Neuroscience and Education

A Philosophical Appraisal

Clarence Joldersma, Clarence W. Joldersma

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317623106
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Teoria e pratica della didattica

This volume makes a philosophical contribution to the application of neuroscience in education. It frames neuroscience research in novel ways around educational conceptualizing and practices, while also taking a critical look at conceptual problems in neuroeducation and at the economic reasons driving the mind-brain education movement. It offers alternative approaches for situating neuroscience in educational research and practice, including non-reductionist models drawing from Dewey and phenomenological philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.

The volume gathers together an international bevy of leading philosophers of education who are in a unique position to contribute conceptually rich and theoretically framed insight on these new developments. The essays form an emerging dialogue to be used within philosophy of education as well as neuroeducation, educational psychology, teacher education and curriculum studies.

1 What Can Philosophers of Education Contribute to the Conversations that Connect Education and Neuroscience?

Clarence W. Joldersma

DOI: 10.4324/9781315754109-1

The book Neuroscience and Education: A Philosophical Appraisal makes a philosophical contribution to an emerging if not burgeoning discussion about the relations between education and neuroscience. There are, as one might suspect, many books and articles that describe this interconnection, including thoughtful assessments about the propriety of applying neuro-science to education. Yet this book is unique: it offers a novel perspective by bringing to the conversation the voices of philosophers of education. They are in a unique position to contribute conceptually rich, theoretically framed, historically situated appraisals of this new development. There is little literature on this subject by philosophers of education.

As is by now well known that neuroscience as an emergent discipline is widely taught around the world, both at undergraduate and graduate levels. ¹ There are also now a growing number of academic societies in (applied) neuroscience. ² Further, neuroscience is increasingly being applied in many academic fields, including economics, philosophy, theology, and aesthetics. Of relevance to the current book, it has also made a visible entry into educational research and practice. ³ Neuroscience is increasingly informing teacher education, as evidenced by a number of undergraduate and graduate programs in educational neuroscience. ⁴ There is ample indication that neuroscience is becoming a major force in the field of educational research and practice—in fact, the field of education is rapidly being transformed by neuroscience.

The explosion of books that bridge education and neuroscience show this. For example, there are many thoughtful volumes that address this interconnection aimed at teachers and other educational practitioners. One interesting example is the book edited by Sergio Della Sala and Mike Anderson, Neuroscience in Education: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (2012). This work brings together (cognitive, neuroscience) psychologists and educational theorists to discuss possibilities, wrong turns, and simplistic suggestions of how neuroscience can help educators. In a similar vein, David E. Sousa has edited an informative volume, Educational Neuroscience (2011), a book that introduces basic brain science to K–12 teachers and suggests a series of instructional strategies making use of that knowledge. It typifies the thoughtful application of neuroscience for teachers. A similar applicatory book is Louis Cozolino’s The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom (2013). This single-authored monograph is written for K–12 teachers, helping them navigate the information and possibilities of recent developments in social neuroscience. However, as might be expected, these ‘applied’ volumes do not address philosophical issues or even more generally possible critiques of the intersection between neuroscience and education.

There are also more scholarly books. Although it is impossible to do a comprehensive survey, a few examples of recent scholarly publications are worth noting. Kathryn Patten and Stephen Campbell’s edited volume, Educational Neuroscience: Initiatives and Emerging Issues (2011), is a book version of a themed issue of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory. The essayists are cognitive scientists, psychologists, and educational theorists specializing in neuroscience, and the essays are thoughtful and scholarly contributions to the discussion on a variety of theoretical and practical topics. Similarly, Paul Howard-Jones is also a prolific and important theorist in the intersection of education and neuroscience. For example, his book Introducing Neuroeducational Research: Neuroscience, Education and the Brain from Contexts to Practice (2010) introduces the interdisciplinary field, puts educators and scientists in dialogue, highlights current neuromyths, comments on methodology in this new field, clarifies neuro-educational ethics, and speculates about the future. Similarly, his edited volume, Education and Neuroscience: Evidence, Theory and Practical Application (2012), also exemplifies this approach. This book, which brings together neuroscientists and educators, considers current knowledge about brain functions that are important for areas of teaching, including reading, mathematics, music, and creativity. The volume tackles the way that neuro-science intersects with the various curricular subjects taught in K–12 school settings. In general, this genre of scholarship does important work in analyzing aspects of the intersection between education and neuroscience. But it isn’t yet philosophical. These books don’t typically utilize philosophical analysis, tackle philosophical themes, or seek out philosophical implications of neuroscientific developments. For example, although Howard-Jones does have philosophical insights, he is first of all an interdisciplinary scholar, and his work does not focus on philosophy as such. That is, his work is not a focused philosophical appraisal, and he does not develop insights for philosophy of education drawn from developments in neuroscience.

This short literature review of the intersection between neuroscience and education thus shows a philosophical lacuna. There is a dearth of literature that tackles philosophical issues around the interconnections between neuroscientific discovery and educational research and practice. Arguably, there is a need for philosophers of education to bring their expertise for an appraisal of the burgeoning educational neuroscience literature, including educational research, teacher education, and K–12 teaching. This book is thus uniquely situated, where leading philosophers of education do important philosophical analysis at this intersection. The book is premised on the idea that philosophy of education, a traditional field of research and teaching associated with most schools of education around the world, needs to address the philosophical implications of the topic of neuroscience and education. As educational research and the practices of teaching keep up with developments in neuroscience, education, and teacher training, it is important for philosophers of education to give philosophical appraisals of this emerging application of neuroscience to education. The book draws on the skills and expertise of philosophers of education to give a conceptual appraisal of neuroscience in education and the possibilities that it might offer to the philosophy of education. The present volume is one of the first forays into that conversation. There are currently no books, either edited volumes or monographs, in which philosophers of education focus on the interconnections between neuroscience and education.

Neuroscience and Education: A Philosophical Appraisal is a philosophical commentary on the interconnections between neuroscience and education. There are two main themes in the book. The first engages in a critique of aspects of neuroscience in educational research as well as problematic connections between neuroscience and educational practices. The second involves thinking creatively with neuroscience research to frame educational conceptualizing and educational practices in novel ways. Both of these themes run through all the essays. However, some focus more on critique and others more on possibilities. The book is therefore divided into two parts: “Critique” and “Possibilities.” I will give a brief synopsis of each chapter in the two sections.

The essays in the first section of the book focus primarily on developing specific criticisms of neuroscience in its relation to education. These include a critical look at the economic reasons driving the Mind-Brain Education movement, albeit disguised as the science of cognitive psychology; a critique of educators offering simple solutions connecting neuroscience to education when the relation is actually complex; and an analysis of the interpretive pitfalls of reading neuroscience research for education, including its pervasive educational neuromyths. In addressing these concerns, the chapters are not merely critical but also offer creative alternative approaches for situating neuroscience in educational research and practice, including non-reductionist models drawing from Dewey and phenomenology. Further, two extended models developed in the section are based on the analyses of human experiences offered by phenomenological philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as well as on the radical embodiment perspective of recent phenomenologists and cognitive theorists.

Emma Williams and Paul Standish’s chapter opens the first section. They begin by pointing out that one of the major challenges facing those working in the field of educational neuroscience today is to bridge the ‘gap’ between knowledge about neuronal activity in the brain (or specific brain regions) and our everyday cognitive human activities, such as learning. Their point is that there seems to be a category mistake, where scholars talk about what the brain does, when it ought to be about what a person does. What remains to be developed in their view is an educational neuroscience today with a different model of the relation between mind and brain. They acknowledge that their concern is not new and that the relation has been a key concern within the field of neuroscience more broadly for some time. A number of neuroscientists have looked to philosophy to address this issue, including particularly the philosophical understanding of consciousness. In that context, Williams and Standish draw on Peter Hacker’s arguments in his challenge to what he terms the ‘consciousness community’ and their adherence to “a mutant form of Cartesianism.” Williams and Standish outline Hacker’s critique of the current predominant conception of consciousness and suggest it is persuasive in its criticism of the consciousness community’s commitment to a faulty (yet long-standing) metaphysic. The authors then build on Hacker’s challenge to neuroscientific accounts of consciousness and the mind. In particular, they show that Hacker’s challenge can be extended and developed in certain positive ways that he himself overlooks. Drawing upon the analyses of human experiences offered by Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, they work to develop an account of the mind that goes beyond the predominant conception of consciousness in both its reductionist and non-reductivist forms. Through this, the authors open the way to a re-consideration of the relation between mind and brain. They argue that their account not only has significant implications for the project of educational neuroscience as a whole but also for pointing toward a better understanding of teaching and learning.

In the next chapter, Paul Smeyers focuses on the rhetoric of neuroscience in its attractiveness for educational research and practice. He acknowledges that neuroscience is ‘hot,’ that there are a growing number of academic positions, research projects, and fields with high expectations about neuroscience’s application to education. To situate his argument, he briefly surveys a variety of reflections by leading scholars on the nature of this sub-discipline and approach, together with insights on how the findings are relevant for various educational contexts. Smeyers develops a meta-analysis of these findings and highlights criticisms by several philosophers of education of this move in education. He argues that the tempting rhetoric of what he calls ‘the believers’ reveals more about what neuroscience possibly could offer than what it actually has to offer. Drawing numerous examples from the themed issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory edited by Patten and Campbell (discussed in the beginning of this chapter), he relates that despite warnings from leading colleagues in the field of neuroscience and from some psychologists, educational researchers continue to believe in its potential for the educational context. Smeyers thus is interested in exposing this blind faith by identifying the flaws in the so-called arguments and by interpreting more generally the position the believers embrace. As an alternative, he argues that a more balanced approach, one that invokes the particularities of the situation as well as a broader concept of practical rationality, is required for the study of education. This means, he believes, that educational researchers should reclaim their territory and thereby do justice to their responsibility in this area. This could be done in part by highlighting the importance of understanding social practices in terms of reasons and intentions. Smeyers suggests that although researchers and practitioners rely upon various sorts of knowledge, one of which he draws from Wittgenstein in particular is important, something he calls “knowing how to go on.” He acknowledges that this invokes something that is different from what one normally understands by ‘knowledge’ but that, nevertheless, it is strategically crucial in reclaiming the territory for education. His overall concern is that because education is complex, the scholarly discipline addressing this field should resist the many simple solutions connecting neuroscience and education, however tempting they may be.

Bruce Maxwell and Eric Racine’s chapter is next. Their interest is the interpretive pitfalls involved in reading neuroscience research, in particular for its application to social practices, such as teaching or parenting. Maxwell and Racine offer two examples of transferring neuroscience knowledge to social practices. Their goal is to uncover ways of tempering the general over-enthusiasm for, and unexamined acceptance of, neuroscience’s applications to everyday educational practices. Their first case, which at first glance isn’t as explicitly neuroscientific as one might expect, concerns what they call behavioral ethics, namely, moral reasoning. Here they draw on cognitive science research in the area of moral behavior, arguing that this research challenges the commonsense idea that ethical behavior is, and should be, based in conscious moral reasoning. Rather, this approach suggests that unethical behavior is largely from influences outside of the moral agent’s conscious control, situated rather in cognitive biases and situatedness that operate more at a subconscious level, concluding that teaching moral reasoning is not effective nor desirable as part of education. This example, broadly speaking, draws on research in neuropsychology. Maxwell and Racine develop a critique of this approach, arguing that its emphasis on instruction in ethical ‘blind spots’ of moral behavior comes up short, and that more deliberate moral reasoning still has a crucial place in education. Their second case study draws more explicitly on neuroscience research. In it they examine the potential for neuroscientific evidence to change the way parents might raise their children. They do so by looking at a set of ‘evidence-based’ practices called ‘responsive parenting.’ The critique emerging from this example includes the idea that we need to distinguish levels of knowledge, understand the nature of neuroscientific evidence, recognize that some applications of neuroscience to parenting can have negative consequences, and that we need to question the uncritical public trust in neuroscience and its quick translation into social practices. With this example, they want to establish respect for levels of empirical evidence, the appropriateness of applying such evidence in educational settings, possible negative effects of improper applications, and the role of public trust in such applications. Their overall aim is not to dismiss neuroscience research in education. Rather, when the limits of neuroscience research are appreciated, and especially when brain-level research is conducted in close consultation with research in other social sciences, they suggest the potential is great for neuroscience to contribute in meaningful ways to a better understanding of teaching and learning processes and to improving practice and policy in education. But their caution is that, as educational neuroscience’s record shows, when these conditions are not met, the marriage of education and neuroscience can lead to shortsighted approaches and direct harm to children, youth, and their families.

Deron Boyles’s chapter continues the critique section of the book, with a chapter that focuses particularly on the interplay between neuroscience’s reductionism and its commercialization. He begins with an exploration of the recent fascination with neuroscience. His argument is that neuroscience, including particularly its ‘application’ to education, is separated from history and philosophy but is cast in technological, biological, and cognitive terms. His goal is to resituate neuroscience within Deweyan pragmatism. The first part of the chapter sketches out this approach, including overviews of pragmatism, neopragmatism, and the recent neuropragmatism. In the second part of the chapter, he sketches out neuroscience, neuropsychology, and the Mind-Brain Education movement (MBE). His (somewhat controversial) claim is that MBE has a commercial subtext, including particularly the idea that following evidence-based practices will enhance education’s administrative control—a domestication or taming function. His point is that neuroscience evidence used in schooling is a political act. He states that they do so by reducing what teaching and learning mean to physical and behavioral phenomena in laboratory settings—his reductionism thesis. Boyle’s response to such reductive moves is to argue for a revised understanding of classical pragmatism and neopragmatism, developing something he calls neuropragmatism. He concludes that this is the most defensible way to situate neuroscience in the realm of authentic and generative education.

The section’s concluding chapter, written by Clarence Joldersma, continues Boyles’s theme by connecting the application of recent developments in neuroscience to education and the ideology of neoliberalism. His argument is that especially popular understandings of neuroscience can easily be co-opted by the political ideology of neoliberalism. The chapter begins with a short sketch of neoliberalism and its connection to education. Joldersma characterizes neoliberalism as, at first glance, a vision of reducing the size of government through market-based approaches. However, he argues, as a vision, it is also an ethics to guide human behavior, one of functioning as a rationally self-interested subject obligated to accept the risks of participating in market exchanges. Following Michael Peters, he calls this “responsibilizing the self,” something he connects to Foucault’s idea of governmentality. As an ideology, he outlines, this appears in education in the ideology of lifelong learning. Joldersma then turns to a sketch of neuroscience, with a particular focus on the emergence of ‘brain plasticity.’ He points out that this recent discovery is being applied to education in many ways, including through commercial projects. However, he is wary of the simple applications of plasticity in education. He shows there are methodological reasons for being wary of claims about plasticity. But his main critique is based on critical neuroscience, an emerging field that focuses on the socio-political interests that frame neuroscience research and its ready application in society. Joldersma turns to Victoria Pitts-Taylor’s idea of the neuronal self to argue that the idea of brain plasticity, in its application to education, gives neoliberalism another—powerful—area to ‘responsibilize the subject,’ especially in connection to lifelong learning. Accepting oneself as a ‘neuronal self’ makes it all-too-easy to accept the obligation that it is one’s economic and political duty to manage one’s brain for the sake of the changing economy. This has implications for the growing economic inequali...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 What Can Philosophers of Education Contribute to the Conversations that Connect Education and Neuroscience?
• Part I A Critique of Neuroscience in Educational Research and Practice
• Part II Thinking Philosophically with Neuroscience and Education
• Contributors
• Index