ABSTRACT
There are many unanswered questions about human behaviour. Psychology has tried hard to answer them. But the trouble with psychology is that it relies on looking at behaviour from the outside – and looks can be deceiving. In particular, things that seem like one thing from the outside are actually many things inside the brain. Take someone saying, ‘I’ll keep that in mind’: it sounds like a single thing. The reality though is that there are many systems all over the brain that keep account of recent brain activity for possible future use. They each rely on a different cocktail of ingredients, which vary depending on context and content, to work well. ‘Keeping something in mind’ sounds simple but in the brain it’s actually pretty complicated. This chapter introduces the core ideas of educational neuroscience and explains the need for this approach. The aim of educational neuroscience is to figure out how learning actually works, in the real-life, messy, biological organ that is the brain. By understanding its mechanisms we can optimise all the systems geared to improving it, that is: teach.
