Brain-to-brain synchrony in STEM learning

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The STEM classroom is a highly dynamic social environment where students and teachers interact face-to-face in real time. These interactions are fundamental to the learning process. Yet our understanding of the brain basis of social interactions in the classroom is very limited. This project will use novel portable electroencephalogram (EEG) technology to record brain activity from a teacher and a group of students in a high school science classroom. The goal is to investigate whether similarities and differences in brain activity between teachers and students predict STEM engagement and learning outcomes. The proposed research will contribute to educational practice in a number of ways. For example, the extent to which brainwaves exhibit similar patterns across students can be used as an online, implicit measure of student engagement with STEM content. As such, brainwave synchrony can prove useful in the future as an objective measure of the effectiveness of teaching practices, providing insight into the learning process in real time. In addition, as part of the proposed research, an EEG-based neuroscience curriculum for high schools will be developed and tested. The project is funded by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances the fundamental research literature on STEM learning. This project pursues a novel and potentially transformative approach to studying classroom interactions using cutting-edge portable electroencephalogram (EEG) technology. The project extends previous NSF-funded work that enabled the development of the experimental setup and analytical tools required to simultaneously record brain activity from a teacher and a group of students. The project will advance our understanding of naturalistic classroom interaction by: (a) using state-of-the-art wireless EEG headsets that are expected to provide much more accurate and richer neurophysiological data than the low-grade portable EEG headsets from prior research; (b) recording brain activity not only from students, but also from teachers; (c) collecting data from a sample of students and teachers in different schools and school types; (d) investigating the relationship between brain-to-brain synchrony across students and teachers, learning outcomes, and objective measures of attention; and (e) exploring brain-to-brain synchrony in the context of an unresolved issue in the STEM learning literature, the effectiveness of virtual laboratory environments. This project will take neuroscience research outside of the laboratory and into the classroom, taking an important step in integrating neuroscience research and education practices. By validating novel neuroscience methods and analytic approaches, this research will pave the way for future cognitive neuroscience research on educational practices. Further, the results of this study will illuminate classroom interactions from a novel perspective and provide teachers with a deeper understanding of the relationship between student engagement and learning outcomes.