Effectiveness of neuroconstructivism teaching model to enhance students’ creative thinking, mathematics achievement, attention, and working memory

This study examines the effectiveness of the Neuroconstructivism (NeuroConstruct) teaching model in enhancing
creative thinking, mathematics achievement, attention, and working memory among grade 7 students. A true
experimental pre-test and post-test control group design was employed, involving 70 randomly selected students
from a total sample of 126 at a secondary school in Phayao, Thailand. The experimental group received instruction
through the NeuroConstruct teaching model, while the control group followed the 5E teaching model.
Three assessments were utilized: a creative thinking test, a mathematics achievement test, and cognitive ability
software to measure attention and working memory. The findings indicate that Grade 7 students from a single
Thai secondary school who participated in the NeuroConstruct teaching model demonstrated higher post-test
performance in creative thinking, mathematics achievement, attention, and working memory than those who
received the 5E teaching model following a five-week intervention. These results provide comparative evidence
supporting the instructional potential of a NeuroConstruct teaching model in the studied context. However,
outcomes were measured immediately after the intervention, and therefore, the sustainability of these improvements
over time cannot be inferred. Moreover, although the observed gains are theoretically consistent
with Neuroconstructivism, alternative explanations, such as novelty effects, teacher effects, or Hawthorne effects,
cannot be fully ruled out in the absence of an attention or placebo control condition. Accordingly, the
findings should be interpreted cautiously and warrant replication across diverse educational settings and
extended time frames. This study’s key novelty lies in translating Neuroconstructivism—predominantly a
theoretical account of developmental, multi-constraint cognition—into a classroom-tested, phase-structured
teaching model with actionable lesson procedures. By operationalizing neuroconstructivism principles into six
implementable teaching syntaxes and evaluating them in a true experimental classroom design, the study makes
an applied contribution that bridges theory and practice in educational neuroscience.