Implications of Affective and Social Neuroscience for Educational Theory

Abstract

The past decade has seen major advances in cognitive, affective and social neuroscience that have the potential to revolutionize educational theories about learning. The importance of emotion and social learning has long been recognized in education, but due to technological limitations in neuroscience research techniques, treatment of these topics in educational theory has largely not had the benefit of biological evidence to date. In this article, I lay out two general, complementary findings that have emerged from the past decade of neuroscience research on emotion and social processing, with a view to beginning a dialogue about the meaning of these findings for educational theory. First, emotion and cognition are intertwined, and involve interplay between the body and mind. Second, social processing and learning happen by internalizing our subjective interpretations of other people's beliefs, goals, feelings and actions, and vicariously experiencing aspects of these as if they were our own. Together, these two results from neuroscience could have important implications for the design of learning environments; to discover these will require reconciling established educational learning theories with the current neurobiological evidence.

Executive Functions as Predictors of School Performance and Social Relationships: Primary and Secondary School Students

“…Empathy has a direct influence on the students' interpersonal relationships (Immordino-Yang, 2011;Valiente, LemeryChalfant, & Swanson, 2010;Zorza, Marino, & Mesas, 2015), which improves their immersion in the classroom. It is possible that the predictive power of the EFs on academic performance and on social behavior increases when these variables are added in a multicausal way.…”

High school teachers’ experience of the educational potential of outdoor teaching and learning

“…The role of emotions in education is not well researched (Jarvis, 2006). Recent research in neuroscience reveals that emotions and cognition are closely intertwined and that the affective aspect of learning should be taken into consideration (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007;Immordino-Yang, 2011). That school-based outdoor learning in the school grounds was associated with positive feelings and increased motivation by the students could to such a large extent well be one of its most important potentials.…”

Brain-Based Learning Studies in Turkey: A Review for Methodological Analysis

“…Araştırmacılar (Davis, 2004;Willis, 2008;Immordino-Yang, 2011) beyin ve öğrenme arasındaki ilişkiyi açıklamanın kolay olmadığı ve öğrenmeyi etkileyen birçok değişkenin bütüncül etkisini belirlemenin zorluğu konusunda uyarmaktadır. Ayrıca böyle bir konuda prensiplerin biyolojik desteğini öne sürmenin ve bilimsel zemine dayandırmayı bilmenin gerekliliğini, aksi halde ispatlanmamış ilkelere başvurmanın öğrenciler için çok riskli olabileceğini vurgulamışlardır.…”

“…Böyle bir yöntem karmasının etkililiğinin deneysel olarak incelenmesinin güçlüğüne rağmen bu durum bilerek ya da bilmeyerek gözardı edilerek bu yönde çalışmalar yürütülmesi, elde edilen tutarsız sonuçlar ile alanın uygulayıcısı olan öğretmenleri yanlış yönlendirecektir. Bununla birlikte eğitsel sinirbilim alanındaki araştırmacıların (Davis, 2004;Willis, 2008;Immordino-Yang, 2011) …”