In 1985, I published an introduction to the newly emerging interdisciplinary field called cognitive science. In The Mind’s New Science, I documented the power as well as the limitations of the computer as a model for human cognition and showed how computational models and analyses were affecting fields such as psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience. One limitation of the computational approach of the era was that it favored analyses that treated human cognition as being rational—a stance epitomized by the “general problem solving” computers of the era. Accordingly, while cognitive science provided insights into problem solving in mathematics, logic, and across the basic sciences, as well as in games like chess, certain aspects of the human psyche were ignored or minimized. Another limitation of cognitive science circa 1985 is that it assumed that all problems were akin to one another and that the approaches optimal in one domain (e.g. positing a possible solution and working backwards) were equally applicable in other domains.
Overall, in describing the lacuna of the cognitive approach of the nineteen eighties, I lamented the fact that the approach had little to say about the arts, creativity, the emotions, complex social interactions, or the importance of context in understanding human thought and behavior. One reason for these laments: these were areas of human life that I myself wanted to understand.
While reading Mary Helen Immordino-Yang’s impressive collection of papers, I often thought back to the research panorama thirty years ago. As I write, in the second decade of the 21st century, we have a much broader and much deeper picture of the range of human thought and behavior. This progress is due to many scholars across several fields, among whom are Mary Helen’s own teachers, such as Antonio Battro, Antonio Damasio, Hanna Damasio, Kurt Fischer, David Rose, and other important contributors, like George Lakoff. That said, Mary Helen stands out for the way in which she has drawn on the findings and perspectives of such scholars, initiated important lines of research in these areas, brought together her work with those of other innovative scholars into original powerful syntheses, and articulated the educational implications of cutting edge work in psychology, neurology, and other strands of the cognitive sciences.
Of the many significant findings and insights in this volume, let me mention ones that especially struck this chronicler of thirty years ago. At the time,
*We had no idea that one could study human emotions that emerge slowly over time—such as admiration or awe—and compare them psychologically and neurologically with emotions that emerge more quickly, such as surprise or fear. Nor did we suspect that such slow-emerging emotions drew on basic non-conscious forms of regulation of bodily processes.
*We were not cognizant of the importance and the neural substrate of unfilled time—time to step back, reflect, evaluate, even daydream.
*We assumed that surgery as drastic as the removal of an entire cerebral hemisphere would result in debilitating cognitive limitations; we could not envision individuals whose behavioral repertoire was normal or close to normal in many respects.
*We had little idea of similarities and contrasts in brain processing of individuals from different cultural groups, let alone of the advantages and disadvantages of various modes of processing.
*We had no idea that certain networks of neurons (now called mirror neurons) fire when others are carrying out actions, but only when the goals of those actions are understood.
Whether or not we are scientists ourselves, most literate individuals are intrigued to learn of new scientific findings. And findings involving the human brain seem to be especially riveting; I can well remember the excitement a half century ago when the different functions and capacities of the left cerebral hemisphere and the right cerebral hemisphere first became widely known. (The specializations of each hemisphere were actually first described in the latter half of the 19th century, but achieved notoriety only after it became possible, due to radical surgery that separates the two hemispheres, to study the capacities and functions of each hemisphere separately.) Indeed, so powerful are findings from neuroscience that individuals find the same results more compelling if they are simply accompanied by a photograph of a brain, even when the two accounts are otherwise identical!
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang is one of the pioneers in the interdisciplinary field of Mind-Brain-Education, launched around the turn of the millennium at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and at several other campuses around the world. Given the widespread fascination with brain findings and her path-breaking studies, there has been enormous interest in her work and its possible implications for the classroom. It would be all too easy to pander to this interest, over-interpreting findings, embracing seductive “neuro-myths,” or using brain evidence simply to endorse practices that one would favor anyway. Indeed, such tendencies are widespread nowadays, even among researchers who should know better.
Just how to summarize often complex scientific findings and relate them to education is a tremendous challenge. Indeed, the challenge is sufficiently great that many scholars refuse to make the leap at all. While this caution is perhaps understandable, it leaves the field wide open to opportunists and even charlatans who say, “The Brain works like X; therefore, you should teach like Y, “ or, “The brain works like A, and so students should learn in manner B.”
In discussing the educational implications of her own research and that of other leading scholars, Mary Helen is admirably restrained. She acknowledges the considerable distance between a finding obtained in the laboratory and a practice executed in a classroom. She appreciates that education is suffused with values; one cannot simply stipulate that because the mind (or the brain) works in a certain way, that mode of functioning dictates how one should teach or how one should learn. Indeed, education is about choices, and many of those choices reflect one’s values and/or the constraints of a given context—be it the youngsters in a given classroom, the predilections of a teacher or a parent, or the dictates of national policy.
Without wanting to put words into Mary Helen’s artful vocabulary, I believe that she endorses the following perspective. A range of sciences (and other disciplines) provide suggestions about how best to educate. None of them is definitive, but it would be foolish to ignore any of them, and we are best off if we try to draw on the range of perspectives, paying particular attention when the various indices point in the same direction. Time and again, in her essays, she combines findings about psychological development, neural development, and cultural contexts in order to make suggestions about how educators might proceed. Sometimes, her recommendations are quite general: emotions are powerful motivators and teachers ignore them at their peril. At other times, the recommendations are more targeted: children can construe mathematical problems in quite specific ways, and the mode of pedagogy that will work best becomes clear when teachers understand the particular assumptions and predilections that students bring to the solution of a given math problem. Some of the recommendations apply generally across human beings—e.g., we work more effectively with digital devices when they are designed to give us a sense of agency. Others are targeted to teaching individuals with atypical brain organization: individuals with a given neurological profile tackle problems most effectively when they can re-construe the problems so that they can draw on spared cognitive capacities.
Science proceeds brick by brick, building gradually on earlier findings, making adjustments as necessary, always mindful of limitations in method and inference. Education, on the other hand, unfolds in real time, and parents, teachers, and learners have to make the best use of time, techniques, texts, and tools. As a teacher of science herself, both to middle school children and to university students, Mary Helen is keenly aware of the pressures and constraints under which educators work. At the same time, she knows that teachers are learners (that is a major reason that individuals choose to enter the profession) and that they are eager to pick up ideas and practices that can enhance their effectiveness. And so, throughout this collection, Mary Helen reports findings, weighs their significance, and makes useful suggestions without stating or implying an exalted status for any of them. Perhaps even more important, she provides a way of thinking about scientific discoveries that is at once exciting and prudent—precisely the frame of mind that we hope to inculcate in teachers and learners everywhere.
As I read through these essays, I had an uplifting feeling: readers of this book will be present at the birth and early stages of a new and vital field of knowledge. Building both on the initial vision of cognitive science, and on the important modifications and improvement introduced by her teachers, by other leading scholars, and as well by her own research, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang presents a panoply of important findings—fascinating in their own right and pregnant with implications for anyone who is interested in teaching and learning. And since we now know that these processes begin at birth—if not in utero!—and continue as long as one’s mind is active, one can readily envision how a full-blown panorama of mind, brain, and education throughout the life cycle may emerge in the decades ahead. I can state with confidence that the work in these pages will be fundamental to this crucial field and I have every confidence that Mary Helen Immordino-Yang will continue her singular contributions to its vitality.