Cognitive Science v Neuroscience: retrieval at the start of a lesson or not?

With the publication of a neuroscience paper on recall and memory we now have convergence between cognitive science’s research in how memory works [in education] with neuroscience’s research in how memory works. Remembering knowledge over time and how to do something, after a gap of time, are very much vogue in education right now and rightly so. However, this article is about the publication of neuroscience research and what this neuroscience paper suggests about the way some in education will approach their lesson design as a consequence (a longer write up of these ideas can be found here).

Let’s get some caveats out the way. The research in this paper is about the brain and formation of memory. It’s not about the more social concept of mind, or indeed what teachers might do with this new knowledge of the brain. I’m not…