ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to encourage those who are part of the early years workforce, in one
capacity or another, to acknowledge, critically evaluate and apply to practice some potentially
valuable and exciting emerging research evidence from the relatively new discipline of
neuroscience. The argument put forward is that such research evidence can enhance and
broaden our understanding of how young children learn and develop. It can, therefore,
provide us with some new ideas to try out in order to improve not only our own practice, but,
by doing so, also improve learning and development outcomes for the young children in our
care – for better/the greater good. Hilary Leevers from the Wellcome Trust has drawn
attention to the ‘evidence gap’ (Coughlan, 2014) that currently exists, identifying an urgent
need for the children’s workforce – and especially those in the Early Years – to start to apply
research findings from the field of neuroscience to inform their practice, and so it is with this
challenge in mind that it is appropriate and timely to consider the ways in which neuroscience
can be used in positive ways to improve practice.
