DOES NEUROSCIENCE MATTER FOR EDUCATION?

In this review essay, Francis Schrag focuses on two recent anthologies dealing completely or in part with the role of neuroscience in learning and education: The Jossey-Bass Reader on the Brain and Learning, edited by Jossey-Bass Publishers, and New Philosophies of Learning, edited by Ruth Cigman and Andrew Davis. Schrag argues that philosophers of education do have a distinctive role in the conversation about neuroscience. He contends that the impact of neuroscience is likely to be substantial, though not in the way its advocates imagine. It has the potential to enhance education by way of interventions that successfully alter the fundamental neural mechanisms of learning, but neuroscience is unlikely to affect classroom teaching substantially.