Neurociencia para educadores – BUENO (I-DCSGH)

BUENO, D. Neurociencia para educadores. Barcelona: Octaedro, 2017. Resenha de: GARCÍA ANDRÉS, Joaquín. Íber – Didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales, Geografía e Historia, n.95, p.84-85, abr., 2019.

David Bueno, investigador en genética de la Universidad de Barcelona, aborda en este libro un amplio repertorio de cuestiones sobre el cerebro de los alumnos y alumnas a través de diecisiete preguntas que, partiendo de la premisa de que este órgano que dirige, gestiona y rige las múltiples actividades que realiza nuestro cuerpo es el que, a partir del comportamiento, nos permite adaptarnos al ambiente al mismo tiempo que lo transformamos. En tal sentido, la educación –la profesión más antigua del mundo, como él la denomina– incide de una forma sustancial en el funcionamiento del cerebro. Por ello, esta obra pretende definir cuál ha de ser el objetivo consciente de la educación, desde un punto de vista social, familiar y, por supuesto, pedagógico, ya que, según sea la respuesta así serán las estrategias educativas a adoptar.

A su juicio, ese objetivo ha de ser ayudar a las personas a crecer con –pero sobre todo en– dignidad. El autor asegura que «la educación ha de ser un elemento de satisfacción que surja de la utilidad que estimula nuestra imaginación», a través principalmente del insustituible papel de las emociones y del trabajo cooperativo. Y las páginas del libro van desgranando respuestas que explican aquello que busca el cerebro cuando aprende algo y, en consecuencia, qué se le puede y se le debe ofrecer al estudiantado.

Cuestiones como ¿las capacidades cognitivas dependen de nuestros genes? ¿cómo funciona el cerebro? o ¿existen las inteligencias múltiples? encabezan esta nómina de interrogantes que gradualmente van concretándose en aspectos más puntuales referidos a los motivos por los que se aburren los niños en clase, cómo se puede desaprender o por qué a los adolescentes les gusta saltarse las normas. Las páginas finales atienden a inquietudes vinculadas a la motivación, la creatividad, la influencia del ambiente social o la «utilidad» de las materias consideradas marías.

A modo de conclusiones, incluye una relación de once «aspectos clave del cerebro» relacionados con la práctica educativa que aluden al hecho de que el cerebro es un órgano muy plástico, en continua reconstrucción, en el que las conexiones neuronales más sólidas son las que se nutren de las emociones, aunque solo fuera porque se vinculan con la supervivencia.

Un imperativo vital no solo del individuo, sino también de la sociedad; de ahí que los aprendizajes cooperativos y colaborativos resulten más significativos y activen muchas más redes neuronales que otros. De modo análogo, El autor destaca el hecho de que las novedades y las sorpresas facilitan la captación de la atención del alumnado de un modo automático, lo que las convierte en resortes motivadores de primer orden, un incentivo para el aprendizaje que también estimula el optimismo.

Otro aspecto que se señala es el relacionado con las actitudes, cuya adquisición se hace en gran medida por imitación, en un proceso en el que las neuronas espejo son fundamentales a su vez para lograr estimular ese otro gran objetivo educativo que es el de dar alas a la creatividad. Un propósito que lleva a resituar a determinadas asignaturas en un lugar de preeminencia junto con las denominadas materias «instrumentales», en el seno de un funcionamiento integrado y no parcelado de las funciones cerebrales, como habitualmente se hace en el marco académico.

En sintonía con esta línea argumental también se tienen en cuenta a los enemigos del cerebro, el aprendizaje y la educación, entre los que destaca el estrés cuando este es crónico, dado que altera las conexiones neurales de determinadas zonas del cerebro, en particular las vinculadas con la reflexión, el control de las emociones, la toma de decisiones y el control ejecutivo.

De ahí su trascendencia, más aún en la medida en que deja una huella imborrable en el cerebro que puede afectar a la conducta de las personas para toda la vida.

En suma, una obra tan interesante como útil que acerca la neurociencia al lector de un modo comprensible, riguroso, ameno y estimulante, hasta el punto de introducir referencias y ejemplos muy ilustrativos, así como un original bonus track que, a modo de recompensa, vincula muchas de las ideas primordiales que desliza a través de sus páginas con ese oscuro objeto de deseo que es el placer.

Muchas de las enseñanzas que se pueden adquirir con la lectura de este libro permiten reivindicar el valor de los aspectos formales del aprendizaje, situando estos en el mismo nivel que los contenidos teóricos, tantas veces «idolatrados» por los docentes. No en vano, en palabras del autor, «las emociones siguen siendo el elemento multiplicador de la ecuación del aprendizaje».

Joaquín García Andrés – E-mail: [email protected]

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Eminent Educators Studies in Intellectual Influence – BERUBE (CSS)

BERUBE, Maurice R. Eminent Educators Studies in Intellectual Influence. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. 176p. Resenha de: Canadian Social Studies, v.37, n.2, 2003.

Based on comments included in both the preface and introductory chapter of this book, it appears that the author of Eminent Educators intends to explore the ways in which selected intellectuals have impacted public school education in the United States. Specifically, the first line of the first chapter reads, This study seeks to flesh out the turning points in American public school education through biographical portraits of the major change agents combined with a policy analysis of their impact (p. 1). While this statement indicates a clear purpose, the book rapidly loses focus and coherence. Although Berube does examine the thought of John Dewey, Howard Gardner, Carol Gilligan, and John Ogbu and does attempt to demonstrate that these individuals did help to shape American education, several major problems undermine the author’s ability to achieve his stated purpose.

Problems emerge immediately. In the first chapter of the book, titled In Search of Leadership, Berube launches a discussion of the notion of leadership, presumably in the effort to clarify the ways in which he considers the individuals he has selected for examination to be leaders. The discussion begins by claiming that there actually is no clear definition of what constitutes leadership (p. 2). While this is not a surprising claim, the author does not provide a direct and clear argument explaining the qualities of leadership that will be used in this study. Rather, the discussion that follows examines such issues as whether leadership can be taught, the history of the idea of leadership (which includes an unsubstantiated claim that the word ‘leader’ does not enter the vocabulary of Europeans until the 14th century), and a nine page diatribe about the popularization of leadership (which includes a overly detailed and ahistorical trashing of ‘how-to-manuals’ and their authors from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People to Bob Briner’s The Management Methods of Jesus).

While the attempt to elucidate a definition of leadership is obscure, a more serious problem is embedded in this chapter and is repeated throughout the book – that is, the serious lack of support for stated claims. For example, in this first chapter the author claims that leadership must have a moral component. To support this claim he strings together long quotations drawn from the work of James MacGregor Burns and then attempts to support Burns’ position by indicating a list of people (including Tomas J. Sergiovanni, Warren Bennis, Burt Nanus, Howard Gardner, and Stephen Covey) who claim to have been influenced by Burns (p. 5). This approach does not substantiate the claim. Further, the claim that leaders must be moral is seriously challenged when individuals such as Hitler and Stalin are considered. Berube does not ignore the challenge, but again he attempts to support his contention that such people are not leaders by quoting statements made by other writers. Specifically, the author poses the questions Must true leadership transform society for the good as Burns argued? Or are the Hitlers of the world also leaders since they had goals shared by followers? (pp. 5-6). These questions are immediately followed by these statements:

Wills confronted the Hitler problem. Wills’s [sic] ‘aim is to destroy Hitler’ as a leader, although ‘Hitler’s followers shared, at some level, his goals.’ ‘Hitler’s enormities’, he concluded, ‘arouse hatred in me.’ For Wills, then, Hitler is not a true leader.
Similarly, Covey dismissed Hitler as being an authentic leader. According to Covey, Hitler lacked a ‘moral compass’ and ‘violated compass principles.’ In short, Covey agreed with Burns that leadership must be moral (p. 6).

In the judgement of this reader, the simple reiteration of statements made by others does not provide a substantive or convincing argument to support the claim that leadership requires a moral component. Similarly the problems of incoherent narrative style and incoherent organization of arguments plague the rest of the book. An examination of the main chapters demonstrates the difficulty.

Berube devotes two chapters to an examination of John Dewey. Chapter 2, titled ‘John Dewey: American Genius,’ includes a brief discussion of Dewey’s life experiences and a rehashing of some of Dewey’s educational philosophy. Although this chapter does not illuminate any unique ideas about Dewey’s stature as an educational leader and includes some peculiar details with little explanation as to their importance a description of Dewey’s mystical experience, for example this section appears to be generally coherent with the originally stated purpose of the book. However, Chapter 3, titled John Dewey and Abstract Expressionists, has virtually nothing to do with an exploration of the ways in which Dewey impacted American public schooling. Although the author eventually does include a few comments about Dewey’s influence on art education, the chapter focuses on the argument that Dewey’s theories about art had a direct influence on the work of American abstract expressionist painters.

Chapter 4, titled Howard Gardner and the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, is the most coherent section of this book. Again, both Gardner’s life experiences and his intellectual theories are explored and some direct links are made between Gardner’s theories and school reform movements. However, Berube diverges from core arguments to explore Gardner’s interest in the arts and, in particular, Gardner’s theories about spatial intelligence. This section of the chapter has more to do with the author’s effort to create links between the chapter on Dewey and the expressionists, than with the exploration of Gardner’s influence on public schooling. In addition, at the end of this chapter, Berube includes several curious, confusing, ill-written, unembellished and unsubstantiated statements that leave the impression that Gardner may be a neoconservative who supports people with racist tendencies (pp. 87-88).

Based on the title Carol Gilligan and Moral Development, it appears that Chapter 5, co-authored with Clair T. Newbold, is intended to explore the life experiences and theories of feminist scholar Carol Gilligan. Although the authors include a discussion of Gilligan’s discoveries about the inner voices of women, particularly with respect to identity and moral development, the irony of the chapter is that Gilligan’s personal ‘voice’ is subsumed due to the inclusion of several other topics in the chapter. These topics include a generic discussion of feminism and education, an explanation of Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, and a discussion of Kohlberg’s relationship with Gilligan. Further, in what seems a rather odd addition to this book, co-author Newbold describes an experiment she conducted to test Gilligan’s hypotheses. Newbold describes how she asked her daughter, her son, and her daughter’s friend the same set of questions used by Gilligan in a study of adolescent girls. Newbold discusses her findings and analysis, concluding: These personal case studies confirmed Carol Gilligan’s theses (p. 115). The addition of this case study not only subsumes Gilligan’s voice and story but is totally out of context considering the stated purpose of the book.

Chapter 6 titled, John Ogbu and the Theory of Caste, is fairly tightly focused on the life and work of cultural anthropologist, John Ogbu. Although there is some diversion into a generic description of the c.1960s civil rights movement and scholars associated with this movement, the incoherence in this chapter comes from the author’s claims that Ogbu’s work has changed the education landscape for minority youth and caused a major paradigm shift in American education (p. 147) while also implying that there was little attention paid by black educators and other scholars to Ogbu’s theory (p. 140). In fact, Berube sends mixed messages about the significance of Ogbu’s work in that it seems he spends as much time exploring critiques of caste theory as he spends exploring Ogbu’s theory and its impact in education.

Ultimately, the lack of coherence in both narrative and argument means that Berube is unable to substantiate claims. As it does not provide well-argued insights into the ways in which the selected intellectuals have influenced education, Eminent Educators has little scholarly value for post-secondary readers and no practical value for classroom teachers.

Lynn Speer Lemisko – University of Saskatchewan. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

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A medicalização da raça: médicos, educadores e discurso eugênico | Vera Regina Beltrão Marques || Higiene mental e eugenia: o projeto de “regeneração nacional” da Liga Brasileira de Higiene Mental (1920-30) | José Roberto Franco Reis

Quando Foucault organiza seu quadro conceituai, ele tem em mente uma dimensão analítica do objeto a ser estudado. O que lhe interessa é saber de que maneira engendraram-se os dispositivos e as disciplinas. Para atingir este objetivo, ele recorre sistematicamente à arqueologia — dos saberes, dos poderes, dos prazeres —, buscando identificar, nos discursos, as táticas e estratégias desenvolvidas ao longo de diferentes processos históricos.

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