'Educational Neuroscience for Literacy Teachers' By Spence and Mitra, A book review by Brenda Walker

22nd Apr 2025

BNA Associate member, Brenda Walker, shares her review of the book 'Educational Neuroscience for Literacy Teachers: Research-backed Methods and Practices for Effective Reading Instruction', Lucy K. Spence and Ayan Mitra, ROUTLEDGE Taylor & Francis Group, 2023

     Many neuroscientists on both sides of the ‘Pond’ have written about the need for educationists to align with current neuroscience research, relevant, not only to the classroom, but also to other aspects of life and learning.  Influenced by the work of the neuroscientist, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, (who writes the Foreword), Lucy Spence and Ayan Mitra set out to combine their experiences, expertise and interests in literacy and neuroscience in order to produce a book that would develop ‘a vision of literacy networks by exploring the brain and literacy together.’ Although examples are based on American children from early childhood to adolescence, and linked conceptually to educational theories, the actual reading-lesson plans, ideas, teaching methods and examples discussed in detail, are similar to those any imaginative and well-informed teacher might envisage whatever the nationality. However, the book’s uniqueness is that the research, in both literacy and scientific fields, is set side by side.  

     The literacy research has been drawn from studies after 2011, but since it is an emerging combination, many questions regarding brain research and literacy ‘instruction’ are said to have remained unanswered, mainly due to ‘the inadequacy of replicated findings and the constraints of neuroimaging equipment, highly controlled stimuli, the type of tasks, and methods of analysis.’ 

     Having given many lectures on this multidimensional concept, Spence and Mitra came to the conclusion that many teacher trainers and student teachers were not being exposed to neuroscience news, apart from odd comments in the media; and that even if they had been aware of such information, they certainly did not have the time or inclination to explore neuroscience or read recent research articles in specific journals. Consequently, encouraged by requests and the interest roused in their lecture sessions, they set about writing ‘Educational Neuroscience for Literacy’. Since the ability to read involves visual, phonological, motor and cultural dimensions, literacy is stated as being the ‘uniquely human ability that helps shape the cultural world we live in today’.  Authors’ comments throughout the book are supported by ideas or research gleaned from past and present researchers – all duly acknowledged.  

      Spence and Mitra set out to explain just how the study of neuroscience can aid understanding of such multiple dimensions by involving, not only the brain’s networks, but also the body and the social environment. They do so by revealing their vision of the six networks related to literacy: Embodiment, Social and Emotional Learning, Multimodality, Semantics (making meaning), Phonology, and Languaging (the active process of using language to achieve a specific purpose or effect) which are explored in relation to the brain. 

     The introduction gives details of the volume’s organisation of the nine chapters with their contents, each introducing facts connected to learning alongside their neuroscience links. Rather than having pages of biography listed towards the end of the book, each chapter has a separate biography relative to its specific content.    

     Overall, there are eight Figures, depicting either pen drawings of the brain or various charts; the first, being a framework of circles showing how the areas of Psychology, Education, Neuroscience and Educational Neuroscience overlap. Occasionally, a pop-up box is inserted in the text containing relevant information; one example being:          

                                                         DID YOU KNOW?   

     ‘With increasingly rich and complex brain data, scientists have changed how they view the relationship between the brain and behaviour. At first, the focus was in regions of the brain. Then scientists began charting connections and pathways between brain regions.  Now scientists are describing the networks and distributed components across the brain that enables human behaviour’ (Vanderah, 2020).    

     Another sample is FOOD FOR THOUGHT, containing items of interest useful to remember, such as: the names of neuroimaging techniques with their shortened versions – EEG, TMS, DTI, fMRI, PET and MRS.            

     The opening chapter, entitled ‘Neuroscience and Literacy’, contains sections on the following, all of which are expanded in depth in later chapters: 

‘Literacy and Biological Sciences’; 

 ‘Neuroscience Research on Reading’; 

 ‘Why We Can Read and Write’; 

 Brain Anatomy’; 

 ‘Reading Network Developments’; 

 ‘Child Brain Networks’; 

 ‘Child Development’; 

 ‘Adolescent Brain Networks’;  

‘Social Restructuring’;  

How to Study the Brain’;  

‘How to Use Neuroscience Findings’; 

 ’Neuroscience and Educational policy’;  

‘Phonics and Balanced Literacy’;  

‘English-only and Bilingual Instruction’; 

 ‘Teaching about Racial Discrimination’; 

 ‘Social-emotional Learning’; 

 ‘Literacy Networks’. 

     Each of the above sections contains many interesting and extremely relevant facts regarding literacy’s relationship with brain networks, as well as the various methods of teaching and the variety of abilities, child development, races, and attitudes that confront the teacher in the field of education.  Apparently, in some American States educational policies have been controlled by ‘special interest groups’ or state legislators, with negative results. The authors conclude that such special interest groups that ‘support curriculum enforcement by legislation would benefit from understanding neuroscience findings on the interconnected nature of learning’. Readers may also have experienced similar pressure in their own countries from similar ‘special interest groups’ or have commented on the need for neuroscience education for other groups, whose work enables interaction with the developing child or adolescent. Curriculums planned by members of any State can be at fault when there is a lack of understanding concerning basic educational neuroscience and its relevant fields. 

     The following chapter explores concepts of ‘Literacy Theories’  ‘foundational to the ideas to the ideas presented in this book.’  Social interaction, a key factor of ‘Social Constructionist Learning theory’, is encouraged. This is where children of any age, learn together or help one another to read or discuss, sitting in a quiet area close to someone they like or trust, with ‘scaffold-prompting’ from a teacher or parent available close by. This is viewed as constructing knowledge that helps to build concepts necessary for understanding literature.  Acting out or discussion groups, representational art or graphics are also mentioned as contributing to the above, as well as socio-cultural learning that clarifies how human interaction, culture and environment shape the growing child’s mental development just as ‘culturally relevant pedagogy addresses the cultural aspect of learning’.  

     Other theories mentioned are ‘Connecting Learning Theories’ where the background and families of students are involved; the psychologists’ theories on ‘Metacognition ‘and ‘Biological’ theories such as evolution and genetics, with an emphasis on Ontogenetic adaptation and Epigenetics.  

     Many models of neurological processing are mentioned as frameworks in teaching, such as the developmental aspect of cognitive psychology, and the two-route model of brain activation for reading (Ventral –   direct and Dorsal – indirect). The direct route being associated with recognition of whole words, using memory to retrieve sound and meaning or irregular words such as ‘Once’. The indirect route requiring what the authors refer to as the ‘Alphabet Principle’, a rule-based analysis of the printed word, involving understanding that letters represent speech sounds.  White matter pathways are also referred to as aiding this process by allowing productive communication between brain areas. However, more detailed information is supplied in later chapters.                                           

         The writing process, reader response, dialog teaching, inquiry learning and critical literacy are also considered as instructional frameworks that act as guides to teaching. When the authors use the word ‘embodied’ they are involving the total literacy environment that includes not only material objects, spaces and people, but also feelings, memories and interactions.  In the task of reading or writing, the senses are activated and the reader is reminded that biological sciences have revealed how ‘our senses are important to our perception of ourselves and the world around us’ (Young, 2021).                                     

     In Figure 3.1 an artist’s impression of the brain as part of the central nervous system is shown, where the central and peripheral nervous systems interact with the environment. This illustrates how the concept of embodiment – Interoception, (referring to interactive functions and systems within the body) and Proprioception, (one’s sense of self within the environment), allows us via the somatosensory system, to sense, perceive and feel as we read or write.  Explanations are given as to how the biological aspects: the nervous system, the network of glands that produce hormones in the endocrine system, the heart, and the gastrointestinal tract, which are all connected to the brain, combine to create ‘one single system’.  The heart and the gastrointestinal system 'action their own electrical activity and send information to the brain that helps us to self-regulate our emotions, stress, and resilience’. The concept of embodiment is therefore defined by Spence and Mitra as interactive functions and systems within the body, together with one’s sense of self within the environment, revealing ‘how the mind exists beyond the brain’.    

     This discussion leads the reader to comments on infancy, body growth and how the brain develops, with details on neural and synaptic pruning, enabling it to continue restructuring during a lifetime.   As language networks are well established before birth and are active for all languages, the authors emphasise that children should benefit from an environment rich and diverse in conversation, where the child is healthy, feels safe, loved, is happy, positively occupied and interested. However, where learning is involved, best results are achieved when the child is personally involved and the brain continues to develop in a body that hopefully should remain in homeostasis. The chapter on the social and emotional brain refers to the neuroscience research of Schurz et al (2021), where it was suggested that ‘connective and affective processes are activated in understanding others’ mental states’.  The sharing of culturally relevant materials for older students, or writing on topics that impact their communities, furnishing them with pertinent matters for discussion, provide a real-world reason for writing.  Brain networks involved in emotion are discussed, including executive control, the default-mode, and salience.  The authors highlight the fact that students’ shared memories, emotions, experiences and interactions can inspire further reading and language communication which helps build brain network connectivity. 

     Technology is introduced when discussing the idea of a multimodel brain in connection with students using the internet and traversing complex texts as well as a variety of modes of expression, such as the combination of writing, image making and speaking during a presentation. Bilingualism and multilingualism are included in the chapter on Languaging, but dyslexia is only mentioned briefly in the chapter on literacy networks that also includes comments on aspects of phonology, early years’ brain plasticity, word-games and decoding. 

     In the Introduction to this book, Spence and Mitra set out to explain what elements influenced their viewpoint:  

 Brain, body and the environment interact together during literate activity, thus exploring human thinking and action in response to interactions and learning from the physical and cultural world. 

How our senses perceive the world as we integrate new information into what we already know and believe. 

Our brains react to our body and biochemical influences as our brains continue to grow and change during our life span due to biological, chemical and social events. 

The biopschosocial brain (Engel 1977), thus develops and engages with the cultural construct of literacy in what we like to call literacy networks. 

     Towards the end of the volume in Chapter nine, there is a summary of the six areas of literacy and neuroscience research that the authors hope will help ‘build a bridge between neuroscience findings and educational research on literacy’. 

      Although written particularly for Teacher Trainers and Student teachers, this book will be a valuable asset to many interested in helping the young to enjoy reading.  Although publications linking neuroscience with teaching have been published in the UK since 2017, and most recently in 2004, the focus of this particular volume appears unique. The neuroscience element is acknowledged as ‘basic’, yet is expressed in a way accessible to those entering the teaching profession with a paucity of brain anatomy.  

     The authors state that neuroscience moves fast, and recently researchers at Janelia Research Campus in Virginia, have discovered a new technique named DELTA, making it possible ‘to see brain-wide changes and opening the door to uncovering the molecular basis of learning and memory by bridging the gap between behaviour and cellular changes’ (Nancy Bompey, HHMI). Hopefully, news of such novel research will reach the eyes and ears of educationists worldwide. 

Brenda Walker. April 2025