Dear PLC Community

Recent literature on the development of the brain indicates that it is far more ‘plastic’ than educators once assumed. Our Director of Information Services, Ms Joanna Taylor, sent me an article from ABC Science recently which summarises the direction of future research. I quote: “Youngsters experience huge swings in intelligence during their teenage years, a finding with widespread implications for education, scientists report. The results will not surprise parents who find their children are a sandwich short of a picnic at one stage of their adolescence, but a few years later display shafts of brilliance - or sometimes the reverse. But the researchers, reporting in the journal ‘Nature’, say the shifts are linked to changes in the structure of the brain, not to hormonal surges, a finding that challenges an enshrined belief."

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