Presenting a New Perspective on 21st Century Education - Mind-Brain Education MBE Convergence Science
Special lectures on learning science from the world's top experts

Mind, Brain, and Education is a new convergence science born from the convergence of psychology, brain science, and education.
This book brings together leading experts in the fields of mind, brain, and education, who have led the way in the development of this field, to share their research findings and discuss their future prospects.


Learning takes place in the 'brain'.
For hundreds of years, teachers have taught students based on experience and guesswork, with little understanding of how the brain learns.
However, now, with the advancement of neuroimaging technology, it is possible to directly observe how the brain works and study the mechanisms of learning in depth.
Accordingly, psychology, brain science, and education came together to create a convergence science called 'Educational Neuroscience'.


This book is written by the main author, David A.
This book contains the research results of 17 authors who are considered the world's leading learning science experts, including Suja, Judy Willis, Daniel Ansari, and Stanislas Dehaene.
The authors present detailed research findings on how the brain learns as revealed by neuroimaging technology, the impact of emotions on learning, the learning paths and teaching strategies through which children learn language and arithmetic, teaching methods that can foster creativity, and the relationship between artistic activities and brain development. They then propose various methods that can be applied to teaching and learning.
In 21st-century education, the role of teachers will expand to 'changing the brain,' and MBE learning science will present a new future for teaching and learning.

You now hold in your hands a book that will go down in history as one of the most important studies in the history of education.
This is the first book to bring together scholars who played a pivotal role in the creation of a new field of study called Educational Neuroscience.
--- p.9

Teachers are ultimately 'people who change the brain.'
They are changing their brains every day.
As long as neuroscientists continue to study what goes on inside the brain, as long as cognitive psychologists continue to try to explain learning and behavior, and as long as educators continue to apply their research findings to improve teaching methods, this emerging field will not only grow into a standalone discipline, but will also provide our children with a much more enriching educational experience.
--- p.42

When I shared this neuroplasticity information with my students through "The Brain's User Manual," they were significantly more motivated to study and review.
Neuroplasticity is the idea that, just as muscles are strengthened through repeated exercise, neural networks and memories are also strengthened through neural activation through review and practice.
When you share this knowledge with your students, they will begin to believe you when you say, "We can finish learning about least common denominators forever in this hour."
--- p.96

The highest-paying jobs of the future will likely be those that can't be done on computers.
To prepare for these opportunities, students need conceptual thinking skills to solve problems no one has yet solved.
Students who want to succeed in the future will need competencies that go far beyond the content currently assessed on standardized tests.
That means you'll need to think critically, communicate clearly, use constantly evolving technologies, be culturally savvy, adaptable, have sound judgment, be open-minded, and make complex decisions based on accurate information analysis.
The key to success lies in the collaboration between scientists and teachers.
--- p.103

For the first time, neuroscience research has shown which parts of the brain are activated when reading, how the brain supports different languages ​​and writing systems differently, how the reading brain develops, and what the dyslexic brain looks like and how to effectively treat it.
The fundamental question is how the methods and knowledge of neuroscience can benefit teaching methods and educational policy.
While it would be beneficial to have a deeper understanding of what brain regions typically change when we read, it would be more important to understand precisely how neuroscience can be applied to education.
A primary goal might be to identify and treat dyslexia (Gabrieli, 2009).
--- p.193~194

I hope that more than anyone else, teachers and parents will read this chapter and realize that the "reading brain" is complexly structured and incredibly plastic.
To build a reading brain, several subsystems must be developed and connected.
To build a brain that can read, training and experience—that is, education—must focus on developing the reading subsystem (Berninger & Richards, 2002; Schlaggar & McCandliss, 2007).
Because the subsystems of the brain involved in reading are complexly interconnected, there are many reasons why children have difficulty reading (Spear-Swerling, 2004).
Understanding how the reading brain is structured will help us understand how the reading brain breaks down.
--- p.226

For most students, algebra is their first encounter with typical modern mathematical thinking: precise, logical, analytical thinking about purely abstract concepts.
Experienced mathematicians may feel that such thinking is 'innate', but it is the result of training and practice.
The brain never feels such thoughts naturally.
It must be learned.
The only known way to learn this is a top-down approach.
First, learn the rules, and then apply them, and you will learn and understand their meaning.
Because the human brain is wired to find meaning and understanding in everything it experiences.
--- p.256

I emphasized that children's arithmetic ability is based on a rudimentary representation of round numbers, a representation we inherited from our evolutionary past and which relies on the parietal cortex of the brain.
However, it was also emphasized that the development of arithmetic relied heavily on the ability to link these quantity representations with linguistic or Arabic numeral symbols, as well as on the reuse of nearby cortical areas involved in spatial representation.
A fundamental goal of mathematics education is to enable these representations to interact with each other fluently and automatically.
Fluency and automaticity are both essential in their own right, particularly because they refine our concepts and lead to accurate linear representations of numbers, and because they free up the prefrontal cortex's versatile working memory resources for other purposes.
--- p.288

One of the biggest challenges facing neuroscientific research on the brain's ability to perform complex computational tasks is investigating how brain activation, which underlies quantitative processing and solving during mental arithmetic tasks, changes with training and experience.
As discussed in the previous chapter, brain research related to reading has shown that well-designed intervention programs can normalize the atypical brain activation patterns of dyslexia (Eden et al., 2004; Shaywitz et al., 2004; Temple et al., 2003).
Such findings raise the question of whether programs designed to improve the computational skills of children struggling with math might also rewire neurons.
Furthermore, because several findings point to atypical activation of the parietal cortex as a hallmark of math difficulties, researchers need to investigate whether educational remediation programs can restore normal activation in the brains of math-challenged individuals and how math and arithmetic training programs alter brain activation patterns.
--- p.318

Cognitive and neuroscience research is beginning to connect the dots between how art influences non-art fields.
For example, music and dance have been shown to aid memory processing through the mediation of mirror neurons (Cross et al., 2006).
The level of mirror neuron activation appears to be similar when a subject performs a movement or observes someone else performing the same movement.
According to research published by the Dana Foundation Arts and Cognition Consortium (2008), there is a close correlation between exposure to the arts and improved cognitive and attentional abilities for learning (www.dana.org).
--- p.339

To increase student participation in class, a positive emotional climate must be created.
This way, we can encourage each person to contribute to creating class outcomes.
To do this, students' anxiety must be low and their engagement must be high.
For each class, I choose appropriate arts integration activities, such as making posters, performing, or writing letters.
When students feel supported, they feel more confident and more willing to engage in activities that require critical thinking.
When I assess student learning, I also encourage students to view those moments as opportunities to "show me what they know," and even then, the most important thing is to maintain an emotional connection with the students.
In my classroom, assessment is a celebration of learning.
The emotional atmosphere throughout the brain-friendly class is most crucial to learning success.

--- p.343