The ‘right’ level

So, I know I’ve talked about this before (not least, here), but it seems to continue to persist. What I’m talking about is the continuing interest in neuroscience for L&D. And, as has been said by others, it’s the wrong level of analysis. What, then, is the ‘right’ level? Here’re my thoughts, and I welcome yours.

This is not to say neuroscience isn’t valuable. It objectively is. We gain insights that bolster some views, and nuance others. That’s important, for sure. We find out about mirror neurons, important for social learning. And, for instance, we can find that dopamine ramps up more for preferred motivators, and orients us in those directions. That’s interesting. It also suggests that we should make sure we’re involving people’s motivation for learning.

However, my point is that we know this already. Cognitive science tells us this. So, for instance, at the neural level, learning is about reinforcing patterns, strengthening connections between neurons at an aggregate level. That’s great. However, how we do that is by triggering patterns in conjunction, to strengthen them. How do we trigger patterns? With words, images, etc. Things that mean something. That’s cognitive!

There’s a level above, too, the social level. Here, we are presented with what others think. Which is useful to understand. But, for learning, we have to translate back to the cognitive level. That is, we need to think about how seeing how others interpreted the same signs, and what that means for ours. Social learning is valuable, but…while we enact it publicly, our understanding of why and how will depend on what we know.

For instance, brainstorming. Without a cognitive understanding, we won’t know how to do it right. We can learn, empirically, that we get better results when we think alone first before converging (and other aspects, like avoiding premature evaluation). Why? When we get to the cognitive analysis, we recognize that if we haven’t generated our own ideas first, others’ ideas can constrain our thinking.

Sure, I’m biased. I was steeped in the cognitive perspective. Yet, when I look at what works and why, I see the meaningful analysis coming from the cognitive level. Likewise, when I see people tout ‘neuro’ and ‘brain-based’, etc, all the results I hear are really cognitive ones. Certainly, ones that cognitive science has already shown benediction for.

So, I keep learning (another recommendation from cognitive science ;). And I have no doubt that we’ll learn things from neuroscience as that field matures. Still, for good prescriptions for learning design, cognitive is the ‘right’ level for analysis. Which means it’s the right level to study and understand. Please, ensure you do understand learning science before you design for others. That’s so you’ll create experiences that honor our learners by providing learning that works: is meaningful and effective. Which is really what we should be about. Those are my thoughts, what are yours?