Introduction

‘Neuroeducation’, including in its various guises, the research endeavour of educational neuroscience and more applied approaches to brain-based or brain-compatible teaching and learning, seems to signify a more developed and defined field than neuroarchitecture. Somewhat confusingly in light of the previous chapter, it is the neuroarchitecture or functional architecture of the brain (the organisational networks and connections of the brain) that preoccupy neuroeducationalists. There is often a tendency in this work to understand this functional architecture in explicitly determinist terms, and to reduce learning to an algorithmic or computational process, as in the account offered by renowned neuroscientist Wolf Singer (2008) in the above quote. Neuroeducation has been promoted since the 1990s through learned institutions, academic publications, corporate organisations and consultancies, and promises to revolutionise the world of teaching and learning, often in the hyperbolic manner offered above by Sousa. Broadly speaking, neuroeducation aims to use neuroscience, biology and cognitive science to better understand how people learn (usually focusing on children in formal educational settings).

There has been a concerted effort to separate out evidence-based pedagogic techniques and so-called ‘neuromyths’, and to elaborate the grounds for cultivating two-way dialogue between neuroscientists and educators (Blakemore and Frith, 2005; Goswami, 2006; Howard-Jones, 2007; The Royal Society, 2011b).