Neuroscience and lifelong learning – some impressions from an RSA / NIACE event

January 21, 2009 by matthewtaylor
Filed under: Social brain, The RSA 

We co-hosted (with NIACE) a great event here last night on neuroscience and lifelong learning. For me it confirmed a few earlier impressions:

• Awareness of the basics of neuroscience, and of the big and undisputed discoveries it has made in recent years, is spreading more and more widely. It is becoming a branch of science that many non-scientists in areas like education and social policy feel they need to understand.   

• This is also true of the general public. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore talked about the ‘seductive allure’ of neuroscientific explanations and Paul Howard-Jones told us that teenagers were not just fascinated but motivated when they better understood the relationship between learning and brain function.  

• However, the main thing that will stop the insights of neuroscience making a major impact on society is hype about neuroscience.  For example, I have Mark Earls to thank for a link to some research reported in the New Scientist which exposes the ‘voodoo correlations’ underlying claims that certain emotional traits and pre-dispositions are hard-wired into specific and identifiable parts of the brain.

• A good example of this is the brain training industry. There is some evidence that some methods have some effect on cognitive capacity but nothing that justifies the claims made by the retailers of the various devices on the market.

• The contribution of neuroscience to policy and everyday life is better understood and less subject to exaggeration when its insights are explored alongside those coming from areas such as developmental and social psychology.

These aren’t just random insights but they are shaping our social brain project here at the RSA.

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6 Comments on Neuroscience and lifelong learning – some impressions from an RSA / NIACE event

  1. Matthew Kalman on Wed, 21st Jan 2009 4:46 pm

    2. NEUROSCIENCE, DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY + SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

    “The contribution of neuroscience to policy and everyday life is better understood and less subject to exaggeration when its insights are explored alongside those coming from areas such as developmental and social psychology.”

    Yes, the potential contribution of neuroscience seems to be becoming hyped and exaggerated in places.

    Ditto with ’social psychology’: everyone’s read ‘Nudge’!

    Will someone please write a ’sexy’, exaggerating book about the many insights of adult developmental psychology! ;-)

    Adult development books like Robert Kegan’s ‘In Over Our Heads – the Mental Demands of Modern Life’ are deep and thoughtful works, but are never going to appear in an airport bookshop.

    Who, I wonder, is currently seeking to integrate neuroscience, social psychology and developmental psychology?!

    That’s someone I need to be reading!

    By the way, Prof Kegan’s work led a major OECD report on key competencies for the digital age to conclude that transformational learning, not just informational learning (the acquisition of more skills or knowledge) is a major foundation for lifelong learning.

    Kegan also found that the reflectivity of a ‘self-authoring’ mind is required to cope with the demands of the modern world.

    However, Kegan – significantly – warns that his research discovered that ‘more than half of even advantaged adults may not yet possess the level of mental complexity that would equip them to enact successfully the competencies we suggest are necessary for adults in the 21st century’!

    I don’t think social psychology or neuroscience can deliver such crucial insights, only adult developmental psychology can.

    Matthew

    PS Re Your response to my previous comment: yes, people can get a bit evangelical and determinist with ‘Spiral Dynamics’ – a field of study that is more popular with NLPers than it is with academics. There are other branches of developmental psychology with a much stronger following in academia.

  2. matthewtaylor on Thu, 22nd Jan 2009 9:44 am

    3. Thanks Matthew

    Who is doing this linking between neuroscience, social psychology and developmental psychology – we are!

    Follow the link to the social brain project and blog.

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