My Science of Learning Manifesto

Science of Learning (SoL) and Language Teaching: Friends or Foes? In light of Alastair Grant's recent video criticizing the emphasis on SoL in ELT, I decided to write this reflection

Ask me how the Science of Learning - or if you prefer, Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) Science - can help teachers around the world, and you’ll probably get the following answer - with unintentional and occasional relapses:

Well, in many ways, but there are no fixed formulas when it comes to learning and teaching.

Despite abiding by those words, there are valid and not-so-valid ideas to summarize what should be considered when planning and delivering a lesson.

But now my mea culpa

About 12 years ago, I became a little obsessed with finding some sort of “magic” formula of what a successful lesson plan should look like. That’s one of the reasons why I got into neuroscience and cognitive psychology in the first place. I was trying to find answers to how our brains learn and what we should be doing as teachers to make learning more effective. But do you know that feeling you have deep down that the answer is going to disappoint you?

Then it happened. It was January 2019, and my professor, Paul Howard-Jones, a reference in Educational Neuroscience, was teaching us a lesson at the School of Education inside one of the many University of Bristol buildings spread across the city. Halfway through the lesson, he said that we were not going to learn this “magic” formula that I had been seeking. He said that maybe, to be quite fair, all neuroscience could do was confirm what we’d been doing all along and give us new insights.

I sort of knew it. I think I had always known it deep down. After all, teachers have been teaching for millennia, and students have been learning - at least something, anyway. As John Hattie puts it:

Nearly everything we do has some positive impact on students

John Hattie in Visible Learning

You might not agree with everything Hattie says or his contributions (believe me, there are reasons), however, I think this quote represents well one of the main ideas of Mind, Brain, and Education (I’ll be using MBE and SoL interchangeably):

Learning is what the brain does

Be it from a positive or a negative experience, in the classroom or away from it, the brain learns. Whatever we do - or don’t do - will have some kind of impact on our students. This realization confirmed a long-held suspicion of mine and allowed me to focus on the things that could have a more positive impact on our students but we are not doing as much as we could in the classroom.

That’s where the Science of Learning (SoL) can support us. Not by prescribing or tying our hands, but by shedding light and helping us understand important principles.

Yet not everyone agrees. Recently, after the IATEFL conference in Edinburgh, Alastair Grant, a teacher and teacher trainer, raised a series of critical questions about how SoL is gaining space in English Language Teaching (ELT). Alastair’s concerns were raised in a video he posted on LinkedIn. His reaction came in response to, I believe, Dr. Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel’s plenary. I thought her plenary was excellent and that it certainly belonged on the main stage of an ELT conference - but I might be biased.

For Alastair, the use of the word “science” gives whatever learning scientists say a stamp of authority and a status of something unquestionable. He mentioned that teachers should be wary of science’s ability - or inability really - to connect with the lived reality of the classroom. It should not be placed on a pedestal over teacher experience. He has done an interview with Graham Stanley on the Teachers Talk Radio Podcast and released a statement summarizing and confirming his views.

I must say here that I absolutely have nothing personal against Alastair and consider him a professional we should learn from. I’m using him here as example because I think it perfectly illustrates what many other English teachers think. Some of his points I consider quite valid. But this post is about why I believe Alastair’s views are more problematic than anything else.

An analogy to help

I like to use analogies to illustrate my points. So let’s think of something as simple as a chef and a carbonara recipe. We can all agree that some steps are universal - boiling the water, adding salt, and cooking the pasta. But then comes the sauce or topping. And that’s where creativity, culture, context, and sometimes chaos enter. A traditional carbonara calls for guanciale, pecorino, eggs, and black pepper. But if you're based in Goiânia, Brazil - like me - you might have to settle for bacon and parmesan. You adapt according to your conditions.

Here’s the important question, though: despite being - potentially - unaware of these processes, isn’t this chef doing certain things based on how the world/nature/the universe works?

1. Water boils at 100ºC at sea level

2. Fresh pasta cooks faster than dried pasta because of its humidity content

3. Guanciale releases fat as it cooks

4. Teflon makes non-stick pans

I know, I know… Comparing teaching to preparing a delicious dish of carbonara seems to be a stretch. Very different levels of complexity. What if we used cooking in general instead? Can science improve chefs’ cooking abilities? Go back to the list above and think. Take fact 1 for instance. The water will take less time to boil if this chef is cooking in the Alps because of the altitude. What about fact 4? Maybe the chef prefers to use a stainless steel pan and deglaze it with some pasta water to add those crunchier bits that stick to the bottom and more flavor. Knowing how things work empowers this chef to make decisions about how to make a very tasty dish.

That being said, I have to share something I wrote in a different blog post for you to think. This part actually reflects a lot of what Alastair seems to believe in:

Saying "this method is based on neuroscience" can be like saying that "cooking is based on chemistry...or physics". Reflect on this question: If someone opened a restaurant in your neighborhood and claimed their cooking was "based on chemistry or physics" would that mean that they can cook better than experienced chefs? Evidence-based cooking? Obviously, cooking involves a great deal of chemistry (mixing ingredients and their chemical reactions) and physics (cooking techniques, heat, pressure). But does knowing specific reactions and the physical properties of certain things always translate into better cooking? What about learning and neuroscience? What does the research say? Studies have shown that irrelevant neuroscience – such as the names of brain structures and processes – can effectively fool non-experts into rating explanations as more reliable and evidence-based. This is how our brains operate since we are all subject to cognitive biases and the appeal of authorities – even if they just look like authorities in the subject

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What about learning and teaching?

Now, imagine lesson planning and delivery. Maybe neuroscience cannot be translated into practical advice for teachers as much as we’d like to think. But SoL (and MBE) are not just neuroscience. So there must be some sort of principles about how people learn best that align in different areas. Indeed, there are. And if chemistry and physics can explain some fundamental concepts of cooking, what areas can do the same for learning? Neuroscience, psychology, and education… evidently. I mean, how could it be any different? The Science of Learning is the interdisciplinary field that looks at the contributions of these scientific areas. It does so because they study how we learn from different perspectives (from inside our brains, as individuals looking at our behaviors, and in groups).

There are concepts about learning based on robust evidence and decades of research. You can understand them better if you read Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa’s book Making Classrooms Better: 50 Practical Applications of Mind, Brain, and Education Science:

• Principles – universal features of all brains

• Tenets – individual variation

• Instructional Guidelines – classroom-relevant insights

To give you a concrete example, we can say that every brain needs attention, a cognitive process that allows us to focus on the stimuli occurring around us. Without it, we cannot learn what a word means for example because we cannot form semantic memory if there’s no attention.

But the catch is: different people pay attention to different things at different times.

Students are complex as they have different likes, dislikes, and interests. That means teachers need to consider both universal principles and individual differences to plan and deliver their lessons. Hardly anything revolutionary, right? But what does SoL say about what usually grabs people’s attention? Two examples are the anticipation of a reward or perceived reward - read Anna Lembke’s, and Daniel Lieberman and Mike Long’s books about dopamine - and error. Or as Jared Horvath, a neuroscientist and educator, puts it:

Any time there is conflict between a prediction and reality, a small blip called an error positivity is generated within the anterior cingulate cortex […]. Once an error alarm is triggered, […] the ventral attention network activates, […] second, the body and brain slow down […] these processes force our attention towards the error and free up resources so that we can analyze the conflict and update our mental model accordingly

Stop Talking, Start Influencing: 12 Insights From Brain Science to Make Your Message Stick (2019, p. 149)

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There are many studies to support this notion. But there are even more studies about the impacts of too much information, working memory, and attention. As Nidhi Sachdeva, a cognitive scientist, explains in a recent interview below:

Nidhi: People like George Miller back in 1950s, an American psychologist, people like Baddeley, folks like John Sweller have done tremendous amount of research, not for one or two years, but this is their entire career. And they're retired, but not retired.

André: It's not just one study. It's decades of research, yeah.

Nidhi: And what they told us is that working memory is really limited in time and in capacity, meaning how long something can stay in the working memory and for how many chunks. And so it's very limited and it's debatable, but people usually say anywhere from four to seven chunks. Right. That's why when I said, kid, you alphabetize days of the week for me, most people can do it with a little bit of thinking. Or if I gave you a telephone number to memorize, which has strings of, let's say, I don't know, four, two, seven, eight, nine, six. So you could do that, right? Ten up to ten, relatively easy.

But if I did five of those telephone numbers, you'll be like, wait a second. That's your working memory screaming back at you. I'm not going to be able to do it. That's how our learner feels when we're teaching them too much and just dump, dump, dump, dump, dump on them. What happens is teaching happened, but learning didn't.

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What’s the problem with Alastair’s views?

1. Science is not up for debate

Perhaps the most central concern raised by Grant is the most problematic one, even though I tend to agree with it in some regards. Calling it a “science” gives it a stamp of authority and finality, and that means that it is not up for debate. Science does make mistakes. No doubt here. But here’s the thing: the Science of Learning, much like any science, is not a list of commandments or unquestionable absolute truths. It follows the scientific method of inquiry and skepticism. If new evidence emerges, scientists are usually keen to review their research - ok, to be fair, not all of them, after all, there are unethical scientists too. But as Paul Howard-Jones says in an upcoming episode of the Learning Cosmos Podcast:

One of the most important things about science, which is also a little bit of a weakness for it in terms of gaining traction in the press sometimes, but it is scepticism. It's sceptical. So scientists are very unwilling to say “I am absolutely 100% sure about this”. They will probably give you some sort of statistical threshold of certainty about something, but they're always trying to keep their minds open. They're always trying to be critical of their own research. And I think that that scepticism which is built into scientific thinking, is a really good reason for people to listen to science and trust scientists. But as I say, I think on and so in a way, it sometimes counts against the credibility, almost, of scientists in the public eye that we don't speak like that. We talk about things in a much more measured, balanced way.

Paul Howard-Jones

The reason it's called “science” is that it seeks to understand learning using systematic observation, experimentation, and analysis from relevant fields dealing with the brain, the mind, the body, the individual, and the social group. There’s no plot or global conspiracy dictating which sciences should have a say in this. It’s called a science because it’s not a dogma or philosophy. It’s called a science because it’s not solely based on personal experience and that’s what makes it so valuable. Sure, we can start a discussion about what knowledge is available, how it is acquired and categorized. We can even debate whether reality is objective and measurable or if there are other things at play when we attempt to understand phenomena in this universe. We’ll leave that epistemological debate and different views on materialism for another post. For now, let’s all assume that the brain is the organ of learning and that learning creates organic changes in the brain - and this claim does not disregard the brain-mind-body connection at all.

Yes, “evidence-based” can sound somewhat hermetically closed. But many have been using the term “evidence-informed” precisely to allow room for professional judgment, local context, and teacher wisdom. Good and ethical scientists have always known this. As I joke when I deliver workshops to teachers:

If a neuroscientist tells you to do this or that because they understand how the brain learns, you might want to ask first if they have ever stepped into a 5th-grade classroom

Science shows how learning and teaching are complex endeavors that cannot be reduced to a few “evidence-based steps”. There’s so much more going on in a classroom at any given moment.

2. Too much focus on (individual) cognition

Alastair said that SoL focuses on cognitive processes ignoring the social side of learning. This might sound like a valid critique, but books like António Damásio’s Descartes’ Error or Louis Cozolino’s The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom - and many others - suggest scientists have been talking about the impact of emotions on cognition and, consequently, learning. A highly recommended paper on this topic comes from Damásio & Immordino-Yang: We feel, therefore we learn.

Contrary to what Alastair thinks, SoL often overlaps with Vygotsky more than it contradicts him. The Zone of Proximal Development? Scaffolding? These concepts align beautifully with what SoL tells us about prior knowledge, social pain, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and the role of feedback. In fact, when we talk about the brain’s plasticity, we're also talking about how the social environment shapes neural development. It’s nature AND nurture.

3. Someone is profiting from this and it’s silencing teachers’ voice

Someone is profiting from this for sure. Some are profiting because there’s a lot of value in the insights gained from SoL research and they’re helping promote this science. That’s not bad. But I understand Alastair’s concerns. As a matter of fact, I think many people - who absolutely shouldn’t - do benefit financially from using neurojargon and psychobabble to sell courses, mentoring programs, and even educational products. As I mentioned before, there are unethical - and even deluded - individuals in all areas. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Here’s an important question, though. People who oppose big pharma, for example, and defend age-old traditions - dating back millennia - and holistic/alternative treatments often use this excuse to accuse the whole industry of extorsion and manipulation. But then they come offering their crystals, homeopathy, and quantum healing. The wellness industry is certainly not as profitable as big pharma, but it is extremely profitable - and potentially much more dangerous.

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There are many powerful interests behind SoL - or any funded research in any area - as there is a hidden agenda behind ELT too. As Geoff Jordan wrote on LinkedIn (I hope he doesn’t mind I copied it here. I couldn’t have said it better myself):

The power that runs IATEFL is the commercial power of publishers, examination boards, educational institutions and teacher educators who between them run a $200 billion a year industry whose aim is to maximise profits. Look no further than the Exhibition Hall. The products on sale are courseboooks (e.g., Englsh File), exams (e.g., IELTS) English course providers (e.g. British Council) and teacher education (e.g., CELTA). All these products reflect an approach to ELT which ignores any scientific findings of SLA research which challenge the coursebook-driven approach to ELT and its reliance on high-stakes exams and the CEFR scale of proficiency.

I agree with Geoff when he mentions Second Language Acquisition research. Language learning bears many differences from, say, learning geography or biology. But attention, memory, emotions, motivation and other processes are involved in any classroom setting and that’s when SoL can help. That’s precisely why instead of silencing teachers’ voice, I believe SoL is empowering teachers with the knowledge that can encourage them rethink what they do in the classroom.

The powerful alliance between science and arts

Here’s where I stand. Science can’t tell a chef how to cook their signature dish - not really. What it can do is help that chef understand the chemistry of emulsions, the Maillard reaction, or even how to create flavor using plant-based alternatives instead of meat - there’s a whole industry now that might one day benefit the planet. Science can even help chefs get rid of wasteful and ineffective techniques such as adding sugar to a tomato sauce to “break its acidity”. It acts on the taste, not the adicic level. Science won’t make the dish for chefs, but it can make the process more efficient, more sustainable, and - dare I say? - even more inclusive.

That’s what I believe the Science of Learning can do for us teachers. It won’t tell a teacher exactly how to teach. It can’t - and shouldn’t - replace empathy or experience that live in every classroom. It cannot replace the human factor so to speak. But it can certainly help us understand the mechanisms behind memory, attention, motivation, and emotions. It can help us rethink strategies. It allows us to offer more equitable alternatives and question why this or that student might not be learning what we’re trying to teach them. I believe it opens new doors for learners who’ve been historically left out.

I want to offer another analogy. Think of The Last Supper. Not the famous one by Leonardo da Vinci, but the one painted by Ugolino di Nerio around two centuries earlier. I like Ugolino’s version. It is beautiful and certainly expressive, but if you pay close attention, you’ll notice that the perspective is off. The disciples have oversized heads and the ones closer to us have small bodies. The scene feels a little awkward. Now compare it to da Vinci’s masterpiece. Why is the Italian polymath still remembered and celebrated today? Because da Vinci studied mathematics, proportion, and perspective. In fact, he dissected corpses in the morgues of Florence to better understand the human body. We can all agree that his knowledge of anatomy allowed him to draw and paint with breathtaking realism. I think of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man as a powerful symbol of the fusion between art and science.

I know I’m biased. I said that at the start. But so is Alastair. So are you. So is everyone else. One of the purposes of science is to look above and beyond our individual biases and through observation, experimentation, transparent publication, peer-revision, and replication - for many years - reach a more refined, yet temporary, consensus about how things work in the natural world, in our bodies, and in society. Science invites skepticisms, but it also has rigorous protocols that make it one of the best tools we have to make progress and break ground.

It’s not the SoL’s objective to render teachers obsolete. We shouldn’t look at it as a threat. We need to see it as an ally and remember that one of the biggest problems we face as a society today is science denialism.

ELT professional, give SoL a chance.