Mind, Brain and Education

Purpose

The purpose of working with this particular field is to substantiate the constructivist approach to educational science subscribed to by, for example, CUL, to confirm and refute new and old conceptions and to identify further areas for investigation. This will provide the 'educational developers' with much firmer ground under their feet, while also providing a stronger foundation for discussing educational choices and initiatives.

Research questions

Whichever way you look at it, learning is a biological process. Learning is, of course, impacted by the social and cultural contexts in which we find ourselves, but these impacts and the resulting changes are evident in our brain processes. It is thus crucial to examine

  • (as already indicated above) to which extent strong neuroscientific and cognitive psychological grounds can be identified to substantiate the choice of constructivism as a theoretical approach to university didactics and, in continuation of this,
  • to which extent core concepts such as deep learning/superficial learning, learning taxonomies, active learning (both generally and in terms of individual techniques), collaborative learning, motivation, emotional climate, the planning of teaching and feedback can be substantiated and developed based on our knowledge of the brain functions, as well as
  • whether other areas of importance for university didactics are emerging.

The field has not yet come so far that it is possible to say anything conclusive about subject-specific didactics, and as a whole it remains dominated by neuroscience, i.e. neuroscience delivers results, and the other two disciplines interpret and translate the results into practice within their respective fields. Subject-specific didactics and a more active approach to neuroscience are therefore topics which must be pursued and cultivated in the longer term.

Status: finished

Finished with the book ’Hjernen og Læring’, 2016, Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, and ’Læring i Praksis’, 2017, Århus: Universitetsforlaget