1. More slippery slopes.
Ethical issues in education & cognitive
research.
And the search for strategies
REASONS & CONTRIBUTIONS
SLIPPERY SLOPES
STRATEGIES
2. Vows for a good
marriage
between cognitive
science and education
• Assess the common
interests (reasons)
• Assess the dowry
(contributions)
• Assess the slippery slopes
(risks, misuses, potential
and actual
misunderstandings)
3. Reasons
Learning
- A natural adaptive function
- The brain is not rubber-like
- The ways it endures
modifications is prescribed by its
properties and constrained by its
own history
- Learning is not the only process
for altering the brain’s functional
architecture (knowledge
acquisition)
Teaching
- A teaching species with social
learning mechanisms for cultural
transmission and for filling-in the
cospecifics’ knowledge gap
4. Reasons
Learning
- A natural adaptive function
- The brain is not rubber-like
- The ways it endures
modifications is prescribed by its
properties and constrained by its
own history
- Learning is not the only process
for altering the brain’s functional
architecture (knowledge
acquisition)
Teaching
- A teaching species with social
learning mechanisms for cultural
transmission and for filling-in the
cospecifics’ knowledge gap
9. More slippery slopes.
Ethical issues in education & cognitive
research.
And the search for strategies
REASONS & CONTRIBUTIONS
SLIPPERY SLOPES
STRATEGIES
10. 1. Getting the science
wrong, or: the trap of
neuromyths
2. And the seductive
allure of neuroscience
15. More slippery slopes.
Ethical issues in education & cognitive
research.
And the search for strategies
REASONS & CONTRIBUTIONS
SLIPPERY SLOPES
STRATEGIES
16. Questions for bridging
the gap
• How to produce new
knowledge that is useful
and usable?
• How to make existing
knowledge available and
usable?
• How to build a new
translational research
field?
18. • (Evans Thornton Chalmers Glasziou 2011, p. 1)
Without fair – unbiased – evaluations, useless or even
harmful treatments may be prescribed because they are
thought to be helpful or, conversely, helpful treatments may
be dismissed as useless. And fair tests should be applied to all
treatments, no matter what their origin or whether they are
viewed as conventional or complementary/alternative.
Untested theories about treatment effects, however
convincing they may sound, are just not enough. Some
theories have predicted that treatments would work, but fair
tests have revealed otherwise; other theories have
confidently predicted that treatments would not work
when, in fact, tests showed that they did.
19. EBM
• Tracing best evidence
• Classification
- Meta-analyses
• Disseminating best evidence
• International collaborations for
the production and publication of
meta-analyses and
• Journals dedicated to evidence
• Centers EBM training
20. 2 questions left aside:
•
How to produce new
evidence that is useful?
•
How to favor adoption?
21. TM
•
From bench to bedside
• selection of knowledge for
pre-clinical and clinical trials
• research aimed at
applications
• From bedside to bench
identification of real needs of
real patients in ecological
conditions, including reasons of nonadoption
knowledge issued from human
clinical trials is re-injected backwards
22. •
(Marincola 2003)
The purpose of translational research is to test, in humans, novel therapeutic
strategies developed through experimentation. This concept is so popular that
Bench to Bedside Awards were developed within the NIH to encourage
collaboration between clinicians and basic scientists across institutes. But a
more realistic approach would be to encourage opportunities to pursue
Bedside to Bench research since our understanding of human disease is still
limited and pre-clinical models have shown a discouraging propensity to fail
when applied to humans. Translational research should be regarded as a twoway road: Bench to Bedside and Bedside to Bench.
… Indeed, the scientist attempting to dissect scientifically human diseases as
they evolve has to confront unique challenges related with the genetic
polymorphism of our species, the extreme and evolving heterogeneity of some
diseases (such as cancer or viral disease) and often external constraints posed
by ethical and practical considerations. Thus, some prefer to pre-fabricate
animal models resembling human diseases to enable the mathematical
prediction of a given treatment outcome by simplifying its biology through
standardization of the genetic makeup of animals and diseases. These
models, however, do not represent the basic essence of human diseases…
23. (Brabeck 2008)
Those of us who conduct educational research have a new paradigm to
guide our work, if we choose to use it. Like other research initiatives, such
as evidence-based practice, this model finds its genesis in the medical
sciences, and is coined "translational research.”
… In education, not unlike medicine, vital knowledge too often remains
with the researchers and is unavailable to the professionals who are in
positions to help children and youths-that is, the teachers. We have a
similar "clinical lab to classroom" gap.
24. Education/Medicine
Similarities
– …
Differences
– evidence is much more spurious
– organisms and journals for the
classification and dissemination
of evidence are rare
– policies are national
– training is not a priority
– the profession is less valued
– the profession is not
scientifically-literate
Notas del editor
The translational model has been recently evoked in the domain of education. The Mind, Brain, and Education initiative seems to be particularly sensitive to the issue of creating action research frameworks where research arises from educational concerns and the potential applications of the research are field-tested in educational settings.(Fischer et al. 2010 p. 73) In other words, creating specific infrastructures that go beyond communication (between neuroscience research and educational structures) and structure collaboration and cross-fertilization of research and practice. These infrastructures have two main aims: raising research that is required in order to answer educational problems (rather than adapting neuroscientific research to educational questions), and testing the results of research in the real settings where learning happens. The most developed model for this kind of infrastructure is represented by Research Schools, which take inspiration from teaching hospitals. Research schools collaborations have been realized by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and there are at present some experiences going on outside the USA too (Fischer, et al., 2010). Research schools take inspiration from teaching hospitals: structures that permit the working together of practitioners and researchers, thus constituting the infrastructure for the cross-fertilization of research and practice together and for the acquisition of a common vocabulary, and literacy (Hinton & Fischer, 2008). Research schools should be constituted by the universities (through faculties of education) and real schools affiliated together; their tasks would include: research on educational issues (especially research inspired by real educational problems); evaluation of educational methods in in-vivo situations; knowledge sharing among practitioners and researchers; instruction and training of future practitioners and researchers, as well as of a new professional figure: educational engineers (or neuroeducators) that can design educational interventions to be tested in classroom and – that to their “bilingual” background - create connections between researchers and practitioners (Hinton & Fischer 2008). Research schools are supposed to promote and teach how to use both qualitative and quantitative research methods in education, and more generally to promote empirical paradigms and a vision of education as grounded on evidence and knowledge. In other words, they constitute the infrastructure susceptible of making of education a scientific enterprise, in analogy with her “sister” applied science: medicine. At the same time, Research schools would provide an answer to some difficulties (that will be discussed in the nex lesson) that arise as side-effects of the spreading of “brain ideas” in the world of education, namely the spreading of misconceptions about brain functioning: In this way, teachers can understand how to evaluate the claims made by the “brain-based learning” industry, which is crucial given the privileged role of the teacher as an agent of educational change.(Fischer et al. 2010 p. 74)
