"O cérebro vai à escola": um estudo sobre a aproximação entre Neurociências e Educação no Brasil

Abstract

Worldwide have been multiplying research centers, conferences, courses, extension projects, books and magazines focused on the intersection between Neuroscience and education. In common, these initiatives share the belief that neuroscientific findings can contribute to the improvement of the educational process. This would occur in two ways: by providing a better understanding of how people learn and thus, contributing to the creation of more effective and educational policies and practices and; contributing to the understanding of the difficulties or learning disabilities in order to provide support for developing more effective approaches and treatments for such problems. The neuroeducation, interface discipline between neuroscience and educational fields, shares this belief. Created between the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, this discipline - sometimes called Mind, Brain and Education or Science of Learning - want to simultaneously build knowledge about learning and develop pedagogical practices. The present work attempts to understand how this approach between neuroscientific and educational fields occurs in Brazil. For this we conducted a analysis of various materials (articles, books, magazines, videos) on the topic produced by neuroscientists, educators and also neuroeducators, new professional category proposed by the Instituto de Pesquisas em Neuroeducação. We found that neuroeducation has been constituted in the country as an extremely multifaceted field permeated by various discourses and practices as well as multiple versions of the human brain.