host posted on 22 September 2009 12:18
Paul Howard-Jones, writing in the New Scientist, correctly and usefully highlights common areas of misunderstanding when it comes to the brain and learning. However he doesn’t much help enrich the collaborative process between neuroscience and education by stating several myths and their actual reality. For example,
This is a classic, flawed attack on MI (and other innovative shifts in thinking): arguing against a new paradigm from within an old one. A traditional, exclusive IQ cannot comprehend an inclusive multifaceted concept of intelligence.
But I’m not arguing for or against MI. I am concerned here that MI and other concepts, currently alive and thriving in many classrooms, are presented as Myths without offering debate. Why not pose questions, suggest experiments and otherwise encourage readers to engage in the scientific process around neuroscience in the classroom, rather than play the science-is-right-because-it’s-been-tested card.
What is intelligence? What are the consequences for children of holding strictly to different definitions? Can intelligence be defined scientifically? Can intelligence change? Does a particular belief about intelligence affect pupil performance?
Teachers may then come to believe that intelligence is fixed and described purely by IQ. Or they may believe it to be broad and defined in different ways. Either way they have taken a proposal from neuroscience and tested in the classroom.
In my work with neuroscientists over the last 10 years I’ve come to realise that they fall into 2 categories: those who seek answers, and those who seek questions: those who want a destination, and those who want the journey. Scientists and those in ITT must help teachers to think scientifically, and not do their scientific thinking for them.
Maybe neuroscientists should stay out of the classroom and teachers stay out of the lab. Maybe they should meet in coffee shops and plan how to enrich the lives of young people worldwide….