Professor Paul Howard-Jones has spent the last two decades investigating how insights from the brain can deepen our understanding of how children learn, and how this knowledge can shape new approaches to teaching that better prepare students for complex challenges such as climate change.
Dr. Howard-Jones’ path into this work has been unconventional and interdisciplinary. He originally trained in Engineering, Psychology, and completed a PhD in Medical Physics before entering the classroom as a secondary school Design and Technology teacher. From there, he went on to train teachers, inspect schools, and ultimately bridge his scientific expertise with a commitment to education.
Drawing from neuroscience and cognitive psychology, his research explores learning games, creativity, and the impacts of teaching approaches on student engagement and memory. For his research, he has used classroom studies, neuroimaging (fMRI), psychological experiments, computational models, and interviews, all tools aimed at understanding how humans learn.
In recent years, Dr. Howard-Jones has turned his attention toward climate change education. He is investigating how psychology and neuroscience can provide insight into what motivates us to face environmental challenges and how we might design more effective learning experiences around sustainability.
He also works in the process of how research gets to be used in the classroom, as he often points out, that journey is a “long road”, one that requires patience, strong partnerships between researchers and practitioners, and new ways of brokering knowledge.
Current Areas of Work
- Research on creativity and learning through games, supported by behavioral and neuroimaging data.
- Climate change and sustainability education, using psychology and neuroscience to understand human responses to environmental challenges.
- Knowledge brokering: bridging the gap between cognitive neuroscience research and practical classroom use.
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