Neuroscience and education: prime time to build the bridge

As neuroscience gains social traction and entices media attention, the notion that education has much to benefit from brain research becomes increasingly popular. However, it has been argued that the fundamental bridge toward education is cognitive psychology, not neuroscience. We discuss four specific cases in which neuroscience synergizes with other disciplines to serve education, ranging from very general physiological aspects of human learning such as nutrition, exercise and sleep, to brain architectures that shape the way we acquire language and reading, and neuroscience tools that increasingly allow the early detection of cognitive deficits, especially in preverbal infants. Neuroscience methods, tools and theoretical frameworks have broadened our understanding of the mind in a way that is highly relevant to educational practice. Although the bridge’s cement is still fresh, we argue why it is prime time to march over it.

Neuroscience and education: prime time to build the bridge

As neuroscience gains social traction and entices media attention, the notion that education has much to benefit from brain research becomes increasingly popular. However, it has been argued that the fundamental bridge toward education is cognitive psychology, not neuroscience. We discuss four specific cases in which neuroscience synergizes with other disciplines to serve education, ranging from very general physiological aspects of human learning such as nutrition, exercise and sleep, to brain architectures that shape the way we acquire language and reading, and neuroscience tools that increasingly allow the early detection of cognitive deficits, especially in preverbal infants. Neuroscience methods, tools and theoretical frameworks have broadened our understanding of the mind in a way that is highly relevant to educational practice. Although the bridge’s cement is still fresh, we argue why it is prime time to march over it.

Entre salinas e maledicências: uma leitura do romance Macau e sua aplicabilidade ao ensino de literatura

The objective of this research is to present a reading of the novel Macau (1934), authoring of Aurélio Pinheiro, situated in the context of Brazilian literature produced in the 30s of the last century and analyze the settings of language that reveal individual and social conflicts related to tensions arising of the modernization of a city in the interior of Rio Grande do Norte, in view of the applicability of this knowledge in the educational context. The discussions on the teaching of literature led to an internship experience in the higher education, with the guiding literary reading of the novel Macau. In this sense, this research, bibliographic, analytical and empirical, is in discussions between literature and education that allow us, in addition to a critical reading about Macau romance, a look both in basic education and in teacher training, which justifies linking this thesis in the research line “Reading of the literary text and teaching”. The objectives were met from literary readings of the text, brief study of the author, analysis of the tensions expressed by language, literature defense as a universal right, panoramic review of research on the teaching of literature, reading official documents governing the Brazilian education, discussion of teacher training, training in higher education with application of a didactic sequence, receipt of that novel by teachers in training directed to the applicability in basic education. For this, the research was the theoretical framework primarily the studies of Antonio Candido (1976; 1995), Luís Bueno (2006), Walter Benjamin (1985), Mikhail Bakhtin (2010), Hans Robert Jauss (1994), Theodor Adorno (2006), Antoine Compagnon (2009), and Rildo Cosson (2009).