Educational Neuroscience Training for Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Construction

The attention to the laws of the brain and the mechanism of learning in the smart education era becomes the starting point for the convergence and development of education and neuroscience, which also inspired educational neuroscience (EN) affecting the teacher’s development. Although teachers always have a general curiosity about EN and its applications, the limited knowledge hinders their general practice, neuromyths begin to emerge, and there is no evidence to directly show the connection between EN and teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) knowledge. Based on an EN teacher training program for 216 teachers, this study verifies that EN training programs can promote teachers’ understanding of EN-related knowledge, and EN is also correlated to teachers’ TPACK. However, the EN training program does not promote high well-being and satisfaction. The research also analyzes the process of teachers’ EN knowledge dissemination based on interviews, and the research conclusion can further reveal the necessity of EN training for teachers in the future.

Student’s Perspective and Teachers’ Metacognition: Applications of Eye-Tracking in Education and Scientific Research in Schools

This Perspective article discusses the possible contributions of eye-tracking (ET) to the field of Educational Neuroscience based on an application of this tool at schools. We sought to explore the teachers’ view of ET videos recorded while students solved mathematical problems. More than 90% of the teachers could predict with great accuracy whether the students had answered the questions correctly or not based solely on the information provided by the ET videos. Almost all participants tried to translate the students’ thoughts to understand the strategy used by the children. Our results highlight the relevance of qualitative analysis to identify the gaze strategies used by students. We propose that ET allows teachers to gain critical feedback about students’ behavior during problem-solving. Most previous studies tend to emphasize the benefits of ET applications to explore learners’ cognition. Our findings point that this system can also be useful to investigate teachers’ cognition by providing metacognitive experiences.