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educationAndNeuroscience.org

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+#+title:      educational neuroscience
+#+date:       [2024-02-08 Thu 10:00]
+#+filetags:   :class:education:neuroscience:teaching:
+#+identifier: 20240208T100049
+
++ https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/12/12/1622 this is a really really basic article and it contains a lot of things that I don't really buy as concepts (like that we live in a Modren Era of constant dopamine seeking, which appears to be at least have partially debunked)
++ https://www.nature.com/articles/npjscilearn201611 so this article seems to be making the argument that some stress is good and that stress/cortisol injections are capable of causing better memory formation and cohesion of ideas but also reduce the ability to properly recall *after* the stress, in other words you end up in a state where you can remember things well in stress but the ideas become solidified
++ http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/march-13th-2019 LOL LMAO &c. this is a piece about some of the wild ways folks are misusing concepts of neuroscience to make pedagogical conclusions, including the idea that learning disabilities simply won't matter with the right teaching
+  #+begin_quote
+Fourth, we think it’s inaccurate to suggest that “A number of different studies have shown that when students are given the freedom to think in ways that make sense to them, learning disabilities are no longer a barrier to . Yet many teachers have not been trained to teach in this way.”  We have no desire to argue for student limitations and absolutely agree with Boaler and Lamar’s call for educators to applaud student achievement, to set high expectations, and to express (realistic) confidence that students can reach them. But it’s inaccurate to suggest that with the “right teaching” learning disabilities in math would greatly diminish or even vanish. For some students difficulties persist despite excellent education.  We don’t know which article Boaler & Lamar meant to link to in support of this point—the one linked to concerns different methods of research for typical students vs students identified with a disability.
+  #+end_quote
+
+  And, alright, to be clear here there's a subtle distinction between "the right kind of teaching can help ameliorate the problems caused by learning disabilities" and the idea that learning disabilities simply do not exist anymore once the correct methodology is at play
+  + This is the Time magazine piece https://time.com/5539300/learning-disabilities-special-education-math-teachers-parents-students/ that they were talking about above
++ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/87567555.2011.580636 Okay, so this has some actually interesting points here. First, that it's really hard to come up with concrete applications of neuroscience to education. The details of how these things work don't obviously abstract upwards to practical pedagogy. Another point I liked, that I want to learn more about, is the idea that "short-term memory" is just focused attention. So this is interesting because it connects to [[denote:20220922T120509][phenomenology]], the idea of the horizon vs. the actual point of attention of consciousness. It's funny that I feel like a lot of these ideas were already presaged by century old philosophy examining the structures of consciousness. One thing about this paper is that it mentions the idea of needing frequent testing and while I really do like to eschew timed exams I have to wonder if coding assignments are, basically, testing for these purposes.
++ /Upgrade Your Teaching/ https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20157436W/Upgrade_Your_Teaching?edition=key%3A/books/OL37475758M I read through this book but was pretty disappointed by it. It feels like it falls into exactly the problem that article I liked up above ran into, where it just skips over the complications of how you apply neuroscience to practical recommendations in a rigorous way and tells just-so-stories
++ I was reminded of this book /Pragmatic Thinking and Learning/, which I haven't read in over a decade https://pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning/ and I wonder how it's aged. Is it just-so-stories and neuromyths or is it actually sound?
++ Another text I haven't read in a long time and haven't tried to apply to a classroom would be the classic /Thinking Fast and Slow/ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow) which is one of the books that popularized the model of system 1 vs. system 2 thinking (which if I remember correctly /Pragmatic Thinking and Learning/ called this L and R system in a nod to the old mythos of left and right brain, without quite ascertaining that worldview)
++ Okay, here's an interesting piece about how system 1 vs. system 2 models might be "unfalsifiable" and "confirmation bias at work" https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/a-hovercraft-full-of-eels/202103/the-false-dilemma-system-1-vs-system-2
+  + One of the papers linked therein: https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S1364-6613(18)30024-X
+  
+So here's an interesting meta-note: if system 1 vs. system 2 thinking can sometimes *work* as an internal model for helping yourself think and learn but it doesn't appear to have any real basis, then what are we actually tapping into when we can build tricks for learning built around the ideas? Is it a kind of placebo effect where thinking that you have tricks to help you learn helps you learn afterall? It wouldn't be unprecedented for something like that to happen (e.g. some reports of efficacy of EMDR)