Dear Antonio Lucero

You righty say that teachers and educators often refer to old works by philosophers, psychologists, and social scientists to support their theories and practices in education. But, almost never -- you say -- have you seen references to the modern science of the brain regarding how we humans learn. In your wise considerations, you also refer to "a valid model of how the brain learns."  Let me say that when you advise us to look at "how the brain learns", you are assuming, if I am not wrong, that it is one's brain that learns. Of course, we need our brain to learn, to see, and even to walk. But, if we performed a conceptual or grammatical investigation a la Wittgenstein, would it not be abusive and even misleading to say that it is our brain than learns, sees, and walks? 

To my understanding, it is learners or people as a whole and immersed in a given physical and social milieu or in a certain language-game, as Wittgenstein used to say, not their brains, who learn. Of course, when we learn, several things happen in our brains, for example, in terms of electric potentials, neural firings, connections among neurons, and the like. Without any doubt, it is important to know what happens in our brains when, for example, we passively learn by rote learning or by actively reconstructing or reinventing what we learn, as Piaget used to say. More than anyone, neuroscientists are in good position to do this important job and they are actually doing it. 

Note also that important and widely acclaimed teachers, such as M. Montessori, C. Freinet, and P.Freire, were excellent teachers, and yet they knew little, if any, about one's brain functioning. I guess that many present-day excellent teachers know almost nothing of the brain's functioning. Of course, I also admit that they could be more excellent teachers than they are if they took into account neural findings, namely those related to teaching/learning.

I know that neurosciences are now much in vogue. Thanks to them, our knowledge of the brain is now much more advanced than it was in the past. It is wonderful that we can profit from such knowledge to ameliorate the way teachers teach and students learn. Even though, I think that it makes little, if any, sense to say, as many neuroscientists do (e.g., Damasio, Gazzaniga) that our brain is social, moral, ethical, pedagogical, and the like. It makes good sense to say of a person that s/he thinks or acts in a social/antisocial, moral/immoral, ethical/unethical way. It is misleading and even nonsensical, however, to say, as neuroscientists tend  to do, that our brain is social/antisocial, moral/immoral, ethical/unethical, and the like.This means that I do not follow neuroscientists when they attribute to the brain, say, predicates that are applicable to a person as a whole (e.g., moral or immoral,  knowledgeable or relatively ignorant). As teachers, scientists, and  so forth, we should always look critically at all breakthroughs whatever.

Best wishes, Orlando

I belong to the Japanese Association of Language Teachers (JALT) and we have a Mind, Brain, and Education Special Interest Group. Robert Murphy is an individual who has done extensive work in this field - http://www.neuroelt.org/

As brain changers, we, the teachers must understand how the brain works.

Teachers as Brain-Changers: Neuroscience and Learning!

Bridging research findings to the realities of the classroom, however, is far easier said than done. In addition to navigating the daily challenges of our work, we must distinguish trendy "research-based" claims about the brain from those grounded in legitimate neuroscientific findings. And then we have to figure out how to apply what we've learned. Sifting through these claims to understand their origins is precisely the goal of my current research...

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2011/12/20/tln_pillars.html

Undoubtedly the changes in brain structure and function underlie changes in behavior called learning. While neuroscience has learned lots about brain structure and function, they have not clearly related brain changes structure and function to learning. It is not yet possible to identify specific behavior to specific brain action. Many are tempted to look at brain imaging technology but there are many problems with that approach (see Uttal, 2001). So, for the moment relying on psychological research is the best they can do. 

I think a lot of theachers are interest in this area, maybe the tounger generations are more into it... thats why one of the lines is neuroeducation...that can be really helpful for teachers to understand  better our students.

Dear Daniel,

It is encouraging to learn about your group. Thanks for the link.

Dear Ljubomir,

I am enthused that this is your research focus. I will read the reference you have provided.

What do you think about the application of heuristic models from neuroscience as tools for planning, monitoring, and conducting our classes. It is a technique that is used in dealing with complex systems, in general; it avoids getting bogged down in non-essential details.

Dear Jim,

I would recommend a very readable book by Elkhonen Goldberg, "The New Executive Brain," for example, his Chapter 6: Novelty, Routines, and Cerebral Hemispheres.

From this you can form your heuristic models of how the brain engages in cognitive processes that are relevant to learning. Exactly how the brain migrates its emphasis from novelty to routine processing is unknown; but you can now characterize the beginning and the end states. That is what is most important for our needs, as teachers. 

Dear Catalina,

We need to encourage all educators and teachers to learn more about the neuroscience of learning. It is ironic that they are in the profession of education, but may want to avoid educating themselves about pertinent parts of neuroscience.

Maybe there is a fear, akin to the fear of mathematics, that it is too difficult or challenging. 

By the way, relying on a neuroscientist consultant to tell you what is relevant to teaching or learning is a cop out. You have to immerse yourself in it in order to develop your intuition and make good judgements as to how to apply the applicable parts of neuroscience. 

Neuroscience is indeed providing essential knowledge about human beings, our experiences, and the learning process. It is important, though, to avoid the 'envatted brain' trap, forgetting that the brain is an integral part of the body, and the body is inextricably interwoven with its environment. The emerging paradigm of embodied cognition provides a conceptual framework that many contemporary researchers find productive; this includes the four 'E' adjectives, applied to the noun 'cognition:' enacted, embodied, embedded, and extended. Dave Ward and Mog Stapleton add an 'A' ajective --affective-- in this article:

Ward, Dave; Stapleton, Mog

2012 “Es are good; cognition as enacted, embodied, embedded, affective and extended,” in Consciousness in interaction: the role of natural and social context in shaping consciousness, Fabio Paglieri, editor, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamin Publishing Company, pp. 89-104 (https://philpapers.org/rec/WAREAG, accessed: 28 December 2016).

For additional sources, see the bibliography I've been building over the last four years. Please excuse me if you've seen it before; I have posted the link on several discussion page. This is the latest version. It has a section on education that is especially relevant to the matters being discussed on this thread.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312320657_Embodied_cognition_and_aesthetic_experience_a_bibliography

Data Embodied cognition and aesthetic experience: a bibliography

Following up on my last post, here is an interesting essay on the concept of the envatted brain:

Cosmelli, Diego; Thompson, Evan

2010 “Embodiment or envatment? Reflections on the bodily basis of consciousness” (preliminary version), in Enaction: toward a new paradigm for cognitive science, John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, editors, Cambridge/London, The MIT Press, pp. 361-385 (http://espra.scicog.fr/Thompson_Cosmelli_BrainBody.pdf, accessed: 8 January 2017).

Dear Antonio Lucero

You righty say that teachers and educators often refer to old works by philosophers, psychologists, and social scientists to support their theories and practices in education. But, almost never -- you say -- have you seen references to the modern science of the brain regarding how we humans learn. In your wise considerations, you also refer to "a valid model of how the brain learns."  Let me say that when you advise us to look at "how the brain learns", you are assuming, if I am not wrong, that it is one's brain that learns. Of course, we need our brain to learn, to see, and even to walk. But, if we performed a conceptual or grammatical investigation a la Wittgenstein, would it not be abusive and even misleading to say that it is our brain than learns, sees, and walks? 

To my understanding, it is learners or people as a whole and immersed in a given physical and social milieu or in a certain language-game, as Wittgenstein used to say, not their brains, who learn. Of course, when we learn, several things happen in our brains, for example, in terms of electric potentials, neural firings, connections among neurons, and the like. Without any doubt, it is important to know what happens in our brains when, for example, we passively learn by rote learning or by actively reconstructing or reinventing what we learn, as Piaget used to say. More than anyone, neuroscientists are in good position to do this important job and they are actually doing it. 

Note also that important and widely acclaimed teachers, such as M. Montessori, C. Freinet, and P.Freire, were excellent teachers, and yet they knew little, if any, about one's brain functioning. I guess that many present-day excellent teachers know almost nothing of the brain's functioning. Of course, I also admit that they could be more excellent teachers than they are if they took into account neural findings, namely those related to teaching/learning.

I know that neurosciences are now much in vogue. Thanks to them, our knowledge of the brain is now much more advanced than it was in the past. It is wonderful that we can profit from such knowledge to ameliorate the way teachers teach and students learn. Even though, I think that it makes little, if any, sense to say, as many neuroscientists do (e.g., Damasio, Gazzaniga) that our brain is social, moral, ethical, pedagogical, and the like. It makes good sense to say of a person that s/he thinks or acts in a social/antisocial, moral/immoral, ethical/unethical way. It is misleading and even nonsensical, however, to say, as neuroscientists tend  to do, that our brain is social/antisocial, moral/immoral, ethical/unethical, and the like.This means that I do not follow neuroscientists when they attribute to the brain, say, predicates that are applicable to a person as a whole (e.g., moral or immoral,  knowledgeable or relatively ignorant). As teachers, scientists, and  so forth, we should always look critically at all breakthroughs whatever.

Best wishes, Orlando

Engaging brain in learning process rise my curiosity in fact. I think it is important for language instructors to study neuroscience and to know the relation between the language and brain. Thank you for raising such question. 

Liqaa 

Orlando, very good point regarding Wittgenstein, learning and neuriscience. Ryle, makes similar point.

Jim, thank you very much for the positive tone regarding my reference to Wittgenstein, learning and neuroscience. If Gilbert Ryle makes similar points, then I am in good company. It is a sad reality that psychologists, among other scientists, often forget to make conceptual or grammatical investigations when they perform empirical research or make some theoretical claims. This partly explains what the neo-Popperian Paul Meehl called, in his article published in 1978 in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, the slow progress of soft psychology. Actually, an empirical research conducted in an atmosphere of conceptual confusion rarely, if ever, clarifies anything. Although it is has been made a long time ago, Wittgenstein's astute remark, in his famous Philosophical Investigations, that in psychology there are experimental methods but conceptual confusion, it is still applicable to several present-day experiments in psychology. As I said in my previous answer, the idea that it is our brains that learn would not pass, say, the test of a conceptual investigation. If neuroscientists performed a conceptual investigation they would be led to the conclusion that it is people as a whole, not their brains, who learn, teach, see, walk, and the like. To think, for example, of a brain that learns or teaches, even defies our imagination.  It may be also the case that, while saying that our brains learn, we are speaking more metaphorically than  literally.

Dear David and Orlando,

Thank you for pointing out the distinction between the organ called the brain and the person as a whole. It is a distinction that is good to remember. Unfortunately it is our human nature to view the world through the particular facet that occupies our thoughts at the time.

Of all the organs that comprise our bodies, the brain is the one that is clearly most representative of our thinking processes, including learning. So it is natural if the brain is your focus, for you to use it as the principle component of the human being to represent what goes on in learning.

The goal for all of us is to find concise, effective ways of functionally modeling what goes on in the learning process.

We must remember that models do not have the full dimensionality of reality. (As Solomon Golomb of MIT once said: "Don't eat the menu.") Models only use the most salient features to serve the desired goal.

The models of novelty processing and routine processing can be very useful. Models of the dopamine learning cycle as relates to considerations of importance and motivation serve as good guideposts. The use of mirror neurons for unstructured learning is also important.

So knowledge of what happens in the brain as information is processed, including the physical changes (plasticity) that take place as we learn is invaluable, especially if this knowledge can be encapsulated in relatively simple heuristic models.

Forgive me if I refer to the "brain" learning. You know what I mean. It is like saying "This car handles well;" when you really mean "It is easy for me to control this car." It is just a shorthand. Another example: during the time of Alan Touring, "computers" meant people who did computations; but once the computing machines were invented "computers" meant these machines, not the people. Hopefully, before long new, concise terminology will emerge to make the distinctions between "people using their brains to learn" and "brains learning."

In the meantime, we just have to put things in context to understand one another - nothing new.

Dear @Lucero, you have stated "What do you think about the application of heuristic models from neuroscience as tools for planning, monitoring, and conducting our classes.." Yes, I find this is very good area of application of heuristic models from neuroscience.

Do you already know for any relevant reference about this emerging issue?

Dear Ljubomir, I guess I should try to write up what I have done in this regard.

Dear Antonio:

Regarding your statement "Hopefully, before long new, concise terminology will emerge to make the distinctions between 'people using their brains to learn' and 'brains learning'," I would just like to add that such a terminology has emerged, or is in the process of emerging, within embodied cognition theory. I think this can help us move beyond the vestiges of the traditional 'soul-body' or 'mind-body' dualistic paradigm that continues to influence some research (not all) in the area of neuroscience. The articles I provided in my last two posts on this thread explain this in relatively concise terms, and the bibliography is more exhaustive, for anyone who wants to dig deeper.

Best regards,

David

Dear David,

I did a quick review of "Es are good. Cognition as enacted, embodied, embedded, affective and extended." by Dave Ward & Mog Stapleton.

Thank you for the reference.

The parts where I saw references to "brain" involved perception. But here too there is a mixing of hierarchies between the brain and the person. It appears to me that when they are referring to subconscious processes, they tend to use the word brain, as though it is the actor. When it comes to conscious deliberate actions they refer to the person.

The tangle of hierarchies is almost unavoidable. Maybe that is what makes us human?  We are able to deal with apparent contradictions in our daily lives. (When it comes to pure logic, we are stymied - Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach.")

Let's be human!

Dear Antonio:

Thanks for your thoughts on this. The term 'brain' first appears after 12 pages though, as the authors look at a few neuroscientific studies and compare them with their views on embodied cognition, which is the gist of the article. I don't see the tangle there. Perhaps the other article (Cosmelli & Thompson 2010) would be helpful for understanding the embodied/enactive stance. I should mention that there are major contradictions and arguments within this emerging paradigm. A lot of things are still up in the air (for example, the matter of mental representations), which makes it exciting to follow.

Warm regards,

David

Dear David and Orlando,

I just remembered a research project I had directed many years ago in which we had developed an unspervised computer algorithm which taught itself how to classify infrared images of various military vehicles - a task that was beyond the ability of a human because the dimensionality was too high.

We provided a training set of infrared images to the algorithm. The algorithm used the concepts of class entropy and recursive bifurcation of the mixed populations in order to reduce the class entropy at each step of the process. When finished, the terminal nodes of the resultant binary decision tree contained images belonging to a single class of vehicles or nearly a single class.

We then input an independent set of test images to see how well the algorithm could classify the test images. The results were extremely good.

This would be an example of learning (in this case, how to classify infrared images of military vehicles) for something far removed from being a person or part of a person.

My conclusion is that it should not be prohibited to use the word "learning" for agents that are not persons.

Another example from immunology would be how our cells "learn" how to combat viral infections.

The context gives meaning to all words, there are no single, absolute meanings to words.

Dear Antonio:

Of course, everbody is free to choose her/his terms. My point was not so much the language, but the conceptual foundations involved in the application of neuroscience, and cognitive science in general, in education. Neuroscience is a huge and essential part of this, but in the last quarter of a century or so, a paradigm shift has been gathering steam, moving beyond a disembodied, computationalist/cognitivist framework, and looking at embodied cognition, which implies the structural coupling (or interaction) of the brain, the rest of the body, its extensions (tools, notations, etc.) and the world.

Last December a group of researchers working in this area gathered at the University of California, Irvine, in a conference called A Body of Knowledge: Embodied Cognition and the Arts. As an encounter between people working in the cognitive sciences and practicing artists, it was enlightening. The topic of education came up frequently. Videos in which organizers and keynote speakers explain their views were put on line recently. Perhaps this material is more accesible and concise than the published sources I have been suggesting on this thread. I recommend starting with the video at the top of the page; it's an excellent introduction to the embodied perspective, provided by leaders in the field. Here is the link:

http://sites.uci.edu/bok2016/

A digital proceedings volume is in the works and should be available this summer at the University of California's eScholarship site.

So, getting back to your initial question, I am receptive to studies of the neuroscience of learning, and I try to use them in my educational praxis, but I make an effort to remain aware of the basic reality that 'teachers' and 'students' are biological organisms --in our case primates with an innate capacity for symbolic thought and action--, immersed in our physical and cultural contexts. There is narrow neuroscience and embodied neuroscience, and a gradation between these two poles; this distinction should be kept in our embodied minds, I think, while we look for ways to move our educational work forward.

Cheers,

David

Dear David,

Thank you for your insights and your references. I have reviewed the previous ones and I intend to review this one soon.

We are all making our attempts at understanding various phenomena, including "learning," bringing to bear our respective knowledge base.

Since some of this is fairly new, there are changes taking place in terminology and concepts. Hopefully, things will stabilize before long, and what was considered outlandish to consider will become commonly accepted.

I fully agree with the extended intelligence you speak of, which includes many parts of our bodies, external to our cranium, as well as social intelligence which involves other people individually and in groups. It's just that I know that an understanding of how our brains are intimately involved in the learning process, will make us even better teachers and students.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Antonio

For those of you interested in this topic, I have added a description of work I had done on applying neuroscience concepts to teaching English as a Foreign Language to my ResearchGate Project. I look forward to any feedback.

Dear @Antonio, many thanks for your work entitled "A practical application of some neuroscience concepts to teaching English as a foreign language".

Dear @Antonio, maybe this chapter may be useful for the issue of heuristics in teaching.

The Heuristics of Effective Teaching!

Thank you Ljubomir.

It looks like an excellent, well-thoughtout treatise.

Did you write it?