Posted: April 24th, 2025

Week 3 Discussion

 

After reading What we know (and think we know) about the learning brain An interview with Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa in

Module 3: Lecture Materials & Resources,

please respond and discuss the following.  

1. Please given an educational implication of one of the six principles in mind, brain and education science that she cites in Figure 1 that you were not aware of previously.
2. Discuss how knowledge of the principle you selected will change your teaching or leadership practice.
3. Provide an example of a mistaken belief that educators hold about learning and how holding that belief can impair a teacher’s effectiveness.
4. Pick one of the tenets in mind, brain, and education science listed in Figure 2 that none of your classmates have chosen and provide an outside citation that supports it.

Module 3: Lecture Materials & Resources

 

Classical Conditioning & Brain, Cognitive, & Language Development

Read and watch the lecture resources & materials below early in the week to help you respond to the discussion questions and to complete your assignment(s).

(Note: The citations below are provided for your research convenience. Students should always cross-reference the current APA guide for correct styling of citations and references in their academic work.)

Read

· Durwin, C. C., & Reese-Weber, M. J. (2020).

· Chapter 5: Brain Development

· Chapter 6: Cognitive Development

· Chapter 7: Language Development

· Chapter 8: Behavioral Learning Theories

· Chapter 20: Intelligence and Giftedness

· Heller, R. (2018). What we know (and think we know) about the learning brain: An interview with Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa. 
Phi Delta Kappan, 
100(4), 24-30.

·

 Kappan the learning brain

Download  Kappan the learning brain

 

Watch

·
The Little Albert Experiment (6:20)
Johncheezy. (2010, June 1). 
The Little Albert Experiment [Video].  YouTube.

The Little Albert ExperimentLinks to an external site.

·
The importance of bilingualism (4:02)
Thechildrens. (2011, March 29). 
The importance of bilingualism [Video]. YouTube.

The Importance of BilingualismLinks to an external site.

·
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain (14:26)
TED. (2012, September 17). 
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain [Video]. YouTube.

 

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: The mysterious workings of the adolescent brainLinks to an external site.

·
Teaching matters: scaffolding (5:13)
eMedia Workshop. (2012, September 17). 
Teaching matters: scaffolding [Video]. YouTube.

Teaching Matters: ScaffoldingLinks to an external site.

Supplemental Materials & Resources

None.

 

Module 3 Discussion

 

 

The Learning Brain

After reading 
What we know (and think we know) about the learning brain An interview with Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa in 

Module 3: Lecture Materials & Resources, 

please respond and discuss the following.  

1. Please given an educational implication of one of the six principles in mind, brain and education science that she cites in Figure 1 that you were not aware of previously.

2. Discuss how knowledge of the principle you selected will change your teaching or leadership practice.

3. Provide an example of a mistaken belief that educators hold about learning and how holding that belief can impair a teacher’s effectiveness.

4. Pick one of the tenets in mind, brain, and education science listed in Figure 2 that none of your classmates have chosen and provide an outside citation that supports it.

 

Submission Instructions:

· Your initial post should be at least 200 words, formatted, and cited in current APA style with support from at least 2 academic sources

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24 Kappan December 2018/January 2019

KAPPAN: Your professional experience has been extraor-
dinarily varied. You’ve taught at the elementary, secondary,
and university levels in multiple countries. You’ve worked
in adult education, children’s television, online learning,
counseling, and higher education administration. You’ve
done research on multilingualism . . . How have your
many roles and interests brought you to focus specifically
on brain science and its implications for teaching and
learning?

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: I trace everything back to
my dad, who was a great, great teacher. He was raised in
Hawaii and went to UC Berkeley in the 1960s on a schol-
arship to study nuclear physics, but he decided what he
really wanted to be was a public school math teacher. He
worked in some pretty tough neighborhoods in Northern
California, and he always chose to teach the students who
were struggling the most. He started something called the
“F Club,” for example, for kids who had failed classes, so
he could get them together and find a way to get back on
track.

I remember walking down the street with him, and these
big, burly guys would always come running over to say
hi and tell him that they have a great job now, and they’re
doing well, and they wouldn’t have made it without him
. . . So I knew my dad was a brilliant teacher. But I always

What we know (and think we know)
about the learning brain
An interview with Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa

Kappan’s editor talks with a leader in the international movement to translate findings
from neuroscience into usable knowledge for educators.

By Rafael Heller

RAFAEL HELLER is the editor-in-chief of Kappan magazine.

wondered what was it, exactly, that made him so good at
it. Was he just really smart about math? Did he have some
mysterious knack for connecting with kids? What was it?

So that’s what drew me into education, this curiosity to
figure out what makes somebody a great teacher, and why
it is that some kids learn things easily but others struggle.
Over time, that led me to neuroscience, which focuses on
the organ that’s most important to teaching and learning:
the brain. And, in turn, I realized that while recent findings
from brain science can be incredibly helpful to educators,
those findings haven’t really been incorporated into teacher
preparation. Perhaps even more important, teachers have
picked up a lot of misinformation about the human brain —
“neuromyths” is the term I like to use — and these mistaken
beliefs about how the brain works can easily lead them to
teach in ways that are harmful to kids.

But let me say up front that I’m not trying to blame teach-
ers for what they don’t know. A lot of the science is new,
and teachers haven’t had enough opportunities to learn
about it and see for themselves why it’s time to reconsider
certain ideas.

KAPPAN: In your new book, you describe working with
researchers from around the world to identify these neuro-
myths, figure out where they come from, and explain why
they’re not true. Tell us a bit about that work.

What We’ve learned about learning

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1177%2F0031721718815669&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2018-11-26

V100 N4 kappanonline.org 25

reach a consensus on what’s known, at this point, about the
science of learning. Given the existing evidence, what can
we say for sure, and what can we say we with less certainty?

In 2017, I conducted a 10-year follow-up to the Delphi
study, and around the same time I was asked by the
OECD to be a part of an expert panel to clarify what
should be teachers’ new knowledge based on all of these
findings. In both projects, I heard a lot of agreement
about important advancements in the study of teaching
and learning, but I also heard experts voice this frustra-
tion: Why do teachers still believe all these old myths
about the brain, like the idea that we use only 10% of
our brain power, or that some people are “right-brained”
and others are “left-brained,” or that listening to classical
music will make you smarter? For years we’ve been col-
lecting and sharing the real findings, so why do teachers
continue to believe things that aren’t true?

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: In 2002, the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which
is based in Paris, did an international comparative study
showing how teachers around the world just didn’t know
enough about the brain. So, in 2007, while I was working
on my doctoral dissertation, I decided to bring together
a group of experts in neuroscience, psychology, and ed-
ucation — called the Delphi panel — to look into ways to
improve teachers’ pedagogical knowledge. In particular,
how should teachers’ work be informed by recent advances
in neuroscience?

The Delphi panel is sort of like the panels that have been
convened in the U.S. by the National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) — and, in fact, some of the members of the Delphi
panel have been on NAS panels, too — but Delphi is more in-
ternational. Basically, the idea is to convene a diverse group
of researchers who are experts in their field to see if they can

TRACEY TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA
A native of California, Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa is an education
researcher affiliated with the Latin American Social Science Research
Faculty (FLACSO) in Quito, Ecuador. She also teaches The Neuroscience
of Learning at Harvard University’s Extension School, and she is a former
member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) expert panel to redefine teachers’ new pedagogical knowledge
due to contributions from technology and neuroscience.

Tokuhama-Espinosa has taught at every level, from kindergarten to the
middle grades, high school, college, and adult education, and she has
facilitated hundreds of workshops for teachers, administrators, and
education policy makers around the world. She is the former director
of the Institute for Teaching and Learning (IDEA) and director of online
learning at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, and she was founding
dean of education at the American University in Quito. She currently
heads Connections, which seeks to improve the quality of education
through research, teacher training, and student support — with MESH, a U.K.-based charity, Connections offers
a free online evidence-based platform (http://thelearningsciences.com, in English and Spanish) to help fill in
gaps of pedagogical knowledge for the 21st century.

Tokuhama-Espinosa is the author of eight books, including Neuromyths: Debunking False Ideas about the
Brain (W.W. Norton, 2018), and dozens of peer-reviewed articles on topics ranging from multilingualism to
21st-century skills to the study of mind, brain, and education. Her current research focuses on improving
the indicators used to measure educational quality and translating findings from neuroscience into usable
knowledge for teachers. She received her bachelor’s in international relations and in communications from
Boston University, her master’s in education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and
her Ph.D. from Capella University.

26 Kappan December 2018/January 2019

which — since bigger is assumed to be better — they took to
mean that men have more brain power. Of course, it didn’t
occur to them that if men’s and women’s brains differ in size,
that’s just because men’s and women’s bodies tend to differ in
size overall. And in any case, we’ve come to understand since
then that our human potential to learn doesn’t have to do with
brain size or the total number of neurons — learning has to do
with the connections we create among neurons.

Now I’m not saying that there aren’t any differences to be
found between male and female brains (or the amounts of
hormones males and females tend to produce, which do in-
fluence behavior). For example, there was a brain imaging
study that observed that when doing certain types of spa-
tial reasoning and math problems, boys and girls activated
different neural networks. But there’s no evidence that this
translates to differences in intelligence or potential. It’s not
that girls can’t reason spatially just as well as boys; they
just use a different network to get the same solution — and
with a tiny bit of training, they perform at the same level.

So yes, you can point to some very small differences
between male and female brains. What’s so important to
remember, though, is that the differences among men, and
the differences among women, are far greater than the dif-
ferences between men and women.

KAPPAN: Is that how neuromyths get started? Scientists
observe a small difference, or they report a single finding,
and people blow it out of proportion?

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: Right, a little bit of scientific
knowledge can be a dangerous thing. We just haven’t done
very much to help teachers become scientifically literate.

Many of us came to the conclusion that if we want teach-
ers to understand how students actually learn, we’re going
to have to start by clearing away these mistaken beliefs. So
that’s when I decided to write this new book on neuromyths.

KAPPAN: Give us a few more examples. Obviously, we can’t
review all 70 of the neuromyths that you describe in the
book, but what are a few of the most prevalent myths that
teachers tend to believe, and what makes them so harmful?

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: There’s the idea that students
have differing “learning styles,” which has been debunked
many times. Or the idea that male and female brains are
fundamentally different from one another. Or the idea
(popularized by some of the early brain research) that
specific abilities are locked into specific parts of the brain
— spatial ability in one part, reading in another, math in
another, and so on.

Or take multitasking. A lot of people, including a lot
of teachers, think they’re good at it — and a lot of people
insist that women are better at it than men! But the fact is
that nobody can multitask, not if we’re talking about tasks
that put a significant cognitive load on your attention and
memory. Sure, if you’re talking on the phone with your
mom, you might be able to chop vegetables at the same
time. But chopping vegetables doesn’t require much mental
energy. It’s a routine activity you’ve habituated over time.
You’ve more or less automated this particular skill, so you
can do it while telling your mom about your day. But you
can’t tell your mom about your day while you’re also trying
to read a recipe. It’s inefficient. You get distracted. At best,
you can shift back and forth between those two tasks.

My own kids tell me they like to listen to music while
they do their homework. It’s relaxing, they say, and it
doesn’t take up any of their working memory. And they’re
right, as long as they just have the music on in the back-
ground. But as soon as they start checking their text mes-
sages, they’re no longer doing their homework. They might
argue that they have this special capacity to multitask, but
it’s just not happening. And the same goes for teachers.
They might think they can go over Johnny’s homework
while they’re also listening to Mary explain why she was
late to class, but they can’t really do both things at once and
pay the necessary attention.

KAPPAN: You mentioned the widespread belief that male
and female brains are different. Is that just old-fashioned
sexism, or is there a specific origin to that idea?

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: Both. And this is one area where
it’s hard to separate the bias from the science itself. You can
go back to the 1800s, for example, when scientists discovered
that men tend to have slightly larger brains than women,

I knew my dad was a
brilliant teacher. But I
always wondered what
was it, exactly, that
made him so good at it.

V100 N4 kappanonline.org 27

Doesn’t it try to be something like a Consumer Reports for
K-12 education?

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: Yes and no. On the Delphi
panel, we looked at the What Works Clearinghouse, but
we found that its goal is much narrower than what we
were trying to do. Mostly, the clearinghouse evaluates
specific educational programs and interventions, but we
set out to take stock of the underlying knowledge base,
from across the learning sciences. We didn’t ask whether
this or that intervention works in the classroom. Rather,
we asked, what does neuroscience tell us about teaching
and learning?

For example, we reviewed the research on sleep
patterns and how they relate to memory and learning,
and we looked at the research on nutrition and stress
and depression and their effects on learning . . . These
topics aren’t going to show up in the What Works
Clearinghouse, but they are critically important for edu-
cators to understand.

KAPPAN: In your book, you explain that the 2017 panel
was able to reach agreement on six core principles (see
Figure 1). These are findings, drawn from a mountain of re-
search in the neurosciences, that panelists found to be true
about how all brains work, regardless of context or culture.
Further, you identified an additional 21 tenets (see Figure
2). These are also supported by very strong evidence,
but the panelists couldn’t reach quite the same level of
consensus on them — some argued that these may not be
universally true; they may vary somewhat by individuals
and across contexts and cultures.

So when the popular media (who love simple Mars-Venus
kinds of stories) report that a new brain imaging study
shows that boys and girls use different neural networks to
solve math problems, how are teachers supposed to know
that, in reality, this isn’t such an important finding?

One danger is that teachers will see the news report as con-
firmation of their existing assumptions about male-female
differences. Unconsciously, at least, it will shape how they
treat boys and girls in the classroom, or how they interpret
boys’ and girls’ performance. So if Anna’s having trouble with
math, then on some level the teacher will assume it’s because
Anna’s a girl — because, after all, didn’t they say on the news
that girls aren’t as good as boys at spatial reasoning?

And another danger is that there’s a lot of commercial
benefit to be had by playing up these differences and
exploiting people’s misunderstandings about the signifi-
cance of individual scientific studies. Actually, this is an is-
sue that I wish I could have addressed more in my book, but
my editors urged me not to because they were worried that
if I went after some of the commercial programs, we’d face
lawsuits. But you can probably guess some of the companies
that I’m talking about. You see their ads all the time on TV,
all these toys, devices, pills, and software that are supposed
to boost your kids’ memory or make them smarter.

KAPPAN: But every new product claims to be the one
that’s finally cracked the code, right? If you’re a parent or
an educator, it’s hard not to be swayed by an advertisement
that says, “Sure, all those earlier products were phony, but
we’ve created an app based on the newest brain science,
and this one really does work.”

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: True, so let me say this bluntly:
It’s always good to be skeptical about commercial products
based on brain research. Don’t be fooled by how many
scientists a company has on its advisory board, or what
they’ve been able to teach rats in the lab, or even what
they’ve been able to teach some kids under controlled con-
ditions. It’s just not that straightforward to turn research
findings into effective programs and apps. If it sounds too
good to be true, it probably is.

That’s why it was so exciting to work with the Delphi
panel, where the whole idea was to bring all of these
super-skeptical scientists together to set the advertising
aside, look very carefully at the existing evidence, and say
“OK, this approach has our blessing . . . and that idea truly
is worthy of bringing into classrooms.” It’s very cool for a
group like that to be able to reach consensus on some spe-
cific principles that teachers can really stand behind.

KAPPAN: Isn’t that what the U.S. Department of
Education’s What Works Clearinghouse is supposed to do?

It’s always good to
be skeptical about
commercial products
based on brain
research.

28 Kappan December 2018/January 2019

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: Well, most people can get to be
pretty good at certain things, especially things that involve mo-
tor learning, like playing the piano. Your brain adapts to what
it does most, so if you spend a lot of time rehearsing a skill,
you’re going to improve. Again, that’s the good news: We can
help every kid to make real progress in school and life.

But there’s a limit. If you have a Tiger Mom who makes you
spend 10,000 hours practicing the piano, then you’re probably
going to reach a pretty high level of proficiency. But if it’s not
in your nature to become a truly great pianist, then you won’t
be a gifted musician, no matter how many hours you put into
it. Not everybody has the potential to be a genius.

KAPPAN: How would you integrate these principles and
tenets into teacher preparation? And if all teachers under-
stood these things, what difference would that make?

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: Experienced teachers know
all sorts of things — either intuitively or from reading and
professional development — about what works and what
doesn’t. They probably know, for instance, that it’s important,
early in a lesson, to elicit students’ background knowledge
about a topic. But the question is, why is it so valuable to
assess prior knowledge? Why should you provide explicit
instruction in metacognitive strategies, getting students to
think about their own learning? Why is it so important to ask
kids how they figured out a math problem?

This is the added value that teachers get when you
introduce them to the neuroscience. They don’t just learn
that a teaching practice has evidence behind it; they learn

The question is, if we know these principles and tenets to
be true, then so what? What are the implications for K-12
education?

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: Let’s start with the first prin-
ciple, which states that while all brains share some basic
similarities in structure, all brains are also unique. Every
person begins with their own, unique genetic makeup, and
they also have their own life experiences, which influence
the neural pathways they create in their brains.

KAPPAN: In other words, we’re shaped by a combination
of nature and nurture?

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: Yes. And free will. And that’s
good news, since it means we’re not totally constrained by
our genetics or past experiences, but also our choices.
But at the same time, there’s also sad news here: Free
will has its limits. It’s just not true that we can rewire our
brains to become whoever we want. The My Fair Lady
story has to go out the window. If the kids in my class
have had totally different life experiences — some of
them super-enriched and others super-constrained —
then it’s not realistic to think that I can get them all to the
same place in the same amount of time with the same
activities.

KAPPAN: I’m assuming, then, that you disagree with
Malcolm Gladwell’s argument that anybody can become suc-
cessful at anything if they put 10,000 hours of practice into it.

FIGURE 1.

Principles in mind, brain and education science (2017)

PRINCIPLE 1
Human brains are as unique as human faces. While the basic structure of most human brains is the
same (similar parts in similar regions), no two brains are identical. The genetic makeup unique to each person
combines with life experiences (and free will) to shape neural pathways.

PRINCIPLE 2
Each individual’s brain is differently prepared to learn different tasks. Learning capacities are shaped
by the context of the learning, prior learning experiences, personal choice, an individual’s biology and genetic
makeup, pre- and perinatal events, and environmental exposures.

PRINCIPLE 3
New learning is influenced by prior experiences. The efficiency of the brain economizes effort and energy
by ensuring that external stimuli are first decoded and compared, both passively and actively, with existing
memories.

PRINCIPLE 4
The brain changes constantly with experience. The brain is a complex, dynamic, and integrated system
that is constantly changed by individual experiences. These changes occur at a molecular level, whether
simultaneously, in parallel, or even before they are visible in behavior.

PRINCIPLE 5 The brain is plastic. Neuroplasticity exists throughout the life span, though there are notable developmental
differences by age.

PRINCIPLE 6

There is no new learning without some form of memory and some form of attention. Most school
learning requires well-functioning working, short-, and long-term memory systems and conscious attention.
However, procedural learning, habituation, sensitization, and even episodic memory can occur without conscious
attention.

Source: Tokuhama-Espinosa, T. (2018). Neuromyths: Debunking False Ideas about the Brain. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

V100 N4 kappanonline.org 29

If we want teachers
to understand how
students actually learn,
we’re going to have to
start by clearing away
these mistaken beliefs.

why it tends to be effective. And that puts them in a better
position to figure out what’s working and what’s not in
their own classroom. If you understand how important
motivation is to learning, say, then you’ll be more aware of
the need to assess students’ motivation, or to figure out why
one kid doesn’t seem to be motivated by something that’s
working for everybody else in the class. Or, for example, if
you understand that the human brain interprets a speaker’s
facial expressions and tone of voice much faster than the
words they’re saying, then you’ll be more careful about your
own classroom demeanor.

I think this is the best way to empower teachers. If
they know the science, then that allows them to be better
researchers in the classroom. And, you know, teachers
do more experiments in a day than a neuroscientist

FIGURE 2.

Tenets in mind, brain, and education science (2017)

TENET 1 Motivation influences learning.

TENET 2 Emotions and cognition are mutually influential.

TENET 3 Stress influences learning.

TENET 4 Anxiety influences learning.

TENET 5 Depression influences learning.

TENET 6 Learning is influenced by both challenge and threat as perceived by the learner.

TENET 7 Reactions to facial expressions are both universal and highly individualized.

TENET 8 The brain interprets tones of voices unconsciously and almost immediately.

TENET 9 Humans are social beings who learn from and with each other.

TENET 10 Attention is a complex phenomenon comprising multiple systems.

TENET 11 Most learning does not occur linearly.

TENET 12 Learning involves conscious and unconscious processes.

TENET 13 Learning is developmental (nature and nurture) as well as experiential (nurture).

TENET 14 Learning engages the entire physiology.

TENET 15 Sleep and dreaming influence learning in different ways.

TENET 16 Nutrition influences learning.

TENET 17 Physical activity influences learning.

TENET 18 Use it or lose it: Brains that remain active cognitively help development and can also stave off cognitive decline.

TENET 19 Feedback about learning progress influences learning outcomes.

TENET 20 It is easier to retrieve memories when facts and skills have been embedded in individually relevant and meaningful contexts.

TENET 21 Brains detect novelty and pattern.

Adapted from: Tokuhama-Espinosa, T. (2018). Neuromyths: Debunking False Ideas about the Brain. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

30 Kappan December 2018/January 2019

style — you’re a “visual thinker,” say — and all of a sud-
den I come along with all of this evidence showing that
there’s no such thing as learning styles, you’ll probably
resist that evidence. You’ve always thought of yourself
as a visual thinker. It’s your identity. So no matter how
persuasive the science may be, you’ll struggle to accept
it. It’s much, much harder to unlearn and relearn than to
teach you something totally new. So it’s absolutely criti-
cal for novice teachers to start out by getting rid of mis-
taken preconceptions about how kids learn. Otherwise,
they won’t be receptive to what the science actually says
about learning.

Second, the panel agreed that at the beginning of their
careers, teachers ought to learn what the science has to
say about planning for instruction. For example, there’s
strong evidence that students remember information
better if it is presented at spaced intervals — it’s more
effective to study something for an hour each day for five
days than to study for a single five-hour block of time. So,
new teachers ought to learn some basics about memory
and attention, so they can understand why this kind of
scheduling makes sense.

In all, we’ve identified more than 220 specific research
findings and skills that teachers might be expected to
learn over time, in order to become truly expert in the
profession. And we laid them out in a hierarchy of skill
sets, which could serve as a road map for professional ad-
vancement. So as a beginning teacher, I should know about
these neuromyths and understand why some of my pre-
conceptions about learning are wrong. I should also know
the basic principles of how brains work (as agreed upon
by leading scientists from a range of disciplines). And I
should know certain things about effective ways to orga-
nize classrooms, plan lessons, and use technology. Then, a
few years into my career, I might be expected to know the
science a little more deeply — for example, to know the de-
tails of how stress and depression and poor nutrition can
influence student learning. And over the years, my knowl-
edge about the science of learning will deepen to the point
where I meet specific standards that we ought to expect of
a master teacher.

The idea is to try to create a clearer path for professional
development over a 30-year career, where your status
depends not just on years served, and not just on demon-
strated skill in the classroom, but also on your concrete
understanding of the scientific evidence about teaching
and learning. To create a profession, you need to be able
to show that you’re grounded in a valid, reliable body of
knowledge. And given the gains that neuroscience has
made in recent decades, it is ready to provide that sort of
professional anchor. K

does in a lifetime. They may not document it or present
it at conferences, but they are always experimenting,
constantly asking themselves, What do I plan to do?
What did I actually do? Did it work? Why or why not?
And the science gives them the background knowledge
they need to make those judgments.

KAPPAN: It sounds like you’re saying that an under-
standing of neuroscience will help strengthen teacher
professionalism.

TOKUHAMA-ESPINOSA: Absolutely. And that’s what
we hoped to find on the Delphi panel: The goal was, in
part, to review the science and identify the strongest
research findings from the learning sciences, but the
real find was the usable knowledge — how to redesign
teacher preparation and development to give teachers a
really solid grounding in the science, beginning with the
basics and then becoming more sophisticated over the
course of one’s career.

We agreed, first off, that when working with novice
teachers, the most important thing is to clear away all of
these mistaken beliefs about the brain and how people
learn. And by the way, that’s really hard to do. There’s
a whole sub-field called “cognitive ontology,” which
studies the ways people come to see and think about
the world, and what it takes to change one’s mind. It
turns out that even if people are confronted with strong
evidence that their ideas are wrong, they tend to hold
onto those ideas very tightly. For instance, if you grew
up being told by your teachers that you have a learning

I think this is the
best way to empower
teachers. If they know
the science, then that
allows them to be
better researchers in
the classroom.