Prof Sam Wass and Dr Gemma Goldenberg are child psychologists and researchers working at Institute for the Science of Early Years and Youth. Sam, based at the University of East London, is an affiliate member of the Centre for Educational Neuroscience.

“Take Action on Distraction” is the first book in the Bloomsbury series  ‘Putting Neuroscience into Practice” and was published on 27th February 2025. In this blog, Sam discusses the new approach that the book takes.

“For decades, research on attention and focus in educational settings has relied on experimental paradigms designed to measure a child’s ‘pure’ cognitive capacity for voluntarily attention control. These attention tasks, commonly used by educational and clinical psychologists, aim to study the developmental correlates of voluntary attention control and how voluntary attention control is instantiated in the brain.  

My first 10 years or so as a scientist were spent working almost entirely with this type of task. I spent my PhD on an MRC-funded program that used experimental tasks to train voluntary attention control in young children. After that, I moved to the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences unit at Cambridge and took part in a number of similar studies. 

Executive function training doesn’t work – why?

10 years on, we’re now pretty sure that running this type of attention training doesn’t offer general benefits. Although it might lead to performance improvements in the specific task being trained, these training effects don’t translate to real-world outcomes. This has led some researchers to question this whole approach to studying brain and behaviour. For me, this meant paying attention to those hard-to-publish findings that had been nagging me for years but were often swept under the carpet. For example, experimental measures of voluntary attention control show little association with other tasks designed to measure the same thing, or even with themselves, when the same tests were administered repeatedly to the same children.

Increasingly, this led me to question: can we abstract a ‘pure’ measure of a child’s capacity for voluntary attention control, independent of context or setting? If we can’t, this is big news – because it means that we need to completely change our whole approach to studying attention development in children. 

So, when Bloomsbury Education asked me and my colleague Gemma Goldenberg to write a book on supporting attention and focus in children, we set ourselves the aim of thinking about attention differently. So, if we weren’t going to focus on executive function tests and training, what did we talk about instead? 

Emphasising that attention control is context-specific

Instead of talking about ‘pure’ cognitive capacities, we have emphasised the context-specificity of attention.

“WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT WHY SOME SETTINGS ARE EASIER FOR CHILDREN TO CONCENTRATE IN THAN OTHERS”

We talk about how, and why, some settings are easier for children to concentrate in than others – and offer practical tips for how teachers can optimise their setting. We emphasise that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach – that a particular setting may be optimal for one child but sub-optimal for another, and that it is the fit between a child and their setting that is key. 

We also discuss how, and why, some types of content are easier for children to concentrate on than others. We discuss how familiarity, and predictability, can make it easier to concentrate on some things. Again, this is not  ‘one-size-fits-all’ – content can be more or less predictable, and consequently more or less easy to focus on, depending on the child and their learning stage. 

This different approach will, we hope, offer some easy, practical tips for teachers on how to improve attention and focus in young children and encourage people to think about how factors like the physical environment, movement and emotion play a role in attention, rather than attention being a discrete skill that happens in isolation. 

It’s definitely controversial though! So please do check it out – you’ll receive a 25% discount if you enter ‘DISTRACTION25’ when ordering through the Bloomsbury website – and, if you have any thoughts – email us – Sam and Gemma – at s.v.wass@uel.ac.uk and g.goldenberg@uel.ac.uk.”

Educational Neuroscience Collaboration and Research UK (ENCoRe UK) is pleased to announce its very first conference in London, to be held at Birkbeck University of London on 24th and 25th April 2025. This two-day event will bring together experts, researchers, and students to foster collaboration and innovation in the field of educational neuroscience.

Keynote presentations will be delivered by Prof. Usha Goswami and Prof. Paul Howard Jones, alongside short talks, poster sessions, and discussion tables. The conference is sponsored by Learnus.

The scientific programme is now available here: Encore-final-programme

Registration is open at this link and will close 1 April. Registration is £70 (£50 for students). A Pre-Conference Workshop on Thursday morning will offer early career researchers (ECRs) and PhD students training on research methodologies, including 15-minute sessions covering various approaches. The pre-conference workshop is free but registration is required.

Timings: The pre-conference will run from 10am-12pm on Thursday 24th. The main conference will run from 1pm to 6pm on Thursday 24th and from 9am to 3pm on Friday 25th April. A conference dinner may be organised on the evening of Thursday 24th (tbc).

For more information, see here.

Download the flyer

Photo by Stockcake

Mobile phones are set to be prohibited in schools across England as part of the government’s plan to minimise disruption and improve behaviour in classrooms. New mobile phones in schools guidance issued today (19 February 2024) backs headteachers in prohibiting the use of mobile phones throughout the school day, including at break times (UK Department for Education, 19 February 2024)

In this blog, Professor Michael Thomas, Director of the CEN, discusses the UK trend to ban smartphones in secondary schools.

“I am part of a research team that has been investigating the impact of mobile phone use in adolescents in the UK (scampstudy.org). We have been following a sample of 6000 teenagers over several years, examining their phone use, cognitive development, health and wellbeing, and educational outcomes.

Over several studies, we have picked up small negative effects of phone-based activities such as social network site use, on both cognitive skills and wellbeing, particularly for children with heaviest use (5 hours a day or more) [1]. For example, high social network site usage in early adolescence predicts higher rates of depression and anxiety two years later. These associations were partly mediated by sleep problems, suggesting underlying mechanisms may be multi-factorial [2]. One of our studies showed that social network site usage was particularly associated with poorer wellbeing in girls, including using these sites at night [3]. Cause and effect are sometimes hard to pull apart – whether, say, risk of anxiety causes greater social network site usage or vice versa. But it seems safe to say that if there are pre-existing risks in children, social network site use can exacerbate them.

More broadly, my view is that it is important to separate the effects of the technology of mobile phones from issues that would arise in any medium. Bad whatever the medium include bullying, social exclusion, displacement of other activities through excessive usage (e.g., homework, play), and age-inappropriate content. Society needs to develop customs, norms, and expectations to avoid these behaviours as they appear in mobile phone use.

Phones and the internet bring specific new challenges due to their ubiquity, the wide reach of social networks, and the commercially driven optimisation of reward schedules that produces compulsive behaviour. Technology-specific problems include screen time addiction and intolerance of boredom, disruption of sleep, social media bullying, unreliable information, and data protection issues. These will require specific solutions, but moderating amount and timing of smartphone use seems the best first step.

I think it’s important to avoid reactionary positions (i.e., new = bad). All media will have drawbacks to weigh against their benefits. Reading, for example, can be viewed as socially isolating, discouraging physical activity, and providing a visually impoverished stimulus – but in moderation is viewed as a culturally valued activity. Mobile phones have notable benefits in allowing children to maintain friendships over geographic distance (which was very important in the pandemic). They have democratised knowledge in allowing children from poor backgrounds to access a vast range of materials beyond what is available in their local environments (albeit children now need to learn new skills to assess the reliability of information). Their contribution should therefore be viewed in a balanced way.

In terms of the UK’s new guidance on banning mobile phones in school, I would be cautiously in favour – but I also recognise it is a missed opportunity. I am a father to 13-year-old twin boys. Their secondary school has a complete ban on bringing phones into school. This has advantages – children don’t stare at phones but talk to each other more – especially when travelling to and from school; there is less risk of cyber-bullying; and reduced risk of mugging for handsets outside of school. We know that phones can be a distraction – just the presence of a phone in front of you, even if you are not using it, can be distracting [4], and this is just as likely to hold in the classroom. These are proximal effects relating to phones in school hours. But my children’s school still relies on the children having devices at home for homework, for timetabling, and to coordinate sporting activities, so it could not be said to be anti-phone per se. As a parent, it induces anxiety for my children to travel to school on a city transport system without the backup of a phone when things go wrong, which is a resource that even adults rely on. Yet it has produced faster development of confidence, independence, and maturity in my children.

Of course, banning phones during school time cannot influence how teenagers use their phones at home. At least one recent study has shown that school-time bans are not linked to pupils getting higher grades or having higher mental wellbeing, presumably because phone usage continues at home [5]. Thus, the study by Goodyear and colleagues found that spending longer on smartphones and social media overall was linked with poorer student sleep, classroom behaviour and exercise. But school bans did not reduce these problems, nor indeed alter how long the students spent on their phones overall. Schools alone cannot moderate smartphone usage.

I believe banning phones in schools is also a lost opportunity because information technology is a powerful tool to support learning, while school-provided IT systems for computer-based learning risk becoming redundant. They are expensive, cumbersome, require restrictive firewalls, and quickly become out of date. Yet almost every child has a powerful, frequently updated computer device in their own possession. The opportunity is for children to use these in schools, but in some sort of Education Mode analogous to the Airplane Mode we activate on flights [6]. Such a mode used throughout the day would only give access to approved educational software, to support learning but not gaming or social activities that would prove distractions. But this requires governments to engage with commercial providers of phone operating systems, through incentivisation or regulation, and we have yet to make progress in this direction. In absence of such engagement, the trajectory of travel appears to be towards banning phones at school. This avoids the risks but is a missed opportunity.”

1. Shen, C., Smith, R. B., Eeftens, M., Thomas, M. S. C., Röösli, M., Spiers, A. D. V., Cheng, L., Booth, E., Elliott, P., Dumontheil, I., Toledano, M. B. (in preparation, 2024). Cognition and behaviours in relation to mobile phone and wireless device use and exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields: Evidence from a longitudinal cohort study of adolescents (SCAMP). Manuscript in preparation.
2. Shen, C., Serrano, B. M., G., Di Simplicio, M., Spiers, A. D. V., Dumontheil, I., Thomas, M. S. C., Röösli, M., Elliott, P. & Toledano, M. B. (in preparation, 2024). Social networking site use, depression and anxiety in adolescents: Evidence from a longitudinal cohort study (SCAMP). Manuscript in preparation.
3. Jenkins, R. H., Shen, C., Dumontheil, I., Thomas, M. S. C., Elliott, P., Röösli, M., & Toledano, M. B. (2020). Social networking site use in young adolescents: Association with health-related quality of life and behavioural difficulties. Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 109, August 2020, 106320. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106320.
4. Skowronek, J., Seifert, A. & Lindberg, S. The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance. Sci Rep 13, 9363 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36256-4.
5. Goodyear, Victoria A. et al. (2025). School phone policies and their association with mental wellbeing, phone use, and social media use (SMART Schools): a cross-sectional observational study. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, Volume 0, Issue 0, 101211. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(25)00003-1/fulltext
6. Thomas, M.S.C., & Rogers, C. (2020). Education, the science of learning, and the COVID-19 crisis. Prospects, 49, 87–90 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09468-z

In this blog, our colleague and collaborator Dr. Erika Galea, talks about how she founded and directs the Educational Neuroscience Hub Europe (Malta). Erika holds a masters in educational leadership and completed her PhD in the Department of Psychology and Human Development at University College London. Her thesis was entitled ‘Regulating Emotions in the Maltese Classroom to Improve the Quality of Teaching and Learning in the Early Years’. She has spent over two decades working in education as a teacher and in senior leadership. The Hub, founded in 2022, is focused on promoting evidence-based strategies to improve teaching and learning effectiveness, emphasising student-centred education. Erika describes the inspiration behind the Hub, and how it is achieving its goals.

Introduction and Impact

The Educational Neuroscience Hub Europe (Malta), of which I am founder and director, has been instrumental in raising awareness and transforming the mindset of educators across Malta and Gozo, from early childhood education through to tertiary education. This transformation involves council of heads, school and college principals, lecturers, senior leadership teams, curriculum coordinators and heads of departments, teachers, learning support staff, as well as psychologists, speech therapists, inclusive coordinators, social workers, and play therapists, all through its extensive training workshops.

Bridging Neuroscience and Pedagogy

By introducing the science of teaching and learning, the Hub aims to bridge the gap between neuroscience and pedagogy. As the expert leading this initiative, I am converging these two disciplines within local schools. Dialogue with experienced educators is of utmost importance, as listening to those who have been trialling and testing teaching strategies for a while is crucial for merging the neuroscientific strategies with their already effective methods. It is important to communicate to educators that this is not about completely changing their methodology, but rather about making small adjustments to enhance its effectiveness in reaching their students in the classroom.

Debunking Neuromyths

A significant focus of the training is to debunk common neuromyths—misconceptions about brain function that can hinder effective teaching practices. For instance, the belief that individuals are either left-brained or right-brained learners is a neuromyth that the Hub actively dispels. Similarly, the Hub addresses the widespread belief in learning styles and multiple intelligences, clarifying that these ideas are not supported by current neuroscientific evidence. By correcting such misunderstandings, the Hub empowers teachers with accurate knowledge, enabling them to adopt strategies that align with how the brain genuinely processes information, including the various types of memory involved.

Evidence-Based Teaching Strategies

A key element of the training workshops is examining the influence of neuroscience on teaching strategies and embedding these approaches within the curriculum, lesson planning, and daily methodology. The Hub’s approach is grounded in evidence-based practices that adopt insights from brain research to enhance teaching methods. Teachers learn how to apply principles of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to reorganise itself by forming new neural connections, which is transformative in enabling them to create more adaptable and responsive learning environments. Practical applications, discussed during the workshops, include strategies such as different modes of retrieval practice, with their lesson planning for improving memory retention, fostering critical thinking skills, and boosting overall student engagement through activities that stimulate cognitive development.

Integrating Emotion Regulation, Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning

Emotion regulation, metacognitive and self-regulated learning strategies are integrated into daily teaching routines, promoting both cognitive and emotional intelligence, as well as a growth mindset, among students. By incorporating these strategies into their pedagogy, teachers not only help students manage their emotions but also support their development of metacognitive and self-regulated learning skills. When students can manage their emotions, they are better equipped to monitor and adjust their cognitive strategies, leading to improved focus and more effective engagement with learning activities. Self-regulated learning further enhances this by empowering students to set goals, develop strategies, and self-assess their progress, all while managing emotional responses that might otherwise hinder their learning.

Enhancing Retention Through Emotional Engagement, Novelty and Relevance

During the workshops, I emphasise the crucial role of presenting relevant content and introducing novelty to enhance motivation and engagement, as well as evoking emotions in teaching to improve the retention of information and skills. By adopting cognitive strategies that incorporate emotional engagement, teachers can help students not only remember content more effectively but also develop the self-awareness and self-regulation skills necessary for lifelong learning. This integrated approach ensures that students are not only managing their emotions but also applying metacognitive and self-regulation strategies to achieve more profound and sustained learning outcomes.

Workshop Structure and Impact

The workshops offer a highly enriching experience, divided into three distinct parts to maximise impact. The session begins with an engaging and interactive talk that presents the theoretical underpinnings of neuroscientific strategies. This is followed by collaborative, hands-on practical work designed to help educators integrate these strategies into their daily methodologies. The final component provides a platform for educators to delve deeper into these concepts, reflect on their practices, and discuss their experiences. This structured approach not only allows educators to critically examine and enhance their methods but also ensures that the strategies are practical and effective for real classroom settings.

Fostering Mindset Shifts and Engagement

Educational Neuroscience focuses on creating awareness of evidence-based approaches, necessitating a change in mindset. This shift fosters engaging and thoughtful discussions, making it a fulfilling experience and a pleasure to positively impact teaching approaches. The insightful questions posed by teachers during these workshops reflect their active engagement and critical reflection on their teaching practices. These interactions highlight the success of the various workshops in promoting a deeper understanding of how neuroscience can inform and improve educational practices. Engaging with experienced educators facilitates a rich exchange of ideas, enhancing the training’s effectiveness and providing newly qualified teachers with new strategies and teaching approaches.

National Recognition and Future Outlook

Since the training and awareness initiatives started last October, teachers and school senior leadership teams nationwide have enthusiastically embraced the educational neuroscience workshops and evidence-based practices throughout the past scholastic year, valuing the insightful and practical strategies provided. There is strong interest in expanding these workshops further, with a focus on providing adequate support during implementation and evaluation phases to measure their impact effectively. Their collective enthusiasm highlights a strong commitment to enhancing educational outcomes through the application of neuroscience principles.

The positive development is that educational neuroscience has been officially recognised and incorporated into the Malta National Education Strategy 2024–2030, which was published in March 2024. Following a consultation with the working group on the National Education Strategy at the Ministry for Education and conducting training sessions for ministry officials, I played a pivotal role in advocating for this inclusion, highlighting the recognition of the significance of educational neuroscience. This strategic move emphasises the commitment to adopting scientific insights to enhance educational outcomes nationwide. By embedding educational neuroscience into the Malta National Educational Strategy, the initiative aims to sustain and expand its impact, ultimately benefiting teachers and students across the country.

I look forward to continuing this journey in the upcoming academic year, delving further into integrating neuroscience principles into teaching and learning.

For more on the Educational Neuroscience Hub Europe (Malta), visit our website. To contact Dr. Galea, email her at: erikagalea@educationalneurosciencehub.com

Here at the CEN, we are very excited about the Spatial Reasoning Toolkit, developed by CEN members Emily Farran and Katie Gilligan-Lee (now at Surrey University and University College Dublin, respectively).

Spatial reasoning involves our interpretation of how things, including ourselves, relate to each other in space, and includes interpreting images and creating representations. We use spatial reasoning in our everyday lives and in many occupations. Importantly, spatial reasoning is strongly linked with achievement in mathematics.

Spatial reasoning can be taught and spatial experiences are particularly important for spatial development in early childhood. However, while research has demonstrated that spatial cognition has a fundamental causal role in success in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects, its potential remains under-realised because spatial cognition is under-emphasised both in classroom practice and in education policy.

The Spatial Reasoning Toolkit provide resources to help educators support the development of children’s spatial reasoning in sensitive, age-appropriate and playful ways. At the CEN, we particularly love the spatial reasoning keyrings, which give a a quick and handy reference resource summarising the learning trajectories for spatial skills. They provide suggestions for activities to support the development of children’s spatial cognition from birth to 7 years and include spatial language prompts. We have been playing with the Shape Properties keyring ourselves (shown above), but there are also Movement & Navigation and Shape Composition & Construction versions available. You can make your own keyrings using the resources here.

Make time for space in your STEM education!

Here’s Emily describing the toolkit at a recent seminar:

Dr. Katie Gilligan-Lee, an affiliate member of the CEN, is excited to be advertising a funded PhD position in educational neuroscience/developmental psychology at University College Dublin, Ireland. This PhD project will begin in September 2024 and will broadly investigate the role of spatial cognition for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) achievement. However, there will be flexibility in the design of specific studies and inclusion of additional research themes. The funding covers both a PhD stipend and fees.

Further information and details on how to apply can be found here. The deadline for applications is: 5pm May 17th 2024. Informal queries can be sent to Katie directly at katie.gilligan-lee@ucd.ie.

Project details: There is convincing evidence that spatial skills play an important role in STEM achievement. However, preliminary evidence suggests that this association may differ for children from different socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. The goal of this project is to investigate the cognitive mechanisms that underpin spatial-STEM associations and explore the moderating effect of SES on these associations. Wider goals of the project are to promote children’s STEM success inside and outside of the classroom, and to reduce SES-based attainment gaps using cognitive intervention.

The Neurodevelopmental Research (NDevR) lab recently launched a new teacher focused training resource: Supporting the Complex Needs of Children with Genetic Syndromes in Educational Practice (www.findteacherresources.co.uk). Researchers Dr Jo Moss and Holly Snellgrove from the University of Surrey developed this novel, freely available e-resource in consultation with SENCOs, SEN teachers, parents, carers and educational psychologists. Its aim is to raise awareness and understanding of the complex needs of children with genetic syndromes associated with intellectual disability. In this blog, Jo and Holly give an overview of the inspiration behind the resource, and what it comprises.

“Children with neurodevelopmental conditions are known to experience poor developmental, health and wellbeing outcomes compared to neurotypical peers (Beadle-Brown et al. 2005). These inequalities are heightened in children with the most complex clinical presentations and particularly those with intellectual disability (ID) associated with rare genetic syndromes.

Currently rare genetic conditions account for approximately 50% of individuals with severe intellectual disability and 20% of individuals with a mild intellectual disability (Oliver & Woodcock, 2008). Therefore, it’s crucial that educational practitioners receive appropriate training and support to cater for the needs of children with genetic syndromes in classroom settings.

“At present, practitioners working in schools have very limited access to training and information about rare genetic syndromes”

At present, practitioners working in schools have very limited access to training and information regarding these syndromes and due to the rarity of the syndromes, they are unlikely to have significant experience of working with other children who have the same condition. Therefore, condensed and accessible information on genetic syndromes can be invaluable for practitioners (Waite et al, 2014).

The resource we developed features information on a range of topics that teachers/educational practitioners can work through at their own pace. It includes topics such as ‘Co-occurring Conditions’, ‘Understanding Behaviour’, ‘Individual Differences’, and ‘Support for Parents and Carers’.

The resource features informative text and infographics, videos from the research team, teachers, parents and an educational psychologist, links to further resources and reflective exercises. The content of the resource has been informed by research findings from various scientific studies, which can be accessed from the academic papers section.

The resource also has dedicated pages which signpost users to additional resources and useful support groups, both general and syndrome specific, that can enable users to identify further information and support resources.

We hope this resource will help teachers and educational practitioners to further develop their understanding of the ways that children with genetic syndromes can be supported in educational settings. Although the resource was designed primarily for education practitioners, others who support children with genetic syndromes may also find it useful, and it is therefore accessible to all.

The resource can be accessed via the following link: www.findteacherresources.co.uk

The launch event can be found here.”