ABSTRACT
Drawing on educational psychology, cognitive neuroscience and developmental cognitive neuroscience, educational neuroscience 'investigates educationally inspired research questions' that 'might lead to applications in educational practice and policy, pedagogy and curriculum'. In order to understand the potential of neuroscience for education, this chapter considers the scientific concept of levels of analysis. As an emerging field of scientific exploration, neuroscience currently studies activity at the level of anatomic structures of the brain. D. Willingham explains that working in isolation neuroscientists might identify that repetition helps with memory, but in a classroom environment, children's motivation may suffer if they are asked to regularly repeat work. Thus, neuroscientific findings made at an anatomical level do not necessarily translate well to the more complex, socially interactive level of analysis of the whole child or classroom. J. G. Geake and P. W. Cooper suggest that, if applied thoughtfully, neuroscientific findings offer significant pedagogical enhancements in the classroom to support 'intuitive high-quality teaching practices'.
