The long standing reign of psychology as the privileged partner of education has, arguably, now been superseded by the neurosciences. Given that this helped to drive the emergent field of neuroeducation, it is crucial to ask what changes in education, if anything does in fact change, when the hitherto hegemonic psychologising discourse is substituted for a neurological one. The primary contention of this paper is that with the neuro-turn a process of “neurologisation” has also been initiated, which can be analysed (...) by taking into account its genealogical predecessor, psychologisation. In doing so, I argue, one ultimately discerns a primordial incompatibility between education and neuroscience, one that can be traced back to the fundamental and problematic reflexivity of modern subjectivity itself, which the discipline of psychology was never able to wholly resolve. From here, I proceed with the argument that while the eagerness of the psy-sciences to embrace neuroscience testifies to how much psychology needs neurology, the neurosciences are structurally incapable of disconnecting from the paradigms of the psy-sciences. Following on from this proposition, other strong/weak factors are brought into the equation: strong/weak nature, strong/weak culture, strong/weak subjectivity and, most pertinently, strong/weak education. Finally, the critical question becomes: if education in itself needs to take recourse to both the psy-sciences and the neurosciences, then how can we begin to account for the fact that these sciences invariably end up becoming captured within educational discourses themselves; that is, the fact that teachers, parents, and pupils themselves are taught the key insights of neuropsychology. (shrink)

The purpose of the thesis is to put forth and explore a notion of teaching as a practice of attention formation. Drawing on educational philosophy and the Didaktik/Pädagogik-traditions, teaching is explored as a relational and lived-though practice that can promote, form, and share attention. In the context of teaching, attention is connected to the acts of showing and observing. As such, teaching can be seen as a complex of relations that emerges through the intersection of the intentions of the one (...) who is showing and the one who is observing. This intersection creates a tension between the self-active student and the paths made possible for this self-activity. The pedagogical dimension of this tension can be expressed through the principles of the summons to self-activity and Bildsamkeit. By turning to some key-texts of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, I explore how the notion of teaching as attention formation can be understood from within a radical relational perspective on education and also how attention itself can be thought of as an educational phenomenon. From this critical relational perspective, where the relation is seen as constitutive of educational situations and where the possibility for uniqueness, difference, and freedom are regarded as central characteristics for a democratic conception of education, I interpret Rancière’s notions of intellectual emancipation and partage du sensible as political/aesthetic analogues to the summons to self-activity and Bildsamkeit, respectively. While the event of intellectual emancipation, although constituted relationally, mainly addresses the unique attentive subject, the notion of le partage du sensible draws attention to the larger and shared context in which this event takes place. In the thesis, teaching as attention formation is addressed as a relational phenomenon in which the unique and irreplaceable subject is called into being and is given space to respond to the summons of the surrounding world and to strive against the materiality of that very same world. It is suggested that attention formation might be the educational event when someone, as a unique other, is called into presence and is given room to claim and to speak for his or her interest. It is an event made possible by those teachers who have the sensibility to discover its coming, the courage to let it happen, and the strength to accept the consequences of it. (shrink)

The idea to utilise cognitive neuroscientific research for educational purposes is known as Mind-Brain Education or Educational Neuroscience. Despite some calls for an uncritical endorsement of such an agenda, a growing number of educational scholars argue that it must remain impossible to translate neurological descriptions into mental or educationally relevant descriptions. This paper takes these well-established arguments further by not only focusing upon these different levels of description but going beyond this issue to assess the theoretical foundations of cognitive science (...) as a functional theory of the mind. With relevance to education it is argued that because of its functional character a cognitive-psychological approach to education suffers from an inherent blind spot regarding the actor’s feelings and motivations. The paper concludes with the claim that, because of this experiential poverty, any cognitive neuroscientific approach must face severe limitations when utilised for educational purposes. (shrink)