Stephen R. Campbell

Educational Neuroscience: Motivations, methodology, and implications

‘What does the brain have to do with learning?’Prima facie, this may seem like a strange thing for anyone to say, especially educational scholars, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. There are, however, valid objections to injecting various and sundry neuroscientific considerations piecemeal into the vast field of education. These objections exist in a variety of dimensions. After providing a working definition for educational neuroscience, identifying the ‘mindbrain’ as the proper object of study thereof, I discuss, dispel or dismiss some of these objections prior to presenting my motivations, aims, and prospects for this new area of educational research. I then briefly outline a positive case for educational neuroscience in terms of theories, methods, and collaborations, and conclude with a brief discussion of some challenges, results, and implications thereof. Naturally, the following considerations are but my own, some of which may be shared to some extent by others working in this area, as the case may be.

Introduction: Educational Neuroscience

This Special Issue of Educational Philosophy andTheory provides an overview of a number of recent initiatives in a new area of research that is coming to be known as educational neuroscience. Educational neuroscience, as a first approximation, variously involves syntheses of theories, methods, and techniques of the neurosciences, as applied to and informed by educational research and practice. Contributions to this special issue were sought from principals involved in initiatives pertaining to educational neuroscience with common foci on 1) motivations, aims and prospects; 2) theories, methods, collaborations; and 3) challenges, results, and implications, both potential and actual, resulting from these initiatives. Contributors were asked to write position statements with special emphasis on the motivations, methodologies, and practical implications of their particular initiatives for educational philosophy and theory, as well as for educational research and pedagogy. What emerges in this special issue is an indication of the wide range of initiatives related to educational neuroscience. This issue presents a wide variety of initiatives and methodologies, as well as common goals, concerns and issues. Many topics raised herein are endemic to the emergence of a new discipline: for instance, a need for more coherent terminology, a struggle to identify and establish theoretical and philosophical foundations, a quest for practical empirically-based models, and a requirement for standards of ethical practice. Amplifying problems in establishing the new discipline of educational neuroscience is its cross-disciplinary nature and its consequential need to combine a variety of resources, methodologies, and results. In order to include as wide a variety of responses as possible, authors truncated their submissions to present brief overviews of their perspectives, purposes, portents, and projects. The authors examine a variety of concerns, issues, and directions relating to educational neuroscience; as well as revealing a need to establish theories, models, ethics, methodologies and a common language. Stephen Campbell, an educational philosopher and researcher in mathematics education at Simon Fraser University, opens this special issue by considering the nature of educational neuroscience. In so doing, he identifies its proper object of study as the ‘mindbrain’. Campbell advocates a radical theory of embodied cognition that takes as a foundational assumption that any and all changes in subjective experience necessarily entail associated changes in brain and body behavior. Accordingly, he has been expanding his empirical research in mathematics education to include methods and techniques of psychophysiology and cognitive neuroscience in his studies of mathematical cognition and learning. Educational Philosophy and Theory,Vol. 43, No. 1, 2011 doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2010.00700.x

Embodied Minds and Dancing Brains: New Opportunities for Research in Mathematics Education

This chapter reports on an initiative in educational research in mathematics education that is augmenting traditional methods of educational research with methods of cognitive neuroscience and psychophysiology. Background and motivation are provided for this initiative—referred to here as mathematics educational neuroscience. Relations and differences between cognitive neuroscience and educational neuroscience are proposed that may have some bearing as to how this area unfolds. The key role of embodied cognition as a theoretical framework is discussed in some detail, and some methodological considerations are presented and illustrated as well. Overall, mathematics educational neuroscience presents exciting new opportunities for research in mathematics education and for educational research in general.

Learning as Embodied Action

The position advanced in this paper is derived in part from the work of Varela, Thompson and Rosch [24] as described in their 1991 book, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive science and human experience, which in turn draws heavily from Varela’s earlier work with Maturana [19] as found in their 1987 book, The Tree of Knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding. We begin with a brief perspective of the philosophical background which gave rise to and inspired Varela et al.’s enactive view of cognition. The major issues addressed revolve around the notion of representation and what is commonly referred to as the mindbody problem. Attempts to resolve this problem essentially define and motivate developments in cognitive science, thus affecting our understanding of mental imagery as well. It will be seen, as we subsequently present Varela et al.’s formulation, of their enactive view of cognition as embodied action, that their theory is no exception in this regard. Implications of this view will eventually require a complete reconsideration of the notion of representation. Theories of mental imagery presupposing a representationalism must then, in some manner, be recast in terms of the immediate experiential presentations of consciousness in all of its modalities. In the final section of the paper, some of the manifest implications of this view for teaching and learning and the environments in which these occur will be discussed.

Mathematical Modeling and Virtual Environments

With the advent of new tools for constructing increasingly popular web-based virtual environments1 such as Second Life , educators face fundamental new questions. What kinds of teaching and learning experiences are possible in web-based mult-user virtual environments (VEs) that are not possible in physical environments (PEs)? How do teaching and learning experiences in VEs relate to teaching and learning experiences in PEs? With the special regard to mathematics education herein, what kinds of mathematics and mathematical applications can be modeled, simulated, and rendered more practically and intuitively in VEs than in PEs? What theories and methodologies might best be brought to bear in researching the teaching and learning of mathematical modeling and applications in virtual environments? This chapter offers background, overviews, inroads into formulating these and other related questions.

Exploring Cardinality in the Era of Touchscreen-Based Technology.

ABSTRACT This paper explores how a young child (56 m) builds an understanding of the cardinality principle through communicative, touchscreen-based activities involving talk, gesture and body engagement working via multimodal, touchscreen interface using contemporary mobile technology. Drawing upon Nemirovskys perceptuomotor integration theoretical lens and other foundational aspects of Husserlian phenomenology, we present an in-depth case study of a preschool child developing mathematical expertise and tool fluency using an iPad application called TouchCounts to operate with cardinal numbers. Overall, this study demonstrates that the one-on-one multimodal touch, sight and auditory feedback via a touchscreen device can serve to assist in a childs development of cardinality.

Dynamic tracking of elementary preservice teachers’ experiences with computer-based mathematics learning environments

A challenging task in educational research today is to understand the implications of recent developments in computer-based learning environments. On the other hand, questions regarding learning and mathematical cognition have long been a central focus of research in mathematics education. Adding technology compounds an already complex problematic. Fortunately, computer-based technology also provides researchers with new ways of studying cognition and instruction. This paper introduces a new method for dynamically tracking learners’ experiences in computer-based learning environments. Dynamic tracking is illustrated in both a classroom and a clinical setting by drawing on two studies with elementary preservice teachers working in computer-based mathematics learning environments.

Commentary on the Chapter by Ferdinand Rivera, “Neural Correlates of Gender, Culture, and Race and Implications to Embodied Thinking in Mathematics”

What differences in gender, culture, and race can be attributed to the biological evolution of the species, and what differences in gender, culture, and race can be attributed to social interaction? Such a polarized question is well posed only if these areas of attribution, biology and sociology, are independent of each other. A moment’s reflection may suggest that biological evolution and social interaction in the human species are to a large extent co-dependent. There are many distinctions that are but distinctions in thought and perception, and not independent in fact—and there are those who take the co-dependent arising of all things as a matter of fact. Be this as it may, some differences may predate others. For instance, sexual differences in humans may predate social interaction. However, the biological emergence of sexual differences in species may also be seen as an important affordance, perhaps even a sine qua non, for social interaction. Beyond and even within the constraints of kinship, social interaction, for better or for worse, must be predicated, for the most part of our evolutionary history, on biological differences of various kinds, covering wide spectra of attractions and repulsions. Through the means of agriculture and industry, and with continued advances in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology, humans have evolved to a point where social interaction can take place in purely semiotic and ideational terms, independently of biological characteristics. Whereas symbols and signs are visible, ideas are not (Merleau-Ponty 1968). Or are they?