S2E1: Mary Helen Immordino-Yang on the neurobiological case for progressive education

Today I’m speaking with Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, whose work is, I honestly think, the most important I’ve yet come across in all my years of dabbling in education research and trying to understand how young people learn and develop, what we should be doing in schools to help them, and what we should maybe stop doing as soon as is humanly possible. Mary Helen is a Professor of Education, Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California and the Director of Candle: the Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education, which, among many notable achievements, is surely the most successful academic acronym of all time. Mary Helen and her team study the psychological and neurobiological development of emotion and self-awareness. In particular, her work highlights the importance of emotions, sociality and culture in young people’s social, cognitive and moral development. She uses cross-cultural, interdisciplinary studies of stories and the feelings they induce to shine a light on the neural networks that underpin identity, intrinsic motivation, and deep, meaningful learning. Mary Helen’s work often features children and adolescents from disadvantaged communities, and she often involves young people from these communities as junior scientists who are participants, as well as subjects, in her research. A former public high-school science teacher, Mary Helen has a doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard University, and she completed her postdoctoral training in social-affective neuroscience with Antonio Damasio, whose research has been incredibly important in shaping Mary Helen’s work. In 2016, Mary Helen published a book, Emotions, Learning and the Brain, which summarises the key findings from the previous decade of her work. I can’t recommend this book highly enough to anyone with an interest in how children and adolescents learn. I really think it’s an incredibly important read, as is the work Mary Helen has done in the 5 years since the book was published. Mary Helen has received numerous awards for her research and impact on education and society, including an Honor Coin from the U.S. Army, a Commendation from the County of Los Angeles, a Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a host of early career achievement awards too numerous to mention. Toward the end of the conversation, we talk about three networks of the brain - the default mode network, the salience network and the executive control network. Understanding what these three networks do, and how they interact, is absolutely central to understanding the importance of Mary Helen’s work. I was hoping that we would have time to discuss these three networks in the conversation, but unfortunately we ran out of time toward the end of the conversation. Fortunately however, Mary Helen recently co-authored a paper with her colleague Doug Knecht, which explains these three brain networks and how they work and interact in lay terms. The paper is called ‘Building Meaning Builds Teens' Brains’, and it’s well worth a read. Links: Building meaning builds teens’ brains: https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/building-meaning-builds-teens-brains CANDLE (The Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education): https://candle.usc.edu/ The Rethinking Education Mighty Network: https://rethinking-education.mn.co/feed Contribute to the Rethinking Education project: https://www.patreon.com/repod Buy James a pint, a coffee - or perhaps even a pint of coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/repod