Where Is Educational Neuroscience?

Abstract

Educational neuroscience is a relatively new field. Where is it in relation to other research domains, such as education research, the psychology of learning, and the neuroscience of learning? Document co-citation analysis reveals that these research fields are tenuously connected. Currently, educational neuroscience sits between subfields of neuroscientific and psychological research but remains distant from issues and topics that are prominent in the education research literature. Part of the problem is that the educational neuroscience literature is a meta-scientific literature, more about the promise and pitfalls of applying neuroscience to education than it is about applications of neuroscience to education. The psychology literature retains a fundamental role in linking educational neuroscience, education research, and neuroscience into an integrated learning research enterprise.