Neuroeducamente blog

Photo by MTAPhotos on TrendHype / CC BY   The brain is indeed complex but believing that we will never ‘crack the code’ does little in advancing the collective effort that we have to engender to understand the different parts to make sense of the whole (Jasanoff, 2018). If there is something that can be understood, though, is that the biological and physically hierarchical structures of the human brain take time and order to develop (Dehaene-Lambertz & Spelke, 2015).  Starting from inception, and going over our development in utero, we already know that there is a reason why our species take so long to prepare for birth and are born with a disproportionately large head. We have also come to realize how the programmed ‘travel’ that neurons take to go to their destined site is guided by an orchestrated chemical symphony. This process is largely conducted by glial cells which make neurons land where they are supposed to be by an almost total account...

Photo by PinksamuraiFairlady on TrendHype / CC BY-SA When we think of disorders and what should be done, two words have to be top most in our minds: knowledge and adequacy , Both words relate to behaviors that may stem from or be associated with the disorder, be it of an individual or of the school community.  The core concern here is that we are all dealing with impairments, disorders and disabilities that still have a faulty perception and understanding. Science has yet to unravel all the pieces of the puzzle that forms the behaviors educators deal with in schools.  The knowledge that staff needs may come from a basic yet thorough informative in-service program about what those learning disruptions are, what ways they can be manifested and how we can work the environment (people and settings) to best accommodate what is not in order, whether transient or permanent When we consider adequacy , knowledge about treatments and medications is in order and sch...

Photo by agu²! on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA   When Kandel said that “In the study of memory storage, we are now at the foothills of a great mountain range. We have some understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms of memory storage, but we need to move from these mechanisms to the systems properties of memory” (UCD, 2009), it was important to me to understand that his call addresses a move from a singular and isolated view to an effort from all parties involved in studying the mind-brain relation to consider the systemic view of how integration promotes diverse functions. As an educator, I have often noticed the isolation that practitioners of different – albeit interrelated – areas defend their praxis. It seems that the breaking into small parts that is so important to an accurate understanding of the limits that cognitive capacity forces upon processing of information have been taken to extremes (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Green & Bavelier, 2008; Lo...

The ‘bridge too far’ that Bruer preconized more than two decades ago (1997) still finds echo in today’s discussions. Is it applicable? Haven’t we crossed the bridge of responsible transdisciplinarity and translational research to application yet? Recent publications seem to contradict this. Let’s then examine why. Daniel (2012) states that “If we are truly interested in pursuing educational implications, it is important to understand that what works in a controlled context may have a very different effect when applied without the support inherent to high-quality curricular design” (2012, p. 252). By controlled context here, the intended meaning is the lab, where variables are carefully controlled to measure intended (or not) outcomes. To all intents and purposes, the idea that Daniel gives is that there should be controlled and well aligned experiments in the lab before they are translated into educational guidelines to improve learning in real classrooms. So far, so good...

Photo on <a href="https://foter.com/re/dafdf9">Foter.com</a> To dare speak about such a broad range of topics, one must decide on a perspective. Mine will be guided by time so let’s start getting all hands on deck to learn from the not-so-far-away decades of the 70s and 80s - a thrilling time for many - when the focus on mental associations created a propitious context for the appearance of the cognitive model for learning (Svinick, 1999). When we consider cognitivist models we come to an era where attention is drawn to the learners; their mental associations (phase I), metacognition (Phase II), and self-regulation (phase III) showed us that there are too many learner variables to consider (Svinicki, 1999). That led to a shift in our focus: if there are so many variables to consider, what concept would provide the underlying similarities through which we could understand the fundamentals of cognitive development? Memory came to fore and now we know th...

Photo on <a href="http://foter.com/re/00cf88">Foter.com</a> Over the course of some past weeks, I had the delightful challenge of reading and revisiting the great giants that have contributed to our Education. We all have to refresh our memories about the colossal contributions that many scholars have bequeathed to humanity. The idea that we are more than the sum of our biological components has never failed to disquiet the minds of great thinkers. From the Greeks – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle – we have received the important legacy of man’s inherent ability to access knowledge. Through reflection, circumspection and perception, the belief that we are all born differently is firmly grounded in that legacy. Later, we received the legacy of instrumentality and the Romans conquered the world based on their need for minds that focused on a trade. The vocational tradition was then born and probably inspired much later behavioristic approaches. When relig...

Photo credit: <a href="http://foter.com/re/171dcc">Foter.com</a> As I read about learning and its intricacies, I keep wondering how interconnected, and interdependent, everything that is related to learning is, by nature and design. From the prism of arts, we can take, for starters, the idea that no new learning happens if not based upon prior knowledge ( Tokuhama - Espinosa , 2010; 2014). The fact that Aristotle has developed the same idea through the notion of schemas seems only to confirm that nature lends itself to a kind of observation to the keen eyes of true educators who are willingly to dissect its secrets. It is only when each student's vast array of previously learned content is accessed that what is known (content to be learned) will find a way to bind into what is already familiar. As each one of us has a different repertoire of previous experiences, it makes sense to use arts to hook what is known to what is to be learned by ...