Shwartz talk at CEN
Compares approaches of neuroscience & education
· Cog neuroscience tend to look at outlier group – motivated to improve any deficits
· Educators , context is important ie the things they can control such as instructional tasks, classroom environment – they want to improve learning across the whole range
Education approach to application
Nothing as practical as a good theory
Needs theories to guide actions in the field
Education guided by broad, orientating theories eg Vygotsky, Marx
Do not really need to understand too much to help shape thinking about learning.
Education & psychology have a number of standing debates that have defied resolution
· Being told v discovery
· Decomposition v authentic practice
· Motivation v cognition
Possible research approach
Schwartz ‘hard to treat ‘motivation’ and ‘cognition’ separately when it comes to learning in the brain
Therefore lets try an approach to research that takes both into account.
Slide 57: Chen et al, Shohany et al. comparing agent with person. Note important to manipulate belief about agent. Greater arousal transfer & transfer for the person condition
Hippocampus, amygdala, reward/feedback circuitry implicated
Research led to following application
Manipulated belief and then compared science learning based on a website with a teach agent with self learning. Irrespective of prior level of achievement teach agent superior over self learning.
Comment on previous example as a way of doing interdisciplinary research
1. Started with contextual manipulation ( guided people’s beliefs)
2. Targeted a theoretical bottleneck – cognitive and affective accounts of social learning
3. Novel phenomena that both disciplines could use
4. Produces a corridor of explanation
· Not providing a single explanation of effect
· Working at multiple levels of explanation
Will they get linked up ? generative in the meantime
