Neuroeducation

There is a long history of interpreting learning in terms of the latest technologies. Examples include writing on a tablet, taking photographs and films, and making connections on a telephone switchboard. Brain-as-Computer Discourses represent an uncritical continuation of this trend, through which knowledge is reduced to information and learning is cast as inputting and manipulating that information.

Non-Trivial Constructivisms encompass a range of learning theories that invoke a “learning as construing” – vs. a “learning as constructing” – metaphor. The construing–constructing distinction is critical, and it became an issue because the French verb construire can be translated as either “to construe” (i.e., to integrate elements to make sense of) or “to construct” (i.e., to build something).

Within Developmental Discourses, learning is understood as a recursively elaborative process rather than a linear accumulative one. Most Developmental Discourses focus on how learners’ key habits of perception and interpretation change amid predictable sequences of biological, psychological, and emotional transformation.

“Learning as acquisition” – the Acquisition Metaphor – is probably the most commonly invoked learning metaphor in English. It is evident in such phrases as “grasping the point,” “taking things in,” “getting it,” “picking things up,” “hard to swallow,” “remember this stuff,” and “cramming for the test.” It is not theoretically sophisticated, relying on the assumption that knowledge comprises externalized objects, and asserting that learning is a process of moving those objects from the outside to the inside.

Proponents of Brain-Based Learning claim almost the same conceptual territory as Neuroeducation, with a somewhat more pragmatic emphasis. Brain-Based Learning aims to interrupt entrenched practices, conventions, and assumptions about the learning process by drawing scientific research into brain function and cognitive development, but its main focus in on school programs, lesson designs, and teaching methods.

Behaviorisms reject the notion that knowledge is some sort of external, stable, and context-free form. Rejecting attempts to explain learning in terms of unobservable mental processes, Behaviorisms focus instead on observable and measurable phenomena – thus operationally defining learning in terms of changes in behavior that are attributable to environmental factors.

Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary branch of biology that focuses on the structure, functions, and development of the nervous system. With a scope that spans the thousands of distinguishable substructures between the molecular to the cognitive, Neuroscience combines domains as varied as molecular biology, physiology, and psychology (among many others) while it has given rise to many other disciplines.

Mentalisms reach across any theory that (1) assumes a separation of mental from physical (inner from outer, subjective from objective, etc.) and (2) casts learning in terms of mental images, models, encodings, or other inner representations of the existing world. Some sort of barrier – typically the body, or fallible senses, or faulty subjective interpretations – is seen to prevent direct, first-hand knowledge of reality.