The bridges between neuroscience and education. Philosophical analysis of the debate

AGUSTIN F. MAURO

Buenos Aires

Workshop; Workshop on Philosophy and Neuroscience; 2018

There isa need for a reflexion on the practices of transference and use ofneuroscientific instruments and theories because the possibilitiesand limits of neuroscientific research in other contexts is notclear. This research studies the transference and use ofneuroscience in education. It analyzes the debate that originatedwith Bruer's paper "Education and the brain. A bridge too far".The presentation has two aims. A descriptive aim, to illustrate howthe bridge metaphor (and related models) highlights and hidesdifferent issues (frames the debate). And an argumentative aim, toshow the main arguments on the metascientific debate about thebridges between neuroscience and education. The conclusions regardingthe relationship between neuroscience and education are that it canbe analyzed in different units (disciplines, research contexts,languages), that neuroscientific research is currently not useful foreducational practice, but it might be useful for other researchdisciplines related to education, that there can be many bridgingstrategies, and that it is best construed by bidirectional exchangesbetween classroom/laboratory-based research (rather than a linearflow between ?basic? and ?applied? research).