Neuroethics, Neuroeducation, and Classroom Teaching: Where the Brain Sciences Meet Pedagogy
- PDF / 175,389 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
- 86 Downloads / 159 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Neuroethics, Neuroeducation, and Classroom Teaching: Where the Brain Sciences Meet Pedagogy Mariale Hardiman & Luke Rinne & Emma Gregory & Julia Yarmolinskaya
Received: 24 November 2010 / Accepted: 27 April 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract The popularization of neuroscientific ideas about learning—sometimes legitimate, sometimes merely commercial—poses a real challenge for classroom teachers who want to understand how children learn. Until teacher preparation programs are reconceived to incorporate relevant research from the neuroand cognitive sciences, teachers need translation and guidance to effectively use information about the brain and cognition. Absent such guidance, teachers, schools, and school districts may waste time and money pursuing so called “brain-based” interventions that lack a firm basis in research. Meanwhile, the success of our schools will continue to be narrowly defined by achievement standards that ignore knowledge of the neural and cognitive processes of learning. To achieve the goals of neuroeducation, its proponents must address unique ethical issues that neuroeducation raises for five different groups of individuals: a) practicing teachers, b) neuroscience researchers whose work could inform education, c) publishers and the popular media, d) educational policy-makers, and e) university-level teacher educators. We suggest ways in which these ethical challenges can be met and provide a model for
M. Hardiman (*) : L. Rinne : E. Gregory : J. Yarmolinskaya School of Education, Johns Hopkins University, 2800 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, USA e-mail: [email protected]
teacher preparation that will enable teachers themselves to translate findings from the neuro-and cognitive sciences and use legitimate research to inform how they design and deliver effective instruction. Keyword Educational neuroethics . Neuroeducation . Pedagogy . Classroom instruction Researchers from the neuro- and cognitive sciences have made rapid strides in the last two decades, producing findings that are highly relevant to the work of practitioners from various disciplines. In response to the ethical issues and challenges posed by the use of this emerging research, a new area of study has arisen—the field of neuroethics. Neuroethics is described as including not only the ethics of conducting neuroscientific studies, but also “evaluation of the ethical and social impact that the results of those studies might have, or ought to have, on existing social, ethical, and legal structures” ([1], p. 21). Racine [2] further expands the definition of neuroethics to what he calls “pragmatic neuroethics,” which promotes an interdisciplinary approach to the discovery and application of neuroscientific findings that benefit society). In accordance with these views, Kurt Fischer and colleagues have proposed that neuroethics must consider the ethical issues involved in applying neuroscience to educational practice [3]. This dimension of neuroethics might be termed educational neuroethi
Data Loading...
