Identifying sound pedagogical practices based on findings from neuroscience

We have identified goals of education by viewing them from the point of neuroscience; through education, we have to produce individuals who are better problem solvers and decision makers. To achieve this goal, learners will have to transform what they have learned explicitly into implicit memories and vice versa. Further, through education, we enhance learner consciousness and wisdom. A number of pedagogical practices that are useful in achieving the above goals are presented. When new contents are presented in a teaching-learning environment, high-level concepts need to be highlighted; the concepts are likely to penetrate through multiple domain areas thus helping learners to form better neural networks of knowledge. In order to reach out to multiple brain regions, we need to get the frontal lobe involved essentially and hence the pace of presentation has to be controlled appropriately; as the frontal lobe connects to many brain regions, the processing occurs relatively slowly. The important task of motivating learners can be done by presenting learners with neuroscience-based facts about learning; even difficult content can be mastered by simply paying attention elaborately; human brains have the feature of plasticity and through learning, neural networks can grow throughout the lifespan. Taking into consideration the phenomenon of binocular rivalry - human brains can concentrate only on one thing at a time fully- we should encourage learners to engage in the discussion in a teaching-learning session fully. When setting assessment, we should focus on open-ended, novel conceptual questions so that learners use their frontal lobes connecting many other regions as well.