Neuropedagogía

Neuropedagogy: Imagining the Learning Brain as Emotive Mind

Kathryn Patten Doctoral Student Simon Fraser University Paper Presented at IERG Conference July 2004 Vancouver, B.C.

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Introduction For too many decades, through a diaspora of discourses and innumerable voices, we have tried to better mankind through improved curriculum. When the news reports with alarming regularity themurders of children by children, we cannot complacently assert that we have made notable progress. Perhaps for too long we have based our efforts on the wrong concept: the wrong concept of the learning, developing brain. Recent years have seen an increased interest in the role of emotions in many disciplines, but specifically in the field of neuroscience. Neuroscientists, such as Antonio Damasio andJoseph Ledoux, have determined that emotions have a cognitive dimension and are therefore not contrary to, but necessary for rational thought. Neuropsychologists, most notably Daniel Goleman, have explored the psychological and physiological mechanisms associated with emotions and feelings. Goleman sees mankind in crisis and elucidates the need for educators to address the emotional mind. Education,however, has been reluctant to apply neuroscientific findings regarding emotion. Although the importance of emotion has been acknowledged recently in some educational literature and discourse, its role remains limited and undertheorized. Discourse in the arena of emotions has been limited to the role of teacher emotions related to the politics of educational reform and to teacher-studentinteractions. Feminists have politicized emotions in their battle to overcome the binary notion of emotional versus intellectual rigor. Some educators have proposed implications for pedagogy based on brain-based research, but little research has been conducted to ascertain specific applications of how emotion functions, perhaps because educational theorists have not ventured into the arena of neuropedagogyand there is distinct lack of discourse concerning its status and merit. The diaspora of curriculum theory has not elicited

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substantive progress in pedagogical practice to take us much beyond the non-emotive Cartesian “animal machine...and Kantian angel” (DeSousa, 1980, p 135). Perhaps it is time for a dramatic paradigm shift. Neuroscience: Emotions as neurological brain functionNeuroscience is a burgeoning field which is changing the way the world views emotions: not as something to be controlled and suppressed as the ancient Greeks and many of our mothers taught, but as the gateway to learning and memory. Ninety percent of all the neuroscientists who have ever lived are alive today (Wolfe & Brandt, 1998, p. 8). In large part due to improved scientific method, such as PositronEmission Tomography (PET), which depicts energy consumption of various parts of the brain; the perfecting of Multi-Resonance Imaging (MRI), functional MRI, and Nuclear MagneticResonance Imaging (NMRI) which provide cross-sectional images of soft tissue, knowledge of how the brain functions has increased dramatically in the last decade (Jensen, 1998, p. 2). Neuroscientists have rejected the ideathat specific parts of the brain perform designated singular tasks and now assert that brain parts are highly integrated, and while specific parts such as the amygdala function as the hub for certain tasks, they do not perform these tasks alone, but serve to orchestrate and coordinate neuronal activity. While many neuroscientists have contributed to the canon of brain function, I will focus onAntonio Damasio and Joseph Ledoux as two of the leaders in this field of study. Damasio is the Head of the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine and adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He is internationally recognized for his research on the neurology of memory, vision, and language, as well as his studies and work...