Quite a lot - according to teachers in a recent survey commissioned by The Innovation Unit and carried out by researchers at the University of Bristol.

Although current teacher training programmes generally omit the science of how we learn, an overwhelming number of the teachers surveyed felt neuroscience could make an important contribution in key educational areas. The research was undertaken to inform a series of seminars between educationalists and neuroscientists organised by the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Dr Sue Pickering and Dr Paul Howard-Jones, at Bristol University’s Graduate School of Education, asked teachers and other education professionals whether they thought it was important to consider the workings of the brain in educational practice. Around 87 per cent of respondents felt it was. Teachers considered both mainstream and special educational teaching could benefit from the neuroscientific insights emerging from modern scanning techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)…

Dr Paul Howard-Jones, who is leading several research initiatives in this area and co-author of the report, said: “Much of what teachers perceive as brain-based teaching, such as educational kinesiology, is promoted in very dubious pseudo-scientific terms and we still don’t really know how, and even if, it works.

“Other programmes, such as those involving learning styles, draw on some meaningful science but, when children get labelled as “a visual learner” or “an auditory learner” and are only ever taught in either a visual or auditory way, then the science is being seriously over-interpreted and misapplied. The good news, however, is that efforts to bridge the gap between neuroscience and education are debunking many of these ideas, and opening up fresh opportunities for valuable and exciting initiatives that are both scientifically and educationally sound.” …

Source: News-Medical.net, Australia
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=31858