Group items tagged

But the biggest message is that our education system is not necessarily offering children what their developing brains need. We know for certain what good teachers have often said: learning is more profound when it is active rather than passive, and that is that it is vital for education to be tailored to individual pupils' needs.

The other key message, he says, is that motivation and a positive attitude are crucial for learning - it is now possible to measure how fear and discomfort can impair a child's ability to learn. It is also possible to see the different neural circuits the brain uses for "extrinsic" learning - which is motivated by a concrete goal such as a good mark - and "intrinsic" learning, which brings its own reward.

One of our problems in education is that we constantly have to balance our images of traditional success with the possibilities in our evolving knowledge of scientific development," he said.