriculum

The burgeoning knowledge of the human brain generated by the proliferation of new brain imaging technology from in recent decades has posed questions about the potential for this new knowledge of neural processing to be translated into usable knowledge that teachers can employ in their practical curriculum work. The application of the findings of neuroscience to education has met a mixed reception, with some questioning its relevance for educational practice. Simplistic generalizations about neuroscience's application to education have been dubbed as neuromyths, and regarded as being at best irrelevant to or at worst counterproductive in bringing about good educational practice. In recent times, expansive literature generated in the area of educational neuroscience has drawn attention to a range of epistemological and conceptual issues pertinent to the attempt to translate neuroscientific research findings into usable knowledge that has the potential to improve curriculum practice. Issues involved in such a process include the place of neuroscience among the corpus of disciplines constituting the educational foundations; the conceptual framework required to translate knowledge between neuroscience and education; and, whether usable knowledge can be generated from neuroscientific information, so to be applied in curriculum work. These curriculum questions have direct bearing on curriculum work as the issue of usable knowledge relates directly to the teacher's role in the curriculum process. This article will consider the expectations and constraints in relation to the contribution of neuroscience to the production of usable knowledge for curriculum work.