National-Research-Council

The Brain in Science Education: What Should Everyone Learn?

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Cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis, Cen­ter for Neuroscience

What should every­one learn about the brain?

At the nation­al lev­el, the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) describes what adults should know in its sem­i­nal work Sci­ence for All Americans.[1] AAAS also rec­om­mends learn­ing goals for K‑12 stu­dents in its Bench­marks for Sci­ence Literacy[2,3], and Atlas of Sci­ence Literacy[4,5], and the Nation­al Research Coun­cil (NRC) offers a sim­i­lar set of goals in its Nation­al Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Standards.[6] States and school dis­tricts use the AAAS and NRC rec­om­men­da­tions as a basis for the design of their own stan­dards, which then inform the devel­op­ment of cur­ricu­lum and assess­ment mate­ri­als (those com­mer­cial­ly devel­oped as well as those devel­oped with grant funds). In addi­tion, the neu­ro­science com­mu­ni­ty has devel­oped its own set of core con­cepts that K‑12 stu­dents and the gen­er­al pub­lic should know about the brain and ner­vous sys­tem and has cor­re­lat­ed those con­cepts to the nation­al standards.[7]

Between the AAAS and NRC rec­om­men­da­tions, there are some areas of broad con­sen­sus on what stu­dents should know. Accord­ing to AAAS’s Bench­marks and Atlas, for exam­ple, stu­dents in the ele­men­tary to mid­dle school grades should under­stand the fol­low­ing ideas:

  • The brain enables human beings to think and sends mes­sages to oth­er body parts to help them work properly.
  • The brain gets sig­nals from all parts of the body telling it what is hap­pen­ing in each part. The brain also sends sig­nals to parts of the body to influ­ence what they do.
  • Inter­ac­tions among the sens­es, nerves, and brain make pos­si­ble the learn­ing that enables human beings to pre­dict, ana­lyze, and respond to changes in their environments.[8]

The Nation­al Research Council’s Stan­dards offers very sim­i­lar con­cepts in [Read more…] about The Brain in Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion: What Should Every­one Learn?

Preventing Mental, Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

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Stronger Effort Need­ed To Pre­vent Men­tal, Emo­tion­al, And Behav­ioral Dis­or­ders in Young peo­ple, Experts Urge (Sci­ence Daily)

- “The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should make pre­vent­ing men­tal, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral dis­or­ders and pro­mot­ing men­tal health in young peo­ple a nation­al pri­or­i­ty, says a new report from the Nation­al Research Coun­cil and Insti­tute of Medicine.”

- “Research has shown that a num­ber of pro­grams are effec­tive at pre­vent­ing these prob­lems and pro­mot­ing men­tal health, the report says. Such pro­grams could be imple­ment­ed more broad­ly, but cur­rent­ly there is no clear fed­er­al pres­ence to lead these efforts.  The White House should cre­ate an enti­ty that can coor­di­nate agency ini­tia­tives in this area, set pub­lic goals for pre­ven­tion, and pro­vide need­ed research and fund­ing to achieve them, said the com­mit­tee that wrote the report.”

- “There is a sub­stan­tial gap between what is known about pre­vent­ing men­tal, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral dis­or­ders and what is actu­al­ly being done,” said Ken­neth E. Warn­er, com­mit­tee chair and dean of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan School of Pub­lic Health.”

Full report: click Here.