Thread by @naomicfisher

Such an interesting episode on the science of learning with neuroscientist Samah Karaki and ⁦@teb_logan⁩. I had to listen to it twice. I’ll put some of my thoughts below. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/fut…

1/ Dr Karaki starts by saying that she’s a neuroscientist by training, but she’s aware that it’s only one perspective. Her aim is to bring together ways of thinking about learning from biology, psychology and social science.

2/ She points out that education often ignores the fact that brains always exist in a cultural and social context, that learning does not happen in a vacuum. Experimental studies remove people from their context and so reduce learning to a technical process.

3/ In her opinion, the distinction between hard science and human science is artificial and unhelpful because we have to take account of the social and cultural aspects to understand how learning happens best.

4/ Because some theories of learning are based on lab experiments, they focus only on certain parts of the brain - in particular the prefrontal cortex. But the prefrontal cortex is connected to other parts of the brain which can’t be disregarded.

5/ The prefrontal cortex is very energy hungry and will look for this energy where it can get it - particularly from the reward network. It’s an efficient way for brains to work. The reward network is triggered by several things including autonomy and challenge.

6/ This means that learning is more efficient when a person has autonomy, and that it would be more efficient to design learning environments with this in mind. This would be working with the ways our brains naturally work.

7/ She talked about how learning itself can be gratifying and rewarding, if the conditions are right, and that this is far more efficient than trying to persuade children to learn for some future goal.

8/ Getting the conditions right means looking at what our children find meaningful and bringing these factors into the learning environment, as well as bringing in neuroscience. It means working with what they are attracted to, rather than fighting it.

9/ She talks about talent and how she thinks the idea of innate talent is damaging for children - and she challenges the focus on exceptional performance - why? Why can’t people enjoy doing things at any level? Why is it better to do things fast rather than slow?

10/ She talks about differences and how education needs to move away from the idea of everyone learning the same thing. As she says, with the same ingredients I can make many different recipes. Why should we always expect the same result in education?

11/ So how about if we thought about how to optimise the learning process for each person? Then we would want to think about how to activate the reward system and the way to do that is to provide autonomy, feedback and challenge.

12/ But educators cannot predict exactly how another person’s brain works or what level of development they are at - and in fact she thinks doing so could be dangerous, as educators may impose their views and values on students.

13/ So it would make sense for educators to focus on the social and emotional aspects of education whilst providing opportunities for challenge within which students are autonomous.

14/ Dr Karaki says autonomy is essential for learning.Look at how babies learn and you will see how we should always think about learning. Impose choices on a baby & you remove the motivation to explore. This remains true as they grow,agency is even more important for teenagers.

15/ The keys to learning, according to Dr Karaki, are autonomy, feedback, repetition, practice and encouragement, All of these should be factors when developing learning environments but autonomy is essential.

16/ And finally, she reminds us that almost everything we know about skill development is euro-centric. We are seriously lacking in data on how children learn in other cultures. It is far more complex than we can imagine.

17/ So my thoughts - she’s advocating for self-direction in learning in many ways. She’s saying we must widen the perspective on learning and that it would be so much more efficient to work with brain development rather than to ignore it.

18/ It seems the neuroscience says that the best way to work with brain development is to allow autonomy, because we can never know exactly how someone else’s brain works and what they will find meaningful. Let learners make choices & abandon the idea of everyone doing the same.

19/ I would have asked her - what about the biological primary/biological secondary distinction? Is there any neuroscientific evidence to back that up? Because if we are to look at babies to see how we learn, then she doesn’t think school learning is distinctly different.

20/ In conclusion, it seems the neuroscience supports autonomy in education, simply because it is a provides a more efficient way to learn and to work with, rather than against, brain development.

21/ And I think all this means that the only way to truly appreciate and embrace differences between people is to allow autonomy and diversity in education. We can’t move away from a deficit-based model of difference whilst still insisting that education should be standardised.