Pioneering Neuroscientist Janet Zadina Reflects on Her Journey of ”Bridging Neuroscience and Education”
For today’s EPISODE #280, we will be speaking with a pioneer in the field of educational neuroscience. The book she wrote, Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain covers the years of work she spent speaking to teachers all over the world about how the brain learns and what this means in the classroom. At the time she graduated, she was the ONLY person, so far as she knew, using the term educational neuroscience. Watch this interview on YouTube here https://youtu.be/mU6eGZi6Rng On today’s Episode #280 we will cover ✔ How Andrea was referred to study Janet Zadina's work back in 2014. ✔ The Impact of Dr. Zadina's Significant Contribution in Academics and Education Over the Years. ✔Janet Zadina's Arduous Pathway Bridging Education and the Brain since the 1980s. ✔ How Dr. Zadina Saw How Neuroimaging Could Help Change the Way We Teach Our Future Generations. ✔ Janet Zadina's Thoughts on Where Educational Neuroscience Began, and Where It's Going. ✔ Tools and Resources for Educators on her website www.brainresearch.us Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we cover the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (for schools) and emotional intelligence training (in the workplace) with tools, ideas and strategies that we can all use for immediate results, with our brain in mind. I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and educator with a passion for learning specifically on the topics of health, wellbeing and productivity, and launched this podcast to share how important an understanding of our brain is to our everyday life and results, using the most current brain research. If there’s a tool, strategy or resource that I find, that could be helpful to improve productivity and results, whether we are a teacher in the classroom, a coach or in the modern workplace, I will share it here. On today’s episode #280 we will be speaking with someone I was referred to back in 2014, from Jeff Kleck, from EP #246[i]. He was the educator who handed me a bunch of books off his book shelf and urged me to move in the direction of educational neuroscience, to make a bigger impact with my work. He didn’t give me our next guest’s book, (so I figured it must be important to him) but he told me to write down “Dr. Janet Zadina[ii]” and study her. Now, I don’t ignore anything someone tells me to do, especially if there is learning involved, so I wrote down Dr. Zadina’s name, and immediately followed her work back in 2014. I had no idea at the time that Dr. Zadina was one of THE leaders, spearheading educational neuroscience in the country, before it was even called this, and now fast forward to last September, when Jeff Kleck and I finished our interview, he asked me “Did you ever interview Dr. Janet Zadina?” I just looked at him thinking “How did I miss that?” remembering it was important. I remembered standing in his office, holding a bunch of books he asked me to read, and then we went to his computer and he pulled up all the FREE resources and most up to date research on Janet Zadina’s website[iii] that he told me to review. It was Dr. Zadina’s work that helped me to begin in this field of educational neuroscience, making the connections to the brain and learning. Today’s guest, Dr. Janet Zadina, we will soon discover, a former high school and college teacher and cognitive neuroscientist whose background, expertise, energy, and humor all took her to international acclaim. Before we meet Dr. Zadina, I want to share a bit about how she is changing lives with science and strategies. She’s been said to be "Powerful!" "Engaging!" "Innovative!" "Life Changing!" These are just a few of the words audiences use to describe concepts and presentations by Janet Zadina, Ph.D. who is known for her extraordinary ability to inform, educate, and empower audiences with the scholarly and credible brain research. She has made such an impact on the academic and education communities that Society for Neuro