The Need for Interdisciplinary Dialogue in Developing Ethical Approaches to Neuroeducational Research
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ORIGINAL PAPER
The Need for Interdisciplinary Dialogue in Developing Ethical Approaches to Neuroeducational Research Paul A. Howard-Jones & Kate D. Fenton
Received: 24 November 2010 / Accepted: 25 January 2011 / Published online: 16 February 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract This paper argues that many ethical issues in neuroeducational research cannot be appropriately addressed using the principles and guidance available in one of these areas alone, or by applying these in simple combination. Instead, interdisciplinary and public dialogue will be required to develop appropriate normative principles. In developing this argument, it examines neuroscientific and educational perspectives within three broad categories of ethical issue arising at the interface of cognitive neuroscience and education: issues regarding the carrying out of interdisciplinary research, the scrutiny and communication of findings and concepts, and the application of research and associated issues of policy likely to arise in the future. To help highlight the need for interdisciplinary and public discussion, we also report the opinions of a group of educators (comprising trainee teachers, teachers and head teachers) on the neuroeducational ethics of cognitive enhancing drugs, infant screening, genetic profiling and animal research.
P. A. Howard-Jones (*) Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 1JA, UK e-mail: [email protected] K. D. Fenton Department of Psychology, University of West of England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK
Keywords Educational neuroscience . Neuroeducational research . Education . Cognitive enhancing drugs . Infant screening . Genetic profiling . Animal research
Introduction The last decade has seen something of a step change in efforts to bring cognitive neuroscience and education together in dialogue. These efforts include a supranational project on “Learning Sciences and Brain Research” by the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) from 1999 to 2006) and the formation of the International Mind Brain and Education Society which launched its journal “Mind, Brain and Education” in 2007. This increase in activity may partly arise from anxieties over the “parallel world” of pseudo-neuroscience found in many schools. Many of these concepts are unscientific and educationally unhelpful and there is clearly a need for some serious “myth-busting”. There is, however, a more positive reason why discussions are breaking out between neuroscience and education. Many ideas are now emerging from neuroscience that are authentically relevant to education. Neuroscience has helped identify “number sense” (a non-symbolic representation of quantity) as an important foundation of mathematical development and associated with a specific region of the brain called the intraparietal sulcus [1]. As we learn to count aloud, our number
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sense integrates with our early ability to exactly represent small numbers (1 t
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