Curriculum and the social brain

RSA Education Seminars
February – March 2010

"Can insights from other disciplines help us create a broad and balanced curriculum?"

26 February: The social brain and the curriculum

The curriculum we have was formed under what might be termed an individualistic paradigm of human psychology and behaviour. Its dominant ideas of knowledge acquisition and intellectual development are based on notions of rational thought and individual discipline and learning.

In recent years this paradigm has been challenged. The idea of the self as an isolated individual whose behaviour and decisions are motivated solely by rational self-interest has come under increasing pressure. Insights drawn from a range of disciplines - such as behavioural economics, neuroscience and psychology - strongly suggest that the brain is essentially social, having evolved to function within group settings. Moreover, it seems altruism and empathy have a basis in the evolved functions of the brain. And strikingly, much of our ‘thinking’ and decision-making seems to happen ‘unconsciously’ - outside the parts of the brain usually associated with conscious reasoning. Finally, our emotions, far from being irrational, seem to play a central role in ‘rational’ thought.

How could this different, fundamentally social understanding of the brain, change the way we think about the curriculum? How should we organise knowledge and what might be the pedagogical and assessment implications? How might we reconcile new ways of thinking about knowledge as socially constructed and collaboratively learned with ideas of a national entitlement and individual rights for every child?

Accepting that these discourses are still somewhat nascent this seminar brings leading brain and behaviour experts into dialogue with those experienced at thinking about the curriculum.

Chair: Matthew Taylor, RSA Chief Executive
Professor Chris Frith, Professor in Neuropsychology at the Wellcome Trust Centre for NeuroImaging at University College London
Dr Ben Seymour, Senior Research Fellow, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging
Lewis Goodings, PhD Research Student in the Dept. of Human Sciences, Loughborough University
Professor Neil Mercer, Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge
Dr Matt Grist, Director of the Social Brain project, the RSA

RSA Education Seminars Report by by Professor Harry Torrance and Professor Maggie MacLure

Read Dr Ben Seymour on The Social Brain and the curriculum
Read Professor Neil Mercer on What can we do to make classroom education more effective?

For more information about this seminar contact Louise Thomas.