Brain and Education

This special issue is based on a symposium titled The Implications of Cognitive Theories of How the Nervous System Functions for Research and Practice in Education, conducted at an annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The papers presented here have diverse origins, but they are closer in general theme and basic assumptions to the work of functionalists such as Dewey (1896), Angell (1907), and Bartlett (1932) than to modern structure-of-knowledge theories. Like early functionalists, the present articles tend to focus on the unifying theme of how the nervous system functions. Similarly, they rest on a set of basic assumptions opposite to those of modern structure-of-knowledge theories.

This issue provides -- from diverse viewpoints -- some very attractive portraits of how the nervous system might function, whereas a careful review of the early work might reveal a suggestive silhouette. This is an important prerequisite for a new brain-based science of education. Another important prerequisite is empirical grounding, both in evidence and methodology. The contributions in this issue have been built on the foundation of many decades of diverse empirical research and methodology, supported by a rapidly advancing technology for research and practice in education. The result places researchers in a realistic position to be optimistic about major advances toward a definitive solution to the problem of relevance in education.