Comment on "the educational relevance of research in cognitive neuroscience"

Byrnes and Fox present a sophisticated approach to the development of useful relations between cognitive neuroscience and education. Their approach, which is similar to approaches advocated by other educational psychologists, emphasizes the importance of findings in cognitive neuroscience to the building of educationally useful models of learning. In contrast to that defensible approach is a popular but simplistic approach that tries to relate the results of individual cognitive neuroscience studies directly to the improvement of teaching. The advantages of the sophisticated approach presented by Byrnes and Fox are discussed and supported for their important roles in the development of productive relations between cognitive neuroscience and education.