What does neuroscience have to say about the educational value of lectures? Not much, says pedagogist Ken Masters in a lively article just published in Medical Teacher: Nipping an education myth in the bud: Poh’s brain activity during lectures Masters lays into an emerging slice of neurononsense. The claim is that neuroscientists have shown that, during lectures, students brain activity flatlines - and is even lower than during sleep. There's a superficially-plausible graph that purports to prove this. Here's an expert - the 'class' section represents lectures:
As Masters says:
The implications of this chart are immediately apparent: in a lecture, the student’s brain is less active than at most other times, including during sleep... this is damning evidence against the lecture as a method of education. Although first published less than three years ago, this chart has already been cited on various internet sites and blogs, Twitter trends (#altc2012), ...
