Start Date
6-8-2013 10:45 AM
End Date
6-8-2013 12:00 PM
Abstract
Concurrent Session Block 3
Recommended Citation
Clarke, D., & Hollingsworth, H. (2013, August 06). Challenges and opportunities for neuroscience : how to explain the connection between socio-cultural practices and cognition? [Paper presentation]. 2013 - How the Brain Learns: What lessons are there for teaching?. https://research.acer.edu.au/research_conference/RC2013/6august/7
Aug 6th, 10:45 AM
Aug 6th, 12:00 PM
Challenges and opportunities for neuroscience : how to explain the connection between socio-cultural practices and cognition?
Concurrent Session Block 3
Comments
Large-scale international comparative studies of teaching and learning such as the TIMSS 1999 Video Study (Hiebert et al., 2003) and the Learner’s Perspective Study (Clarke, Keitel & Shimizu, 2006) offer many instances of profound differences in teacher and student behaviours in different classrooms around the world. In particular, the classroom practices of high-achieving communities frequently seem to contradict the prescriptions of empirical research conducted in Western settings. It has been argued that pedagogies in different cultures appear to be predicated on different assumptions about both the process and the product of learning in classroom settings (Clarke, 2013). These include differences in the role accorded to such things as spoken language, physical activity, and student self-regulation in the learning process. Examples from the LPS and TIMSS video projects will be used to illustrate these differences. Such findings have been interpreted as differences in sociocultural performance rather than in cognition itself, leaving unexplored the possibility that people in different cultures might learn in fundamentally different ways. Can neuroscience help us understand the variation that we find in cross-cultural classroom studies? Crosscultural studies of teaching and learning provide both a challenge and an opportunity to determine what is truly fundamental to human learning.