Carboni Alejandra, Maiche Alejandro, Valle-Lisboa Juan C
Centro de Investigación Básica en Psicología e Instituto de Fundamentos y Métodos, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Centro Interdisciplinario de Cognición Para la Enseñanza y el Aprendizaje, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2021 Sep 28;15:718399. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.718399. eCollection 2021.
In recent decades, Cognitive Neuroscience has evolved from a rather arcane field trying to understand how the brain supports mental activities, to one that contributes to public policies. In this article, we focus on the contributions from Cognitive Neuroscience to Education. This line of research has produced a great deal of information that can potentially help in the transformation of Education, promoting interventions that help in several domains including literacy and math learning, social skills and science. The growth of the Neurosciences has also created a public demand for knowledge and a market for neuro-products to fulfill these demands, through books, booklets, courses, apps and websites. These products are not always based on scientific findings and coupled to the complexities of the scientific theories and evidence, have led to the propagation of misconceptions and the perpetuation of neuromyths. This is particularly harmful for educators because these misconceptions might make them abandon useful practices in favor of others not sustained by evidence. In order to bridge the gap between Education and Neuroscience, we have been conducting, since 2013, a set of activities that put educators and scientists to work together in research projects. The participation goes from discussing the research results of our projects to being part and deciding aspects of the field interventions. Another strategy consists of a course centered around the applications of Neuroscience to Education and their empirical and theoretical bases. These two strategies have to be compared to popularization efforts that just present Neuroscientific results. We show that the more the educators are involved in the discussion of the methodological bases of Neuroscientific knowledge, be it in the course or as part of a stay, the better they manage the underlying concepts. We argue that this is due to the understanding of scientific principles, which leads to a more profound comprehension of what the evidence can and cannot support, thus shielding teachers from the false allure of some commercial neuro-products. We discuss the three approaches and present our efforts to determine whether they lead to a strong understanding of the conceptual and empirical base of Neuroscience.
近几十年来，认知神经科学已从一个试图理解大脑如何支持心理活动的相当晦涩的领域，发展成为一个能为公共政策做出贡献的领域。在本文中，我们聚焦于认知神经科学对教育的贡献。这一系列研究已经产生了大量信息，这些信息有可能帮助教育转型，推动在包括读写和数学学习、社交技能以及科学等多个领域的干预措施。神经科学的发展也引发了公众对知识的需求以及对神经产品的市场需求，以通过书籍、小册子、课程、应用程序和网站来满足这些需求。这些产品并不总是基于科学发现，再加上科学理论和证据的复杂性，导致了误解的传播和神经神话的持续存在。这对教育工作者尤其有害，因为这些误解可能会使他们放弃有用的做法，转而采用没有证据支持的其他做法。为了弥合教育与神经科学之间的差距，自2013年以来，我们一直在开展一系列活动，让教育工作者和科学家共同参与研究项目。参与程度从讨论我们项目的研究结果到参与实地干预的各个方面并做出决策。另一种策略是开设一门围绕神经科学在教育中的应用及其实证和理论基础的课程。必须将这两种策略与仅仅呈现神经科学研究结果的科普工作进行比较。我们表明，教育工作者越多地参与神经科学知识方法论基础的讨论，无论是在课程中还是作为停留访问的一部分，他们就越能更好地理解基本概念。我们认为这是由于对科学原理的理解，这导致对证据所能支持和不能支持的内容有更深刻的理解，从而使教师免受一些商业神经产品的虚假诱惑。我们讨论这三种方法，并介绍我们为确定它们是否能导致对神经科学的概念和实证基础有深入理解所做的努力。
