ABSTRACT[mdash]In "A tale of two cases: Lessons for education from the study of two boys living with half their brains" (M. H. Immordino-Yang, 2007), I showed that Nico (missing his right cerebral hemisphere) and Brooke (missing his left) had compensated for basic neuropsychological skills to previously unexpected degrees and argued that the ways they had compensated revealed general principles about the active role of the learner and the organizing role of emotion and social interaction in development. Here, I briefly review my findings and interpretations of that work as background for readers to engage in the cross-disciplinary conversation that follows in this journal issue.

ABSTRACT[mdash]How can current findings in neuroscience help educators identify particular cognitive strengths in students? In this commentary on Immordino-Yang's research regarding Nico and Brooke, I make 3 primary assertions: (a) the cognitive science community needs to develop an accessible language and mode of communicating applicable research to educators, (b) educators need proper professional development in order to understand and relate current research findings to practice in the classroom, and (c) the specific research on Nico and Brooke clearly suggests that educators need to rethink the classroom as a place not of problem solving but rather problem design in order to further understand and use the cognitive strengths of each individual student.

ABSTRACT[mdash]Advances in neuroscience during the past century have yielded important insights into mental functioning, but their implications for the field of education have remained largely unexplored. In a bold attempt to bridge this gap, Immordino-Yang presents findings from 2 boys, Nico and Brooke, each of whom lost half of his brain. The remarkable recovery of functions in the 2 boys highlights the degree to which children's emotional and social experiences shape brain development, as well as the importance of plasticity. Immordino-Yang places emphasis on cognitive plasticity[mdash]the ability to use different strategies in solving a task[mdash]which is clearly evident in the boys' performance. It is possible, however, that neural plasticity may have occurred as well, either prior to or after surgery. Although it may not be possible to distinguish between cognitive and neural plasticity at this point, Immordino-Yang makes a crucial contribution. By placing these findings in an educational context and presenting their implications in a clear and compelling fashion, she successfully brings neuroscience and education a notch closer.

ABSTRACT[mdash]Methodological ingenuity and deep knowledge of expected development are combined by Immordino-Yang to produce an enlightening analysis of 2 hemispherectomized youths. Specific lessons to be drawn from her article include the following: the limitations of anatomy in predicting function; the need for educators to understand fully the multifunctionality, plasticity, and experience-driven development of cortical structures; the importance of a wide-ranging and multilayered approach to assessment when it is being used for diagnostic purposes; and, finally, the difficulty (and importance) of distinguishing task accomplishment from procedures undertaken while performing the task. Carefully documented stories like those told by Immordino-Yang in this important article serve as a salutary reminder to educators that there are multiple pathways to the achievement of many developmental goals and that the educator's role is to support the student's optimal trajectory rather than imposing a normative trajectory.

ABSTRACT[mdash]Immordino-Yang's description of the unexpected recovery of 2 boys with severe brain trauma is an example of the interplay between the plasticity of the brain and the plasticity of the context. It highlights the dynamics of "wants and cans" and the specific role of motivation in this dynamic. As an example of how this dynamic can evolve in different directions, we focus on learning trajectories of children with developmental psychopathology using a model of the process of social interaction to explain the interplay between behavior and performance on short-term and long-term timescales. The idea is that the flexibility of the short-term process allows for a particular quality of teaching and learning and helps explain highly unexpected developmental trajectories such as those described by Immordino-Yang (2008). The explanation of the long-term outcomes of the educational process lies not in the determinism of the (dysfunctional) brain but in the positive characteristics of interacting creative minds.

ABSTRACT[mdash]From the pragmatists to the neo-Piagetians, development has been understood to involve cycles of perception and action[mdash]the internalization of interactions with the world and the construction of skills for acting in the world. From a neurobiological standpoint, new evidence suggests that neural activities related to action and perception converge in the brain in high-level sensory association and motor planning areas that have been described as "mirror neuron areas." However, the term "mirroring" can be misleading for educators and neuroscientists alike, as it suggests a direct and largely passive internal reflection of another person's goals and actions into one's own brain. Building from my colleagues' thoughts on my earlier study of two hemispherectomized boys (M. H. Immordino-Yang, 2007, pp. 66[ndash]83; see commentaries, this issue), in this response to commentaries, I suggest a model in which the internalization of another's goals and actions happens in a culturally modulated dynamic interaction between minds and is grounded in the neuropsychological strengths and weaknesses of the learner. In this approach, learners capitalize on their strengths and pref...[查看详细内容..]

ABSTRACT[mdash]This article notes that many key positive developments in education originated in research on the structure and genetics of abilities, providing primary evidence for ability in disadvantaged groups and playing a critical role in demonstrating the existence of developmental learning disorders and effective interventions. It is argued that new work in genetics offers similar hope, but that widely held beliefs about genetic equipotentiality and brain plasticity act as roadblocks to research improving educational outcomes. It is suggested that rebuilding the collaborative links between educationalists and psychometric and genetic research that functioned so effectively in the early development of universal education can again underpin improved educational outcomes.

ABSTRACT[mdash]This article examines the role of working memory, attention shifting, and inhibitory control executive cognitive functions in the development of mathematics knowledge and ability in children. It suggests that an examination of the executive cognitive demand of mathematical thinking can complement procedural and conceptual knowledge-based approaches to understanding the ways in which children become proficient in mathematics. Task analysis indicates that executive cognitive functions likely operate in concert with procedural and conceptual knowledge and in some instances might act as a unique influence on mathematics problem-solving ability. It is concluded that consideration of the executive cognitive demand of mathematics can contribute to research on best practices in mathematics education.

ABSTRACT[mdash]We begin this article by situating a methodology called developmental maieutics in the emerging field of mind, brain, and education. Then, we describe aspects of a project in which we collaborated with a group of physical science teachers to design developmentally informed activities and assessments for a unit on energy. Pen-and-paper assessments, called teasers, were employed, along with interviews, to study how students learned about the physics of energy. Results were used to describe students' learning pathways and to design a scoring rubric for teacher use. We hypothesized that (a) teasers, by themselves, could be used effectively to evaluate the developmental level of students' reasoning about energy and (b) teachers could employ the scoring rubric with minimal instruction. Encouraged by our findings, we went on to create a freely available online version of the energy teaser, including a new rubric designed to improve the accuracy with which teachers can assess the developmental level of students' energy conceptions.