The nature-nurture debate in education: implications for narrowing attainment gaps

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• Professor Michael Thomas, Birkbeck
• Tuesday 04 March 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Hybrid: in-person in Cambridge & online via Teams.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Louise Gray.

In-person: Ground Floor Seminar Room, Old Cavendish Building, Free School Lane / Teams Meeting ID: 376 812 611 469, Passcode: ToLLAZ

Abstract:

In this talk, I will survey the current state of the nature-nurture debate in education. I will take an educational neuroscience perspective which focuses on the translation of mechanistic insights from developmental cognitive neuroscience to educational contexts.

Inequality of educational outcomes is influenced both by environmental and genetic factors. A hundred years of twin studies had rather driven the nature-nurture debate aground (Question: is a person’s development more due to nature or to nurture? Answer: it’s about half and half).

But new developments in the cognitive neuroscience of socioeconomic status on the nurture side, and the creation of individual metrics for educational potential directly from DNA on the nature side, have given the debate new impetus.

I will finish by presenting some computational modelling work which suggests that for translation, concepts like heritability are less relevant – the key question is what developmental outcomes can be reached for an individual given their genotype. Research agendas may need to be reconfigured to address this question.

Speaker Biography:

Michael S. C. Thomas is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Birkbeck University of London. Since 2010, Michael has been Director of the Centre for Educational Neuroscience, a cross-institutional research centre which aims to further translational research between neuroscience and education, and establish new transdisciplinary accounts in the learning sciences. In 2003, Michael established the Developmental Neurocognition Laboratory within Birkbeck’s world-leading Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development.

The focus of his laboratory is to use multi-disciplinary methods to understand the brain and cognitive bases of cognitive variability, including behavioural, brain imaging, computational, and genetic methods. In 2006, the lab was the co-recipient of the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education, for the project “Neuropsychological work with the very young: understanding brain function and cognitive development”.

This talk is part of the Centre for Child, Adolescent & Family Research Seminar Series series.

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• Centre for Child, Adolescent & Family Research Seminar Series
• Hybrid: in-person in Cambridge & online via Teams
• Hybrid: in-person in Cambridge & online via Teams
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