Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98

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Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Neuroscience knowledge enriches pedagogical choices

Marc S. Schwartz a, Vicki Hinesley a, Zhengsi Chang a, 1, Janet M. Dubinsky b, *
a
University of Texas at Arlington, USA
b
Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, USA

h i g h l i g h t s

Non-science teachers learned neuroscience and used educational neuroconcepts to modify teaching lesson plans.

Educational neuroconcepts offer a promising strategy to encourage student-centered teaching practices.

A neurobiology model of learning offers a promising scaffold in teacher training programs.

This pilot study provides a framework for future empirical studies evaluating neuroscience in teacher education.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Teachers face a daunting challenge in balancing the demands of employing student-centered pedagogies
Received 14 August 2018 in contexts where mandated testing and district teaching expectations can easily constrain or compro-
Received in revised form mise their pedagogy. In this pilot study, we investigated how professional development based on the
11 February 2019
“neuroscience of learning” impacted non-science teacher understanding of basic neuroscience; and, in
Accepted 4 April 2019
turn, how that knowledge impacted their reflections on pedagogy. In a pre/post design, teacher un-
derstanding of neuroscience improved significantly after the 36-h course based upon a set of educational
neuroscience concepts. Furthermore, teacher revisions of their lesson plans after the course revealed the
Keywords:
Pedagogy
integration of more student-centered pedagogies.
Neuroscience © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Student-centered learning
Conceptual change
Society for neuroscience neuroconcepts
Lesson planning

1. Introduction additional, novel approaches (Diamond & Amso, 2008; Howard-

Over the last century research in the cognitive sciences has led
to numerous and powerful models describing how humans
develop, learn and solve problems (Fischer, 1980; James, 1890;
Kahneman, 2011; Piaget, 1952,1983; Powers, 1973; Thelen & Smith,
1996; Vygotsky, 1980). However, despite this rich and insightful
legacy (as well as recent contributions from the neurosciences), its
impact on classroom pedagogy has been very difficult to assess
(Desimone, 2009; Penuel, Fishman, Yamaguchi, & Gallagher, 2007).
The educational and cognitive sciences have established a wealth of
theories and associated best classroom practices (Hattie, 2012).
Neuroscience brings a biologically based, mechanistic approach
that can explain why these practices work and may suggest
* Corresponding author. 6-145 Jackson Hall, 321 Church St SE, Minneapolis, MN
555455, USA.
E-mail address: Dubin001@umn.edu (J.M. Dubinsky).
1
Current address, University of Dallas.
Jones, 2014a). For example, the discovery of the mirror neuron
system helps explain why mimickry and social interactions
powerfully effect learning, especially for language acquisition and
associated cognitive processing (Diamond & Amso, 2008;
Pulvermuler 2017). In similar fashion, understanding how symbolic
and non-symbolic quantities and numbers are represented in the
brain in conjunction with socially communicated anxieties around
math learning has informed new pedagogies (Howard-Jones,
2014a). Additionally, neuroscience, psychological and educational
research have converged to support the concept that spaced
learning promotes retention (McClelland, McNaughton & O'Reilly,
1995; Seabrook, Brown, & Solity, 2005). Many of these ideas have
been incorporated into online courses and resources that have been
variably evaluated on how well they help teachers make peda-
gogical decisions (Society for Neuroscience, 2012; Hornby, Jackson,
Jay & Howard-Jones, 2017; Annenberg Foundation, 2017).
Translating such advances into classroom practices requires
professional development and the more difficult task of assessing
its impact on teachers' reflections of their pedagogy. As Stoll, Harris,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.04.002
0742-051X/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
88 M.S. Schwartz et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98
and Handscomb (2012) observed, “… the research doesn't always
track exactly how professional development improved pedagogy or
what it was about the changed pedagogy that resulted in positive
pupil outcomes” (p. 2). This persistent problem in evaluating
improvement relates to the way change is measured. Studies
consistently depend on surveys, interviews and teacher self-reports
that follow the intervention to evaluate the impact of professional
development (PD) on pedagogy (Colbert, Brown, Choi, & Thomas,
2008; Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001; Penuel
et al., 2007; Ravhuhali, Kutame, & Mutshaeni, 2015). While
teacher views are an important indicator of the perceived value of
PD, their accounts are subjective, personal and influenced by what
they remember at the time of the survey or interview. Thus, re-
searchers, at best, can only search for trends and patterns in
retrospective accounts of a prior experience.
Equally important is the impact of the pedagogy used to deliver
professional development. Penuel et al. (2007) point to the growing
consensus that, “teachers need professional development that is
interactive with their teaching practice, allowing for multiple cycles
of presentation and assimilation of, and reflection on, knowledge”
p. 929. Achieving these ends has been the focus of research on the
“student-centered” model from the cognitive sciences. In this
model, students construct knowledge from their experiences;
increasingly more complex knowledge is constructed in a hierar-
chical process, which requires practice, support, and scaffolding to
stabilize (NRC, 1999; 2000; 2005). A student-centered approach
requires that educators maintain their focus on what students need
instead of what the curriculum requires. The needs include devel-
opmental considerations, the amount of practice students require,
whether there are sufficient contexts to stabilize a concept, and
whether they have access to the appropriate resources, tools or
possibly alternative pedagogies.
However, the demands of student-centered instruction in
classrooms can easily be undermined if teachers must also keep in
mind mandated standards and local, national and international
assessments (Kempf, 2016; Koretz, 2017; Lingard & Lewis, 2016).
These pressures easily constrain the time and focus necessary to
establish student-centered learning (Kempf, 2016). Thus, given
these uncertainties, a model supporting student-centered learning
must be so compelling that teachers would always apply it to
pedagogical decisions despite any pressure or demand that could
undermine learning. Neuroscience may provide such a model; its
biological explanations emphasize the importance of student
experience and motivation which promote agency for learning. By
focusing on a small number of neuroscience concepts, we are of-
fering teachers a powerful heuristic to support their understanding
of the learning process and the pedagogical choices that resonate
with this understanding. This pilot study used a framework of ten
educational neuroscience concepts (ENCs) to develop a course to
influence teacher thinking about learning and the pedagogy they
use in their classrooms.
These ten concepts (Supplemental Table 1) were distilled from
the Neuroscience Core Concepts developed by the Society for
Neuroscience (Dubinsky, Roehrig & Varma, 2013; SfN, 2008).
Similar distillations have been previously proposed (Churches,
Dommett, & Devonshire, 2017; Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2010). We
argue that these ten ENCs can contribute to operationalizing the
meaning of student-centered learning and can strengthen the un-
derstanding, reasoning, and commitment of teachers to a student-
centered approach (NRC, 1999; 2000; 2005).
1.1. Neuroscience as an alternative framework
Many teachers perceive they are missing important insights
regarding how their students’ brains work, which we conclude
from the ongoing popularity of workshops and PD conferences
highlighting the “brain” in their titles. We have uncovered no ex-
amples of pre-service psychology instruction that includes basic
neuroscience explanation of learning and memory at the level of
single cell synaptic communication and plasticity or how these
insights might inform the pedagogies advocated in classes. How-
ever, this is not surprising given the absence of neuroscience (or
any neuroscience finding relevant to learning) in national teaching
standards (NBPTS, 2016; CCSSO, 2013). Furthermore, even if
teachers perceive a need to weave neuroscience into professional
development, unique challenges remain in envisioning how
neuroscience can inform practice. One major issue is the numerous
levels of analyses separating research at the cellular level from
classroom research.
Another challenge is the added layer of complexity in under-
standing and using ENCs in meaningful or correct ways. As with
many new views, especially those in science, concepts can be easily
misunderstood or taken out of context resulting in misconceptions
e a recurrent observation in the context of neuroscience and ed-
ucation (Howard-Jones, 2014b; Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson,
& Gray, 2008). No matter the origin or content of misconceptions,
they become part of a network of incorrect or outdated ideas that
must be addressed to ensure understanding. However, mis-
conceptions are not simply replaced with correct ideas, especially if
they are popularized or feel intuitively correct. As revealed in fMRI
investigations, experts who correctly understand concepts must
also engage inhibitory brain circuits to suppress existing mis-
conceptions (Foisy, Potvin, Riopel, & Masson, 2015; Masson, Potvin,
Riopel, & Foisy, 2014). Any neuroscience curriculum must recognize
and respond to the fact that initial understandings are not aban-
doned or replaced but held in check when they conflict with new
knowledge (Dundar & Gunduz, 2016; Foisy et al., 2015).
Given the challenges discussed thus far, the curriculum in this
study (Supplemental Table 2) focused on helping teachers under-
stand ENCs (Dommett, Devonshire, Plateau, Westwell, &
Greenfield, 2011; Dubinsky et al., 2013) through student-centered
activities supplemented with summative direct instruction. This
conceptual framework is also consistent with models of best
practices that use student-centered activities (Schwartz & Sadler,
2007; Ward, Sadler, & Shapiro, 2007). Thus, the course offered a
series of activities to help teachers develop a personal meaning of
each ENC. For example, when learning about synaptic plasticity
teachers also explored how this ENC might impact learning or
pedagogy. In similar fashion, Yeager and Dweck (2012) taught
synaptic plasticity to help learners shift from a fixed to growth
mindset. In their work, synaptic plasticity was used to emphasize
individual malleability and student potential. We emphasize that
synaptic plasticity involves structural changes at the level of neu-
rons and circuits and accounts for the making of memories.
Furthermore, this ENC underpins the idea that each individual
comes with and will produce a unique set of previously constructed
and future to-be constructed circuits and experiences. Finally, the
associative nature of synaptic plasticity is critically important, as
the more synapses that are active simultaneously, the more
robustly encoded is the information and the memory (McClelland,
McNaughton, & O'Reilly, 1995). This includes the simultaneity of
emotional and cognitive circuit activation in the making of
memories.
Thus, we posit that understanding the neuroscience of learning
and memory will provide teachers the explanatory path to recog-
nize (and embrace) more effective student-centered pedagogies.
Furthermore, teachers have the opportunity to consider their po-
tential in improving their pedagogy, as well as the importance of
providing students similar opportunities to demonstrate their own
agency. Through this agency, students develop their own neural
 M.S. Schwartz et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98
networks, allowing them to coordinate relevant memories, expe-
riences, senses and insights into richer understandings. Many brain
circuits contribute to and are necessary for this feat, including
emotional, reward and social interaction circuits as well as execu-
tive functioning (Lieberman, 2007). We predict when a teacher
understands that their own neural network (which encodes a
particular understanding) is not their students’, then teachers will
focus less on sharing their personal understanding and more on
creating opportunities for students to develop their own
understanding.
A teacher-centered approach provides content and practice and
will undoubtedly activate synapses and circuits. However, teacher-
centered practices provide little opportunity for students to engage
in their own exploration, reasoning or strategic thinking. They do
not provide contexts for increasing motivation and the emotional
buy-in needed for the associative nature of synaptic strengthening.
Teacher-centered practices also do not engage peer social in-
teractions, preventing contributions from these circuits in
strengthening the learning. Thus, understanding the basic neuro-
science of plasticity and synaptic communication can provide
teachers with an explanation for why student-centered learning
can be effective. The explanation provides a basis for changing one's
model of the world (in this case teaching) by providing teachers an
accurate and accessible model of learning.
This role of neuroscience is represented in the mission of a new
transdisciplinary field called Mind, Brain and Education (IMBES,
2009). This mission was partly operationalized in a MBE master's
program which, in this case, emphasized a set of cognitive and
behavioral models to help teachers, such as those in this pilot study,
to design and test educational interventions. However, teachers
often struggled recognizing how or when to replace their peda-
gogical models with those that naturally follow from the cognitive
science. Although the program presents general principles of brain
function, teachers have few opportunities to see how neuroscience
informs the cognitive models they are required to use; and
furthermore, they do not encounter any activities that substantiate
the neuroscience presented. Thus, this pilot study was a collabo-
rative effort to explicitly integrate basic neuroscience into an MBE
program to highlight how neuroscience informs the cognitive
principles teachers encounter. This research explores the degree to
which knowledge of the basic cellular processes studied in neuro-
science can scaffold teachers in their transition to using student-
centered pedagogies and whether a working knowledge of ENCs
would help suppress older views of pedagogy. To this end an
experimental course, Neuroscience for Educators, based on ten ENCs
was offered during three weeks in May of 2016 as an elective to
students in the master's program as well as to students in the
college of education.
1.2. Research questions
We argue that learning neuroscience in a professional devel-
opment program utilizing active learning strategies can influence
the pedagogical choices teachers make (MacNabb et al., 2006;
Dommett et al., 2011; Roehrig et al., 2012). Science teachers who
encountered the kind of PD used in this pilot study subsequently
enacted active, inquiry-based lessons in their classrooms and were
observed to increase substantive conversations with students that
reflected deep knowledge, higher order thinking, and applications
to real world problems (MacNabb et al., 2006). While neuroscience
knowledge was not explicitly linked to pedagogical practice in this
PD program, subsequent work focused on distilling a core set of
concepts in neuroscience broadly applicable to teaching at all levels
(Dubinsky et al., 2013). These are the ENCs used in the current
study. When high school biology teachers were trained to teach
89
neuroscience using student-centered pedagogy, students learned
neuroscience concepts better than a control group (Dubinsky et al.,
2013). In similar studies, student-centered pedagogy was more
readily practiced by teachers (MacNabb et al., 2006; Roehrig et al.,
2012). Thus, prior work speaks to the prospect that understanding
the neuroscience of learning and memory may impact any teacher's
pedagogical choices to improve student outcomes.
Based upon these findings, we wanted to know if neuroscience
knowledge could lead to pedagogical change among teachers who
would not be directly teaching neuroscience to their students and
were not necessarily science teachers. Given the compelling power
of the ENCs to influence science teachers, we expanded the audi-
ence to include teachers representing a variety of disciplines and
grade levels. Our research questions explored:
C To what extent can teachers without a strong scientific or
biological background understand the neuroscience of
learning?
C What meaningful links do non-science teachers recognize
between the ENCs and their pedagogy?
C To what extent are non-science teachers able to apply ENCs
to their lesson plans?
To address these questions, we provided teachers a 36-h course
in the neuroscience of learning and memory taught using inquiry-
based approaches. We pre and post tested their understanding of
basic neuroscience principles and assessed their ability to apply
pedagogical strategies modeled during the course in a revision of
one of their own lesson plans. In this cohort, non-science teachers
significantly increased their understanding of neuroscience,
recognized the implications for teaching and learning, and were
able to apply these ideas to their own lesson planning. This pilot
study suggests that teaching neuroscience in formal teacher
training programs may broadly benefit preK (children below the
age of 5) to grade12 teachers across all levels and disciplines by
providing them with a basis for understanding the benefits of
student-centered pedagogy.
2. Methodology
This pilot study employed a mixed methods approach using
both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze how non-
science teachers responded to an experimental curriculum
employing ENCs as a conceptual framework. The qualitative
portion of the study was the principle method used to understand
the teachers’ reactions to the curriculum and was based on a
grounded theory approach (Creswell, 2013). This methodology
emphasizes that participants participate in a shared experience,
and that general findings in this case are extracted from teacher
thoughts and writings. The quantitative approach was generally
descriptive with standard t-testing to distinguish the significance of
changes in teacher understanding about the ENCs before and after
the pilot study.
While the primary purpose of the quantitative approach was to
evaluate the teachers' confidence in applying these concepts, we
recognize that anything measured could easily be perceived as
important, thus threatening the neutrality of the experience.
Therefore, we minimized what we measured as much as we could.
For example, downplaying the ENCs or their definitions allowed us
to emphasize the importance of the teacher's thoughts, hypotheses,
actions and the feedback those actions generated. Grounded theory
facilitated the detection of patterns in the teachers' reflections.
90 M.S. Schwartz et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98
2.1. Participants
Fourteen teachers (female 11, male 3) met for 12 days during an
intensive three credit summer program at a Midwestern university.
Teachers were already enrolled in (2), about to begin (2), about to
graduate or had graduated from (3) a master's program in Mind,
Brain and Education (8) or were enrolled in another program (1).
Participants included eight PreK and elementary teachers, one
middle school teacher (student ages 12e14), three high school
teachers, and two curriculum specialists or administrators. Subject
specializations included special education, American Sign Language
(ASL), social studies, elementary math, algebra, and chemistry. The
chemistry teacher's data was included as we found no difference in
prior neuroscience knowledge, quantitative and qualitative data
between this teacher and others in the cohort. All teachers formally
consented to participate in this study, agreeing to share with re-
searchers their daily reflections, lesson plans and reactions to
course activities and to complete the pre-post survey. Course per-
formance ratings included turning in daily reflections and revision
of their lesson plan but were not dependent upon their content or
ideas expressed.
2.2. Program context and content
The neuroscience class drew largely from a teacher professional
development program previously implemented in another state
(MacNabb et al., 2006). However, the content was streamlined to
focus principally on the neuroscience of learning and memory and
other nervous system activity known to influence learning such as
emotions and stress. Specific topics included general brain struc-
ture and function, neurons and circuits, synaptic plasticity, memory
and learning, brain development, emotions and stress, mirror
neurons, and effects of drugs on learning and memory
(Supplemental Table 2). Teachers’ initial questions were largely
answered in covering these topics (Supplemental Table 3,
Supplemental Figure 1). Active learning pedagogies were employed
(Dubinsky et al., 2013) to highlight the nature of all ten ENCs
(Supplemental Table 1), which were also used to develop the
evaluation instruments and assessment assignments for this study.
However, teachers were never explicitly taught the ENCs, nor were
they formally discussed. They were only acknowledged in class in
relation to the assessment assignments that students completed.
Again, our objective was not to unintentionally convince teachers
that learning “names and definitions” of the ENCs was our goal. We
wanted teachers to build a personal meaning of each from their
experiences during the course.
2.3. Instruments and assessments
Quantitative data was collected on the teachers' acquisition of
neuroscience content knowledge as well as their confidence in
recognizing the use of the ENCs in the pedagogy described in their
lesson plans. Qualitative data included the teachers’ daily re-
flections on class activities and a final revision of a personal lesson
plan of their choice.
While teachers described how the neuroscience they encoun-
tered influenced their thoughts about learning and teaching (as
research cited earlier exploring the impact of PD on pedagogy), we
also assessed the impact of those thoughts in the final revisions of
their lesson plans. In surveys at the beginning and end of the
course, teachers considered how the neuroscience they understood
theoretically influenced or could improve their lesson planning.
The actual changes they made to their lesson served as an artifact to
evaluate the impact of the course on teacher's thoughts about
pedagogy.
Teachers saw the set of ENCs for the first time at the beginning of
the course with a survey they completed (see below). Subsequently,
they requested a printed copy for their use (Supplemental Table 1)
and we complied. Again, we avoided any explicit instruction or
formal introduction of the ENCs, telling teachers the ENCs were for
our use in designing the course and the survey instruments.
2.3.1. Neuroscience content knowledge test
Teacher neuroscience content knowledge was measured using a
two-part pre-posttest. Part one consisted of eight multiple choice
questions focused on general knowledge about neurons and the
brain. Performance on these questions has been consistent across
use with approximately 300 teachers in five different cohorts since
2000 (Dubinsky et al., 2013; 2019). Part two required teachers to
draw and label two connected neurons. This task has also been used
to assess both teacher and student knowledge of neurons and
synapses across three different studies over 10 years (Dubinsky
et al., 2013). The drawings were scored by a neuroscientist ac-
cording to a 48-point rubric for the presence or absence of a specific
list of structures covered in class. The drawing rubric included 4
points for each structure (1 for drawing and 1 for labeling on each of
2 neurons) plus additional points for indicating type and direction
of information flow.
2.3.2. Lesson plan surveys
Teachers’ confidence in applying neuroscience to lesson plan-
ning was first assessed in a pre-post Qualtrics survey. Teachers
evaluated how easily they thought each of the ten ENCs could be
applied to lesson planning in general. Prior to deployment, four
cognitive interviews were conducted to assess the clarity of the
survey questions. For each ENC, the survey first asked, “Does this
statement make sense to you?” A negative response directed the
respondent to the next ENC. A response of “Yes” or “Maybe”
directed the respondent to rank how confident they were that this
concept could be used in lesson planning. Confidence ratings were
collected on a slider ranging from 0 to 100.
In a second use of the survey teachers considered the usefulness
of each ENC in regard to one of their own lesson plans.
2.3.3. Revision of a personal lesson plan
At the end of the course, teachers evaluated a lesson plan of
their choosing and recommend changes based upon their current
understanding of neuroscience. Teachers revised the lesson as a
Word document using track changes to annotate changes and
explain why they made these changes. Both the lesson plan changes
as well as the teachers’ justifications were separately analyzed as
described in section 2.5.
2.3.4. Daily reflections
Daily during the course, participants responded outside of class
to the same three prompts: (1) If colleagues asked what you
learned in class today, what would you tell them; (2) How might
the lesson impact your teaching practice; and, (3) Additional
comments and concerns. The responses to the second prompt were
analyzed qualitatively as described in section 2.5.
2.4. Quantitative analysis
Two-tailed paired t-tests were carried out to detect any signif-
icant change before and after the course on the knowledge survey
described above. For all data analyses, the significance level was set
at two-tailed p < .05. Cohen's d was reported as effect sizes.
Shapiro-Wilk tests were conducted to examine the normality of the
difference between pre-test and post-test data.
 M.S. Schwartz et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98
2.5. Qualitative analysis
Two of the authors separately used a constant comparative
method (Creswell, 2013) to code the teachers’ daily responses to
generate categories describing course connections to their class-
room practice. Where there were disagreements, the two met to
discuss and resolve differences. This process was iterated until they
reached full agreement. As a second step, the agreed upon cate-
gories were independently aggregated into themes, followed by
meetings to resolve differences and iterating until full agreement
was reached. A third author reviewed all categories and, again,
where there were disagreements, the three met to resolve
differences.
A similar collaborative process was followed for analyzing the
changes teachers made to their lesson plans. Only the text portions
representing changes teachers made in the revised lesson plans
were analyzed qualitatively. The ways in which ENCs were used or
described in lessons were not judged as correct or incorrect. Most
lesson plan changes were clear and generated little debate between
raters. Thus, the raters transitioned from working separately to
working together to more efficiently identify changes and create
categories to classify changes. Two investigators (a teacher and a
neuroscientist) jointly read each change and categorized how the
change would play out in a classroom. If a deletion was accompa-
nied by an insertion, both changes were categorized together for
their combined intent. When tallying results, comparable changes
were counted more than once (i.e., removal of a specific vocabulary
word), if they were in separate paragraphs. Once all the changes in
the 14 lesson plans were categorized, codes were generated to
group the changes across lessons. These codes were then combined
into broad themes. A third author reviewed these codes and themes
as described earlier with the teacher's daily reflections.
To analyze the teachers’ justifications of lesson plan changes,
coding was done jointly by two authors so that consensus could be
reached more rapidly. Because these codes were similar to those
developed for the analysis of the daily reflections, the same set of
themes were adopted. Finally, in a follow-on analysis, one author
used a top-down classification scheme to explore whether the
justifications invoked a pedagogical argument, a neuroscientific
argument or both. The neuroscientific classification was further
broken down into whether an ENC was explicitly or implicitly
invoked. To be categorized as explicit, exact wording in the justi-
fication had to match one of the ENCs. Less precise language or
paraphrasing of an ENC counted as implicit. A second author
reviewed this coding, and, after joint discussion, the classifications
were accepted or modified until agreement was reached.
3. Results
3.1. Neuroscience content knowledge
Teachers convincingly acquired a working knowledge of the
neuroscience of learning and memory as demonstrated by their
improved performance on both the multiple choice and free
response drawing test of two interconnected neurons (Fig. 1). The
differences between pre and post-test multiple-choice scores were
normally distributed, as examined by Shapiro-Wilk Normality test,
p ¼ .17. The distributions of drawing scores also satisfied a
normality assumption, p ¼ .49. Item difficulty and discrimination
indices were calculated on the pre-test scores for each item of the
knowledge test (Matlock-Hetzel, 1997). The average item discrim-
ination for the test questions was 0.50 ± 0.35. Average item diffi-
culty was 0.65 ± 0.10. The internal consistency reliability (Kuder
Richardson 20, KR20) for the entire test was 0.40 (Urina, 2014) as
might be expected for a test that covered a mixture of neuroscience
91
concepts. For the four items focusing upon synaptic plasticity, the
KR20 was 0.76, suggesting good internal reliability. Teachers suc-
cessfully learned neuroscience content, improving significantly on
the multiple-choice test between pre-test (Raw Score Mean ¼ 4.79,
SD ¼ 1.67) and post-test (Mean ¼ 6.07, SD ¼ 1.07, t (13) ¼ 2.86,
p < .05, d ¼ 0.76. Changes in conceptual understanding were also
supported by changes in the accuracy of drawings of neurons
before (Mean ¼ 28.85%, SD ¼ 20.30%) and after the course
(Mean ¼ 60.42%, SD ¼ 7.70%, t (12) ¼ 5.87, p < .001, d ¼ 1.63, Fig. 1).
3.2. Teacher confidence in applying educational neuroscience
concepts
All teachers in the study evaluated their confidence in applying
their neuroscience understanding in pedagogical settings by esti-
mating their confidence (from 0 to 100) that each of the ten ENCs
could be applied to lesson planning in general (Fig. 2A) as well as
their own personal lesson plan (Fig. 2B). One teacher said a few
concepts did not make sense on the pre-survey. However, on the
post-survey all respondents said the ENCs made sense.
The change in their confidence ratings (pre to post course) was
normally distributed (Shapiro-Wilk Normality test, p ¼ .61 for
generic application and p ¼ .42 for their own lesson plans). Teacher
confidence ratings in applying the set of neuroscience concepts to
their lesson plans improved: precourse (Mean ¼ 76.20%,
SD ¼ 11.54%) to postcourse (Mean ¼ 88.41%, SD ¼ 7.50%), t
(13) ¼ 4.08, p < .01, d ¼ 1.09 (Fig. 2). Teacher confidence ratings in
applying ENCs to lesson planning in general also improved signif-
icantly: precourse (Mean ¼ 72.39%, SD ¼ 13.36%) to postcourse
(Mean ¼ 89.52%, SD ¼ 9.03%), t (13) ¼ 6.21, p < .001, d ¼ 1.66. A
Bonferroni correction was applied to all calculations to control for
family-wise error rates. The significance level was calculated as
p < .025 (0.05/2 tests).
3.3. Daily reflections on pedagogy
Analysis of the qualitative data was a lengthy process of revis-
iting strategies we thought promising to identify patterns in
teacher reflections and revisions. We began by using the ENCs as a
rubric, but determined that this approach yielded little consensus
between researchers. As this outcome aligned with our desire to
downplay the ENCs with teachers, we recognized the need to shift
to a bottom-up approach where we assessed and discussed the
strength and robustness of patterns noted. This process eventually
led to the identification of themes and categories detailed below.
To consider how or if teachers' pedagogical views were influ-
enced by learning neuroscience, they responded to three prompts
in their daily reflections: (1) What had they learned; (2) What
connections they had made between the day's neuroscience ac-
tivities and their teaching practices; and, (3) Any additional com-
ments they chose to share. Analysis of responses to the first prompt,
“what had they learned” underscored the teachers' claims that they
understood the major neuroscience ideas presented each day (data
not shown). This observation is consistent with the teachers'
increased knowledge of neuroscience (Fig. 1). The second prompt
provided a richer range of findings.
3.3.1. Analysis of responses to the second prompt
In regard to the second prompt, “connections to practice”,
teachers produced a wide range of ideas (336 in total, see Fig. 3).
The ideas were divided into three overarching themes: Theme 1:
Instructional Strategiese178 comments; Theme 2: Insights into
learninge140 comments; and, Theme 3: Insights into teacher roles,
requirements and responsibilitiese18 comments. All ideas
extended well beyond the pedagogy they observed in any activity
92 M.S. Schwartz et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98

Fig. 1. Performance of teachers on neuroscience content assessments. A) Responses on an eight-question multiple choice test of neuroscience knowledge covered in the course. B)
Responses to a prompt to draw two connected neurons with labels. Individual data points, mean and one standard deviation are shown. Pre indicates prior to the course (blue);
post, after the course (red); N ¼ 14. C, D) Example of drawings from a single teacher on the pre- (10 out of 48 points) and post-tests (34 out of 48 points), respectively. Images of the
pencil drawings were background subtracted in FIJI and contrast enhanced in Photoshop. ***p < .001, 2 tailed t-test.

Fig. 2. Teachers self-assessment of their confidence in applying ideas from neuroscience in the abstract (A) and to their own lesson plan (B) prior to the course (blue) and after the
course (red). ***p < .001, 2 tailed t-test.

during the course. Only four comments specifically related to the
possibility of repeating one of the modeled activities in their
classrooms. In a fuller description of the three themes that follow,
the number of comments in each category or theme appear in
parentheses.
3.3.1.1. Theme 1: instructional strategies. The majority of comments
within this theme focused on how to structure lessons. Teacher
suggestions included both theoretical ideas (70) and concrete
techniques or elements to include in a lesson (108).
Theoretical considerations included the benefits of Active
 M.S. Schwartz et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98
Fig. 3. Representation of ideas encountered in teachers' daily reflections regarding
connections between the neuroscience that was covered and their own practices.
Colors represent the categories grouping the ideas across all class meetings. The
numbers of ideas encountered in each major category are shown.
Learning (26) using concrete examples and sensorimotor experi-
ences (Fig. 3). One educator noted, dissection.
“emphasized the use of hands-on activity to keep students
engaged because it involved manipulatives and real-life exam-
ples, students' content retention will be enhanced.”
The Authentic Understanding (15) ideas were student-centered,
encouraging students to construct their own ideas, and to direct
and become accountable for their own learning to develop critical
thinking skills. Six Attitude comments highlighted the distinction
between student versus teacher-centered approaches (6), where
one teacher wrote,
“I am impressed with how engaged and mindful people are
when they have some level of autonomy in what and how they
learn. We are just now realizing how essential this is to moti-
vation and students’ willingness to dig deeper in establishing
their own understanding.”
Inquiry (23), the second largest category of theoretical consid-
erations, emphasized the teacher's use of problem solving, obser-
vations, analysis and synthesis. One educator pointed out that these
practices were “engaging ways to work on social skills, incorpo-
rating problem solving, math, and science into the entire project.”
The more concrete comments focused on changes that could
improve a lesson. Lesson Elements (52) included ideas such as
providing clear visualizations, relating to prior knowledge and
connecting to student interests, as evidenced by many teachers
who recognized that, “learning occurs when there is a relationship
between what has been taught with students’ prior knowledge and
interests.”
Several mentioned that student manipulation of models and
demonstrations, rather than teacher-only demonstrations
increased questions asked and memory retention. The second
largest group of concrete suggestions involved Sequencing (27)
where lessons included spiraled practice, spaced learning, scaf-
folding, or intermittent play and practice. Teachers claimed that
this focus provided time for processing complex information and
93
stabilization of new concepts and skills. Smaller categories of sug-
gested strategies included Lesson Templates and Specific Lesson
strategies (16) such as “jigsawing” or using a “critical response
protocol” (Ellingson, Roehrig, Bakkum & Dubinsky, 2016) and
Assessment (13), which according to one teacher,
“created an environment where data could be collected, and
students could question whether the experiment and results
were valid and significant.”
3.3.1.2. Theme 2: insights into learning. The second theme featured
three broad areas, biological contributions to learning, how
learning occurs in classrooms and pedagogical considerations
(Fig. 3). In the category Biological Contribution to learning (43),
comments covered the importance of basic synaptic plasticity, the
building of new cortical networks with both mental (thinking,
reasoning) and physical skill development, and an appreciation for
how physiological states and environmental factors impact
learning. Many teachers’ thoughts aligned with the following
comment,
“the more practice involved, the stronger the synapses become
and the more easily activated the next time the information is
presented.”
Teacher comments on how learning occurs in classrooms
encompassed the specific categories that Learning Takes Time (22)
and students must Engage to Learn (12). Numerous teachers
recognized that the amount of time and effort necessary for
learning can vary and engaging students is an essential instruc-
tional consideration. Furthermore, they recognized that individual
Students Learn Differently (10) and Thinking Processes (5) range
from automatic low-level skills to abstraction and creativity in
problem solving.
Teacher understanding of the neuroscience of learning was
evident in the comments on pedagogy, under Social Emotional
Support (36). Most importantly, 12 of 14 teachers commented on
providing Social and Emotional Support for students. Insights here
included leveraging social interactions of group work to promote
learning and responsibility, teaching emotional control, and uti-
lizing mirror neuron pathways to help students read social cues.
Other Pedagogies (12) included the importance of preventing
cognitive overload as well as the need to address misconceptions.
For example, one educator reflected on the need to,
“use my prior misconceptions to help me anticipate the mis-
takes my students may make because I realize going over in-
formation once doesn't mean the students learned it.”
3.3.1.3. Theme 3: insights into teacher roles. Teachers commented
less on their own roles (Fig. 3). They reflected upon the importance
of Experience (6) in either being trained to use student-centered
practices or to experience learning as their students regularly do.
Teachers identified with specific Roles (5); “teacher as facilitator” in
student learning and collaborating with colleagues. They also
identified specific Responsibilities (4) such as figuring out student
needs, integrating pedagogy and content, and communicating
effectively to both students and parents. Concerning the issue of
Time (3), and how it could be used more effectively, teachers
expressed a need for either a professionally designed curriculum or
more time to design lessons incorporating best practices. One
educator effectively summarized five teachers’ sentiments by
94 M.S. Schwartz et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98

writing, “My job as the teacher is to facilitate an environment so

students make their own discoveries and develop their own un-
derstandings of concepts-not to deliver them my own under-
standing through lecture. It takes a lot of prior planning, but it truly
works!”

3.4. Revision of a personal lesson plan

As a final course assessment, teachers used their neuroscience

understanding to revise the pedagogy in their chosen lesson plan.
Teachers were instructed to describe as well as justify changes to
their lessons. These two objectives led to three sets of observations:
(1) lesson plan changes (Fig. 4), (2) justifications for the changes
(Fig. 5); and, (3) attribution of the justifications to either neuro-
science or pedagogy (Fig. 6).

3.4.1. Lesson plan changes

The range of lesson plans reflected the breadth of teaching
specialties and grade levels among the teachers. For example, an
elementary teacher chose a lesson introducing equivalent additions
(2 þ 8 ¼ 5 þ 5) while a high school social studies teacher chose a
lesson on the relationship between capital and GDP. Lesson plans Fig. 5. Representation of justifications teachers made for the changes to their own
varied in length from a single hour to an 8-day unit. Teachers did lesson plan. Colors represent the categories (same as in Fig. 3) grouping the ideas
not follow directions perfectly as not all changes were separately across all class meetings. The numbers of ideas encountered in each major category are
shown.
justified. Teachers also provided comments on both changed and
unchanged portions of the lesson plans. One teacher made no
changes but made 7 comments while another teacher made 7 text
discussing ambiguities, and adding jigsaws or wrap-ups. Synthesize
changes but no comments. A total of 225 changes to fourteen lesson
(9) emphasized students categorizing ideas to generate their own
plans were coded with an average number of changes per teacher
understanding, interpreting data, making connections, and draw-
per class session of 16.1 ± 6.1. Codes were then sorted into three
ing conclusions. Idea generation, discussion, and synthesis all
types of changes: Student Actions (99), Teacher Actions (86), or Text
represent increases in student participation in the intellectual work
Only (40), (see Fig. 4). Text Only changes included everything from
of the class.
correcting spelling to adding information to materials or standards.
Additional Student Actions included Increasing Social (and
emotional) Interactions (13) or Metacognitive Reflection (16). Social
3.4.2. Student actions or emotional interactions included group work, sharing, using
The majority of the proposed lesson plan changes involving games to motivate, evaluating social interactions of characters in
Student Actions (99) focused on increasing active student partici- books, or discussing self-confidence. Various forms of documenting
pation and agency in class (Fig. 4). In the first category, teachers
increased student involvement by providing them opportunities to
Generate Ideas, Questions and Predictions (22). An equal number of
new or additional opportunities allowed students to Apply, Build,
Do or Solve (22), such as building a model, creating a game or
challenge for students, solving a problem or helping students exert
their own agency. Opportunities to Discuss (17) varied in form, by
replacing whole class discussions with small group discussions,

Fig. 6. Proportion of lesson plan comments (justifications) related to neuroscience,

Fig. 4. Representation of actual changes teachers made to their own lesson plan. pedagogy or both. Neuroscience justifications were subcategorized by those that
Colors represent the categories grouping the ideas across all class meetings. The explicitly used language from the ten ENCs or those that implicitly referred to the
numbers of ideas encountered in each major category are shown. concepts using other terms.
 M.S. Schwartz et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98
work, reflecting upon experiences, and comparing and evaluating
work comprise the last category, Metacognitive Reflection.
3.4.3. Teacher actions
The majority of 86 changes noted within this theme involved
two categories. The first focused on ways to Add Activities to
Support Learning (31) (Fig. 4) by allowing for more open-ended
answers (5), adding scaffolding (11), applying concepts to new
contexts (7), adding formative assessments (5), using alternative
materials or sequences (2), and integrating across topics (1). The
second category coalesced around increasing opportunities for
students to Practice (19). In over a fourth of the lesson plan changes,
teachers Removed Teacher-Centered Activities (24) by replacing
initial teacher explanations with a final wrap-up discussion or
removing teacher reading, talking, or listing vocabulary. In Add
Teacher Actions or Promote Learning (12), teachers assessed prior
knowledge and added illustrations, prompts, directions, or
feedback.
3.4.4. Justification for changes
The 185 lesson plan changes coded as Teacher or Student Actions
in Fig. 4 were accompanied by 168 comments or justifications
(Fig. 5). All comments were coded by the rationales provided. The
coded justifications were grouped into the same set of themes used
in the analysis of daily reflections (Fig. 3): Teacher Roles (9),
Instructional Strategies (79) and Insights in Student Learning (80).
Within the theme, Teacher Roles, justifications included holding
students accountable for their ideas through in-class writing,
teachers expressing their feelings and modeling behavior. For
example, one teacher demonstrated ASL signs to engage students’
mirror neuron systems. Another teacher assessed class opinions by
taking the temperature of beliefs students held about her topic.
3.4.5. Instructional strategies
Justifications for instructional changes followed two general
strategiese those focusing on pedagogical reasons alone (47) or,
alternatively, strategies providing students additional social and
emotional support (32) (Fig. 5). Instructional strategies included
Increase Student Agency (13) allowing students to generate ideas
and make more connections, increase Inquiry and Student Dis-
covery (8), provide opportunities for Problem Solving (6) and
identify students’ Prior Knowledge (6). Teachers also acknowledged
that Student Goals (5) differed from than those of teachers, and
pedagogy should become student-centered. A smaller but varied
number of specific pedagogical changes were grouped under
Miscellaneous Pedagogy: increase visualization (3), stimulate in-
terest through games (3), scaffold learning (2) and identify mis-
conceptions (1).
The 32 remaining justifications represented three different
categories, all focused on increasing social and emotional support
for students. Over half of lesson changes involved Social In-
teractions (17) to improve student learning by capitalizing on stu-
dents sharing curiosity, providing their peers with feedback,
engaging in discussions and building on others' ideas. Teachers also
attempted to make the lesson environment Safe (8) so that stu-
dents could share ideas without judgment. Lesson change justifi-
cations also recognized the importance in making Connections to
Students’ Lives (7), which included acknowledging how external
circumstances impacted students.
3.4.6. Insights into student learning
The largest subgroup of justifications concerned the role of
synaptic plasticity in learning (44) (Fig. 5). Teachers noted that
Synapses Change with Practice (20), and that Practice Builds Neural
Circuits (24). As a result, learning is stabilized at increasingly
95
complex levels. Twenty-five comments focused upon physiological
variables by adding an Emotional Stamp (14) to lessons and using a
Sensorimotor Activity (9) to engage students. In the category
Miscellaneous Physiology (2), teachers recognized the importance
of stress and decreasing cognitive load. Numerous comments cited
engaging students’ Reasoning Powers (11) to recognize patterns (5),
to apply and transfer concepts (2), to reason and revise their own
thinking (3), and to make analogies (1).
3.4.7. Invoking neuroscience as a justification for changes
Altogether 68.3% of the justifications and 13 out of 14 teachers
invoked an idea aligned in some manner with the ENCs. Of the 168
comments 45.5% invoked neuroscience explicitly or implicitly.
Twenty-seven comments (16.1%) explicitly utilized the wording in
an ENC (see Fig. 6). This outcome is not a surprise as the lexicon of
ENCs was infrequently used during the course; however, a few
exceptions are worth noting. For example, one teacher specifically
identified ENC #9 (Supplemental Table 1: Nervous system
complexity produces reasoning, communication, creativity, curi-
osity.) as the justification for leading the class to discover the
meaning of “critical attributes”. Using the concept of a chair, she
asked students, “What features represent a chair? What parts
might be eliminated or added, and we would still consider the
structure as a chair?” Students were given the opportunity to
reason through the concepts of representativeness and critical
attributes.
Implicitly, 29.3% (50) of comments aligned with the ENCs but
were expressed in the teachers' own words as justification for
lesson plan changes. For example, one justification, “Experiences
with an emotional stamp are more easily remembered” clearly
referenced ENC #6 (Supplemental Table 1) but did not use the exact
wording. Teachers added opportunities for students to practice
skills highlighted in their lesson plans which reflect an implicit
understanding that practice strengthens synaptic and circuit
development. For example, after explicitly invoking the concept
that revisiting an idea strengthens synaptic change in one
comment, a teacher justified additional uses of review as “Practice
in a different context.” Justifications focusing on just pedagogy
were present in 31.7% (53) of the comments, including rationales
such as generating ideas, building on others' ideas, and making
personal connections to increase engagement and motivation.
Several teachers noted that giving students more control to
demonstrate their understanding was important. One teacher said,
“I do not want students to just copy my labeling, so they attempt
their labeling and then compare it to the teacher's labeling.”
Ideas attributable to both neuroscience and pedagogy repre-
sented 22.8% (38) of comments. For example, sensorimotor activ-
ities were categorized under both neuroscience and pedagogy due
to the derivation of these ideas from both developmental models
(Fischer, 1980; Piaget, 1983) and neural models that describe
learning as the combined engagement of sensory, motor, and
cognitive brain circuits (Fuster, 2009). Teachers also noted that
allowing students to initially experience new knowledge at the
sensorimotor level was essential to constructing deep conceptual
understanding. In the middle of a multi-part lesson on simple
machines, a teacher provided students with a long pole and the
challenge to move a big box. She justified this change as an example
of “Direct sensorimotor experience, context sensitive, apply and
transfer skills and understanding across situations.”
3.5. Impact of prior courses
To examine whether the number of MBE courses taken affected
the quantity of lesson plan changes or comments, we compared
them to the number of text changes per lesson, the number of
96 M.S. Schwartz et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98
comments, and the percentage of Neuroscience-related comments
that teachers made in lesson plan revisions. The Krushal-Wallis test
assessed the effect of the number of courses taken (0, 4 or 9 cour-
ses) on the three variables. A Bonferroni correction was used to
control family-wise error with a significance level at p < .017 (0.05/
3 tests). No significant differences in the number of text changes
(Chi square ¼ 3.55, p ¼ .17, df ¼ 2), the number of comments (Chi
square ¼ 0.46, p ¼ .79, df ¼ 2), or the percentage of Neuroscience
comments (Chi square ¼ 2.59, p ¼ .27, df ¼ 2) were found among
teachers who had taken 0, 4 or 9 MBE courses.
4. Discussion
This pilot study addressed three questions. The first focused on
whether an experimental course could improve non-science
teacher's understanding of basic neuroscience concepts. On
average, the teachers demonstrated a significant increase in
knowledge on both multiple choice and free response assessments
administered before and after the course. This foundation appeared
to serve teachers well, as they described meaningful links between
the neuroscience that was taught and their pedagogy in daily re-
flections, addressing the second question. Additionally, self-ratings
of teacher confidence increased significantly when applying ten
ENCs to lesson planning in general and to their own lesson plans.
Finally, we measured the extent to which non-science teachers
applied the ENCs to their pedagogy. An extensive analysis of the
teachers' lesson plan revisions revealed a rich and varied number of
student-centered instructional practices that teachers suggested as
improvements.
Justifications for these changes included both pedagogical and
neuroscience-based reasons. Moreover, teachers could translate
the modeled inquiry-pedagogy used in this study to student-
centered pedagogy relevant to their content specializations. These
outcomes demonstrated the teachers’ ability to understand the
relevant neuroscience and appropriately apply the ideas in their
own educational settings.
4.1. Impact of the course
The concrete explanation of learning at the synaptic level pro-
vided by contemporary neuroscience offers teachers a foundational
understanding for building sound practices (Owens & Tanner,
2017). Teachers consider “knowledge of students, how they learn,
and what motivates student learning” as central to their knowledge
about teaching (Fives & Buehl, 2014). In focusing upon the neuro-
science of learning, this pilot Neuroscience for Educators course
provided the fundamental understanding of learning at the cellular,
synaptic and circuit levels, apparently satisfying this perceived
need. This biological knowledge was accurately perceived as con-
crete and not theoretical. The neuroscience taught also provided
teachers insights into the social and emotional behaviors that in-
fluence peer interactions, attention, and motivations.
By course-end, teachers were acquainted with key ideas,
structures, functions and vocabulary in the neuroscience of
learning and how these could contribute to teaching and learning.
Teachers were not as expert as neuroscience graduate students, nor
were they expected to be. Similarly, after taking an educational
psychology course, often part of preservice training, teachers are
not as knowledgeable as psychology graduate students. Rather
teacher understanding of ENCs was sufficient to embrace the ideas
of student-centered pedagogy. Whether or not educational psy-
chology courses should provide teachers with this basic neurosci-
ence knowledge remains a matter of debate (Bowers, 2016;
Gabrieli, 2016; Howard-Jones et al., 2016; Im, Cho, Dubinsky &
Varma, 2018).
The majority of changes and justifications in teachers' lesson
plans demonstrated more student-centered practices. Where
pedagogical changes were noted, the teachers’ promoted student
agency and provided support for learning, as opposed to offering
additional explanations. Overall, the changes in the revised lesson
plans reflected how teachers used the ENCs to reconsider their
initial lessons. Their questions to students became more focused on
understanding how students thought about the content. Teachers
used more class time to allow students to learn from other stu-
dents, consider alternative points of view, combine ideas heard in
discussions, and to summarize and synthesize ideas. The lesson
plan changes were consistently non-trivial, featuring how teachers
were challenging assumptions and refining or reconsidering their
beliefs about pedagogy. Furthermore, the lesson revision justifica-
tions demonstrated that teachers understood the ENCs and they
recognized that they were not the sole repository of knowledge.
Rather they sought opportunities to allow students to experience
concepts, support collaborative meaning-making, and help stu-
dents make sense of these experiences.
In a separate analysis of the justifications, teachers balanced
purely pedagogical explanations, neuroscientific explanations or
combinations of the two. The proportions of justifications in the
first two categories were roughly equivalent, suggesting that
teachers could also distinguish between them. Neuroscience ex-
planations were not used universally, nor were there mis-
attributions or improper applications of the neuroscience concepts.
These observations suggest that given proper neuroscience
training, teachers do not initially misapply the concepts.
4.2. Usefulness of ENCs
Neuroscience has broad appeal, which we used as an underlying
framework to add validity to the models of learning from the
cognitive sciences. While the ENCs influenced our curriculum, they
were only obvious to the teachers as part of our assessments. We
never formally introduced them so that teachers could actively
construct personal meanings of the ENCs from their experiences,
through class discussions or in their daily reflections. This student-
centered approach allowed teachers to reflect on the salience and
meaning of the neuroscience in their daily reflections about
pedagogy. To that end the ENCs provided a useful framework for
designing a curriculum to enrich our teachers’ pedagogical thinking
and action over time.
Future iterations of Neuroscience for Educators might consider
introducing and discussing these concepts towards the end of the
course to generate additional thinking about the application of
neuroscience to pedagogy. Such discussions would help identify
which ENCs resonate most powerfully with teachers, and which
empower and motivate them to alter their practice.
In this course, class time was spent modeling inquiry pedagogy
to teach neuroscience. At the end of each class, participants
engaged in conversations evaluating the day's pedagogy. In pro-
fessional development, teachers generally value practical class-
room implementation strategies over theoretical constructs, which
do not appear to motivate their own learning about pedagogy
(Fives & Buehl, 2014). The lack of perceived connection between
theory and practice may derive from the abstract nature of many
learning theories (e.g. Fischer, 1980; Piaget, 1983; Powers, 1973;
Thelen & Smith, 1996), which many teachers had been exposed to
in prior coursework. Consciously weaving theory and practice in all
activities appears to increase the usefulness of ENCs to teachers.
More importantly, neuroscience may be the foundation that
teachers need to appreciate the models of behavior that are the
legacy of the cognitive sciences.
Self-regulated learning is another behavioral model that
 M.S. Schwartz et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 83 (2019) 87e98
addresses student agency. (Bjork, Dunlosky, & Kornell, 2013). This
model highlights how students’ self-knowledge of their ability to
learn influences their initiative in exercising control in learning
(Bjork et al., 2013; Zimmerman & Schunk, 1989). By focusing on the
biological changes underpinning learning in the brain, neurosci-
ence supports personal responsibility (Bjork et al., 2013). Use of
student-centered pedagogies by teachers promotes self-regulated
learning among students (Paris & Paris, 2001). Teachers in this
sample demonstrated their intent to include more student-
centered pedagogies in their lessons. Thus, understanding neuro-
science might also be expected indirectly to promote student gains
in self-regulated processes. Teaching neuroscience content to stu-
dents was not a goal of this course, although some teachers re-
flected that they would share their new knowledge with their
students informally. The conjunction of self-regulated learning
ideas with neuroscience merits further exploration.
Also clear is the potential of a neuroscience framework to in-
fluence pedagogy for a wide variety of teachers, not just science
teachers (MacNabb et al., 2006; Roehrig et al., 2012). The findings
from this pilot study demonstrate neuroscience content was
accessible to teachers who did not have an in-depth biology or
science background. The variety of teachers in this cohort high-
lights the potential for further testing and evaluation of this
approach with a greater range of teachers across disciplines and
student age groups.
4.3. Limitations of the study
To conduct this exploratory study on how neuroscience
knowledge influences teacher confidence and lesson planning,
teachers in a Master's Program in Mind, Brain, and Education were
recruited. Given their voluntary participation, one might expect
that these teachers were primed to provide more student-centered
approaches. However, no relationship was found between the
number of MBE courses taken and the quantity of lesson plan
changes or comments. Teachers entering the program with no prior
coursework responded as did those who had completed the degree
program, indicating that the impact of this combined neuroscience
and pedagogy class was independent of previous theoretical cour-
sework. Given the small number of teachers in this study, this
observation merits confirmation in a larger investigation, which
includes teachers that are not self-selected.
While our goal was to establish a proof of concept, we remain
extremely cautious given the variety of factors that can influence
the outcomes described here. Teachers in this study were enrolled
in a master's program, clearly invested in their ongoing professional
development. Whether teachers from the general population
would respond similarly to a neuroscience program brought to a
school district remains to be tested. Furthermore, we cannot easily
parse out the role of the pedagogy used from the power of the ENCs
themselves. Controlling for time to reflect and revise lesson plans
and the potential of an educational psychology course to provide
similar content are also important in more broadly developing and
challenging these proof-of-concept conclusions. As in all courses,
instructors rarely know how the course influences future partici-
pant behavior.
Thus further studies will have to control for the impact of
modeling student-centered pedagogy versus the ENCs acting
independently as a conceptual framework for change. While we
believe the neuroscience framework offers guiding principles for
understanding the cognitive science, quantifying the added value of
the ENCs will be important in future, more rigorous control studies
to understand the relative contribution of each variable to teacher
professional development.
As noted earlier, courses in this master's program focused
97
mostly on the impact of cognitive and behavioral models of
learning in their pedagogy. Success in knowing when and how to
use the models in their classrooms could take as long as the pro-
gram duratione two years, sometimes longer given student com-
ments after they completed the program. Thus, looking for
strategies that weave together models that account for behaviors
with those that reveal the underlying neuroscience that support
behavior is a promising direction for teacher professional devel-
opment. Recognizing the relative impact of both behavioral and
neuroscience models in influencing pedagogy can lead to more
effective teacher professional development.
5. Conclusion
The main purpose of this pilot study was to explore the rela-
tionship between understanding of neuroscience and the educa-
tional choices among non-science teachers. Even though student-
centered activities are emphasized as critical to student learning
by the National Resource Council (1999; 2000; 2005), motivating
teachers to enact active learning is difficult. Viewed collectively,
these data present a promising case for teaching neuroscience to all
teachers in PD or university settings. The course appeared to sup-
port a diversity of willing teachers in using the ENCs to reconsider
and adjust the pedagogy they used in initial lesson plans. The
teachers’ ability to reiterate and apply the neuroscience content
triangulated with the increased knowledge they displayed on the
post tests. Teachers not only want to know what the best practices
are as proven in actual classrooms, but why these strategies and
processes are effective, and why they are worth the time and en-
ergy needed to implement them. Thus, teachers may seek out and
apply ENCs both practically in their classrooms and to satisfy their
own needs to understand theoretical models of learning. We found
that teachers both understood the neuroscience of learning and
memory and were able to provide explanations for why active-
learning engages students, and that this outcome may motivate
them to plan more social and emotional support and scaffolding in
their classrooms.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr. S. S. Guzey for critical
reading of earlier versions of the manuscript. This work was sup-
ported by the Steffen Palko Endowment for the SW Center for Mind,
Brain and Education.
Appendix ASupplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.04.002.
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