Knowledge‐ and Evidence‐Based Education: Reasons, Trends, and Contents

Education is in need of reform, and the development of the sciences of mind and brain are candidates to contribute to the renovation of the way people are instructed and of the tools that mediate learning. Knowledge‐ and evidence‐based approaches to education put forward the fact that educational systems are inadequate to provide an answer to the challenges of the 21st century and claim that education should be guided by scientific principles rather than by intuition and professional wisdom only (or, worst, by tradition). This is because sciences that are capable of shedding light into learning process have dramatically advanced during the last half‐century and, still more meaningfully, during the last 20 years. The time has come for a new science of learning to rise, which is structured around cognitive and neuroscience, investigates topics that stem from educational problems, and rests on rigorous forms of in‐laboratory and in‐vivo evaluation.