Through the diligent work of laboratory researchers tirelessly applying the scientific method, we’ve managed to cure diseases, abate ozone depletion and solve the mystery of genetic coding. So, you’d think it would be pretty easy to use lab-based science to heal the ills of education … right?

Unfortunately, despite more than three decades of intense effort devoted to applying scientific insights within the classroom, little has changed. The sad truth is that, although academic research may influence how educators choose to approach or interpret certain situations, it will never directly determine teacher practice.

This is not an issue of more time, more effort, or more data - this is an issue of prescriptive translation. More specifically, in order for information born in the laboratory to drive teacher practice, it must first be adapted, amended and tested within the ever-changing context of the classroom: a process that can only ever be meaningfully undertaken by teachers.

Why am I so seemingly defeatist? Let me show you.

The problem

To understand prescriptive translation, there are two concepts we need to explore.

The first is “levels of organisation”. This is the idea that, when small entities join together, bigger, more complex entities arise.

As a simple example, imagine a cell. By combining a bunch of cells, we can build a tissue. Next, by combining a bunch of tissues, we can build an organ. This continues upwards through an organ system, an organism, a society, and so on. Each new level of organisation is composed of the material extant within the previous level.

The second concept we need to understand is “emergence”. This is the idea that, as we move up levels-of-organisation, new properties emerge that are neither present in, nor predictable by, earlier levels.

As a simple example, picture a yellow circle sitting alongside a red circle. Now, imagine you knew everything there was to know about the yellow circle: every yellow molecule, every yellow atom, every yellow particle. In this instance, with absolutely perfect knowledge only of yellow, would you have any idea that a colour called orange existed? Of course not, because orange is not in yellow.

Now flip it. Imagine you knew everything there was to know about the red circle. Would you have any idea that a colour called orange existed? As before, you wouldn’t, because orange is not in red.

So, where exactly does orange exist? Orange emerges only when we bring yellow and red together and allow them to interact. Pull the two apart and orange doesn’t split (50 per cent in yellow/50 per cent in red) - it is completely gone and can no longer be meaningfully discussed. This is emergence in action.

Let’s return to our earlier example. When we combine cells to create a tissue, a number of very important properties emerge (permeability, malleability, mineralisation). Importantly, none of these properties exist in any of the individual cells; they arise only when many cells interact.

Similarly, when we combine tissues to create an organ, a number of new functions emerge (digestion, circulation, respiration). Again, these functions are unpredictable by, and nonexistent within, any individual tissue; they arise only when many tissues interact.

Emergence is why the patterns of a colony can never be explained by the actions of a single ant; why the movement of a flock can never be explained by the actions of a single bird; why the behaviours of a classroom can never be explained by the actions of a single student.

Are you starting to see the issue?

The levels of organisation typically drawn upon to determine teaching practice are the brain (neuroscience), the person (psychology) and the classroom (education). Nothing untoward here.

Problems begin to arise when we recognise and take into account emergence. More specifically, once we combine a brain with other organs to create a person (moving from neuroscience to psychology), a number of hugely important properties emerge: properties like movement, behaviour, emotions, consciousness and cognition.

No neuroscientist worth his/her salt will ever discuss these topics because they do not exist in the brain; they arise only when many organ systems interact. As such, these properties can be meaningfully discussed only at the psychological level.

To be fair, behaviours, emotions, and cognitions most certainly have neural correlates (regions of the brain that play a role in their emergence), but this does not mean those properties exist in or are driven by those parts of the brain.

This is the same as recognising that removing the spark plugs from an engine will cause a car to stop accelerating - but this doesn’t mean acceleration exists in the spark plugs themselves. Acceleration emerges only via the interaction of many car parts and can’t be reduced to, predicted by, or explained through any single part.

Once we combine many people together to create a social environment (moving from psychology to education), again, a number of new and hugely important properties emerge: properties like communication, relationships and culture.

Thus, the reason why psychological researchers have perennially struggled to comprehensively (or even coherently) explain these phenomena is that psychology is concerned with how the individual mind works. Even social psychology attempts to describe group dynamics according to the drives and actions of individuals.

So, now you hopefully see the problem clearly: emergence is the reason why, when we attempt to move brain or psychological research into the classroom, it almost always falls flat. It’s not that the data, theories or concepts are wrong - it’s simply that strategies developed in a controlled laboratory can never account for the emergent properties that arise in a social classroom.

But this hasn’t stopped people from trying …

Lost in translation

Decades of neuroscientific research has revealed that the brain runs almost exclusively on glucose. In other words, your brain is powered by sugar.

Therefore, it stands to reason that, if we give students sugar, this will enhance brain activity and boost learning.

If this sounds absurd, then someone clearly forgot to tell one prominent university (that will go unnamed), which - on the advice of neuroscience - spent thousands ensuring its students had ready access to “brain food” in the guise of jelly beans.

This is a wonderful example of the translation problem. It’s an incontrovertible fact that the brain runs on glucose and will function more efficiently when pumped full of sugar. Unfortunately, this does not take into account properties that emerge at ascending levels of organisation.

As any parent can attest, once a child ingests sugar, it’s not only the brain that kicks into hyperdrive; it’s all behaviours and cognitions. Attention becomes scattered, movements become dyskinetic, emotions become volatile. Unfortunately, these emergent properties override any benefits and actively hinder learning.

Furthermore, as any teacher can attest, once a dozen kids ingest sugar simultaneously, social interactions become disorderly, communication becomes disjointed and social norms disappear. Once again, emergent properties, unpredictable by simply studying the brain, counteract any benefits of sugar and kill learning.

Let’s move to a possibly more relevant example: mnemonics. For over a century, these memory-boosting techniques (acronyms, acrostics, the method of loci, and so on) have been shown to enhance recall among individuals within the laboratory. Therefore, it stands to reason that these techniques should be a mainstay within education.

Unfortunately, countless surveys have shown mnemonics are rarely used within the classroom and, when they are, they have little to no impact on learning. Why might this be? Emergent properties, of course.

First, mnemonics take a long time to learn and perfect. Time is one thing classes don’t have an excess of - and, when free time does arise, there are typically far more important things for teachers to focus on than memorisation techniques.

Second, mnemonics appear to be effective only with simple facts or word lists, which classes are rarely focused on. More often, teachers focus on prose, concepts, abstractions - material not conducive to mnemonics.

Third, mnemonics boost individual short-term memory. Most teachers aren’t interested in immediate solo recall but rather long-term retention and collaborative interrogation.

Again, this does not mean mnemonics are bad or that the laboratory research conducted to elucidate them is wrong. It simply means that this research does not (and could not) take into account the properties that emerge within a classroom: properties that very quickly overshadow and negate any meaningful impact mnemonics may have.

So, what do we do?

As alluded to earlier, in order for laboratory research to be meaningfully applied within the classroom, it must first be prescriptively translated. This means concepts born in one level of organisation must be redefined, adapted and tested within each subsequent level. This stepwise movement up the levels of the organisation ladder is the only way to account for new properties that emerge.

Importantly, this process of prescriptive translation can (and should) be undertaken only by the experts within each relevant level.

For instance, if a brain researcher hopes to utilise concepts born from biophysics within her laboratory, it’s her job to draw on her expertise and redefine those concepts into brain language, identify relevant brain correlations and test the boundaries within her field. Where do those concepts make sense, and where do they become eclipsed by emergent properties that biophysicists could never have predicted?

Similarly, when psychologists want to use neuroscience to drive their practice, it’s their job to redefine, adapt and test the boundaries of each relevant concept. Again, psychologists are the only ones qualified to undertake this prescriptive translation because they are the only ones who truly understand and can account for the emergent properties within their field.

This means, in order for laboratory research to drive educational practice, it must first be prescriptively translated by experts within the field of education.

But just who are these experts? I’ll give you a hint: they don’t work in academia …

Painters don’t ask optometrists how to create portraits; lawyers don’t ask lawmakers how to try cases; surgeons don’t ask biochemists how to remove tumours. Why, then, do educators ask researchers how to teach?

Believe it or not, nobody in the world understands what teachers do, the decisions they make, the context they do this in or the goals they are trying to achieve - nobody, that is, except teachers themselves.

Only teachers understand and can account for the properties that emerge within the classroom, which, by its very definition, means teachers are the experts within the educational level of organisation.

To be fair, many people think they know what teachers do - presumably driven by the fact they’ve gone to school. But simply being in a classroom gives you no more insight into the craft of teaching than flossing gives insight into the craft of dentistry.

As such, in order for laboratory research to drive educational practice, prescriptive translation must be undertaken by the only people qualified to do it: teachers. Statisticians can’t do it (sorry, Hattie), psychologists can’t do it (sorry, Bruer) and neuroscientists can’t do it (sorry, Horvath).

Don’t get me wrong: none of this is to say that brain or behavioural research is useless. On the contrary, this work can (and does) supply teachers with incredible concepts to draw on for inspiration and ideas. However, the ultimate determination of what these concepts mean for teaching practice can be derived and determined only by the practitioners of that craft.

Recently, neuroscientists discovered that the brain processes the “silent reading voice” in exactly the same fashion as it does an out-loud speaking voice. Accordingly, just as the brain can’t process two people speaking simultaneously (just try following two students as they jockey to explain who pushed whom in the playground), neither can it process the internal reading voice and an external speaking voice simultaneously.

From this, a wonderful theory is born: if reading and speech conflict in the brain, then we should only ask students to read words that are identical to those being spoken - that way we get no interference. Get this into the classroom, stat!

Not so fast. In order to account for emergent properties, we must first step this theory into the psychology level to tests its limitations.

Here, we learn that even when the words being read are identical to those being spoken, people still cannot process both simultaneously (the issue is one of timing; people tend to read much faster than others speak, meaning text and speech quickly fall out of sync).

Now we’re ready for the classroom, right? Not yet. If you think about it, simply knowing that identical text and speech clash does not offer any concrete tips on how to teach. That’s why, at this point, experts in education (teachers) must redefine, adapt and test this theory in their specific context.

For instance, when teachers first hear about the text/speech concept, they often think of eliminating words from PowerPoint slides during direct instruction. This is a wonderful theory - but notice it’s not inherent in the original text/speech research itself; rather, it arises only when teachers prescriptively translate into their unique field.

More importantly, the only way to know how this PowerPoint theory works is for teachers to test it in their classroom context: something neuros and psychs could never do.

Luckily, a number of teachers have tested this theory and, indeed, removing words from PowerPoint slides can enhance learning and participation during group discussions - unfortunately, it can also decrease student confidence, as they may fear they’ve missed key information. These findings and resultant strategies could have been discerned amid the emergent properties of a classroom via teacher craft, knowledge and expertise.

Next steps

I hope you better understand why laboratory research rarely (if ever) directly impacts on teaching practice. The issue is not irrelevance; it’s contextualisation.

Once we jump up levels of organisation, new properties emerge that are simply unpredictable and unexplainable by data generated in previous levels. In order to make laboratory concepts practically useful, teachers must prescriptively translate into and test within the classroom context.

Which leaves us with one final issue: evidence-based practice.

Whenever I hear this silly phrase, I always ask: whose evidence do you want?

Through our discussion, I hope you’ve come to recognise that evidence is not a singular thing; rather, it is a concept that changes and is redefined across different fields. Evidence to a lawyer (precedence) is very different from evidence to an anthropologist (stories and myths), is very different from evidence to a neuroscientist (blood flow), is very different from evidence to a psychologist (surveys).

Importantly, none of this evidence is wrong - it’s simply meaningful only when working within the confines and emergent properties of each unique field.

This means that evidence-based practice within education cannot be defined by practitioners working, or data generated, outside of education. It must be defined by teachers, with teachers, for teachers via prescriptive translation.

In the end, I can’t predict how teachers will ultimately choose to define evidence - it might be quantitative, qualitative, based on student feedback, expert judgement, or any combination thereof. But I do know they are the only ones qualified to make that decision.

Dr Jared Cooney Horvath is a neuroscientist, educator and author, and is director of the Science of Learning Group. He is an honorary research fellow at St Vincent’s Hospital (an arm of the University of Melbourne’s Medical School) and the Melbourne Graduate School of Education

Jared’s new book, Stop Talking, Start Influencing: 12 insights from brain science to make your message stick, explores fundamental principles of how people learn and considers ways teachers can adapt this knowledge for their context. Read the Tes review at bit.ly/Tes_Horvath

This article originally appeared in the 14 June 2019 issue under the headline “Emergent complexity…or why lab-based education research tells only half the story”