Abstract
Since a decade or so there is a new hype in educational research: it is called educational neuroscience or even neuroeducation (and neuroethics)—there are numerous publications, special journals, and an abundance of research projects together with the advertisement of many positions at renown research centres worldwide. After a brief introduction of what is going on in the ‘emerging sub-discipline’ a number of characterizations are offered of what is envisaged by authors working in this field. In the discussion that follows various problems are listed: the assumption that ‘visual proof’ of brain activity is supposedly given, the correlational nature of this kind of research, the nature of the concepts that are used, the lack of addressing and possibly influencing the neurological mechanism, and finally the need for other insights in educational contexts. Following Bakhurst and others a number of crucially relevant philosophical issues are highlighted. It is argued that though there are cases where neuroscience insights may be helpful, these are scarce and that in general not a lot may be expected from this discipline for education and educational research. A reminder is offered that the pitfalls of going along that road of neurophilia is just another neuromyth which needs to be addressed.
To identify relevant publications I started from a bibliographical search in the Philosopher’s Index and the Social Sciences Citation Index (July 2014) and used as keywords neuroscience and education.
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Notes
- 1.
The special issue (Patten and Campbell 2011) contains the following contributions: Introduction: Educational Neuroscience (pages 1–6), by Kathryn E. Patten and Stephen R. Campbell; Educational Neuroscience: Motivations, methodology, and implications (pages 7–16) by Stephen R. Campbell; Can Cognitive Neuroscience Ground a Science of Learning? (pages 17–23) by Anthony E. Kelly; A Multiperspective Approach to Neuroeducational Research (pages 24–30) by Paul A. Howard-Jones; What Can Neuroscience Bring to Education? (pages 31–36) by Michel Ferrari; Connecting Education and Cognitive Neuroscience: Where will the journey take us? (pages 37–42) by Daniel Ansari, Donna Coch and Bert De Smedt; Position Statement on Motivations, Methodologies, and Practical Implications of Educational Neuroscience Research: fMRI studies of the neural correlates of creative intelligence (pages 43–47) by John Geake; Brain-Science Based Cohort Studies (pages 48–55) by Hideaki Koizumi; Directions for Mind, Brain, and Education: Methods, Models, and Morality (pages 56–66) by Zachary Stein and Kurt W. Fischer; The Birth of a Field and the Rebirth of the Laboratory School by Marc Schwartz and Jeanne Gerlach; Mathematics Education and Neurosciences: Towards interdisciplinary insights into the development of young children’s mathematical abilities (pages 75–80) by Fenna Van Nes; Neuroscience and the Teaching by Kerry Lee and Swee Fong Ng; The Somatic Appraisal Model of Affect by Kathryn E. Patten; Implications of Affective and Social Neuroscience by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.
- 2.
See http://www.engrammetron.net/about.html (retrieved October 22 2013) “ENGRAMMETRON facilities enable simultaneous observation and acquisition of audio data from talking-aloud reflective protocols; video data of facial and bodily expression; and real-time screen capture. Instrumentation most notably supports: multi-channel electroencephalography (EEG); electrocardiography (EKG); electromyography (EMG); and eye-tracking (ET) capability. Orbiting this constellation of observational methods around computer enhanced learning platforms allows for unprecedented flexibility of educational research experimental design and delivery, and for subsequent data integration and analyses.”
- 3.
“Before the trials begin, the researcher fits a cap on the child’s head with electrodes that register brain activity. This non-invasive EEG technique informs the researcher about the onset and duration of brain signals for particular stimuli and motor and perceptual responses. ANOVAs help determine differences in the brain activation and in the reaction times and additional analyses give more insight into the nature of interference and facilitation effects in the different experimental conditions.” (Van Nes in Patten and Campbell 2011, p. 78)
- 4.
Some authors remain nevertheless confident of such an approach: “With one research discipline set in a classroom environment and another that is based on a laboratory setting, the collaboration between the ME [Mathematics education component] and NS [Neurosciences component] research rests on studying the same children. The children who participate in the ME research are part of the larger pool of children who will also participate in the NAS research. In this way we hope to be able to compare children’s phase of spatial structuring with the degree to which they automatically process quantities.” (Van Nes in Patten and Campbell 2011, p. 78)
- 5.
“Psychological predicates are predicates that apply essentially to the whole living animal, not to its parts. It is not the eye (let alone the brain) that sees, but we see with our eyes (and we do not see with our brains, although without a brain functioning normally in respect of the visual system, we would not see). So, too, it is not the ear that hears, but the animal whose ear it is. The organs of an animal are part of the animal, and psychological predicates are ascribable to the whole animal, not its constituent parts. Mereology is the logic of part/whole relations.” (Bennett and Hacker 2003, pp. 72–73). Bennett & Hacker term the neuroscientist’s ascription of psychological attributes to the brain ‘the mereological fallacy’ in neuroscience . They also point to what the neuroscientist is seeing: “What one sees on the scan is not the brain thinking… nor the person thinking … but the computer-generated image of the excitement of cells in his brain that occurs when he is thinking.” (Bennett and Hacker 2003, pp. 83–84)
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Smeyers, P. (2016). Neuromyths for Educational Research and the Educational Field?. In: Smeyers, P., Depaepe, M. (eds) Educational Research: Discourses of Change and Changes of Discourse. Educational Research, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30456-4_7
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