Changing the Narrative of School: Toward a Neuro-cognitive Redefinition of Learning

Abstract

How learning is defined affects our national narrative of school, broadly conceived as how and what is learned and to what extent learning is accomplished as well as through what means. The narrative of school has broad ramifications for fundamental operations, such as how schools are architecturally conceived; the organization of learners, classes, and subject matter; and how learning accomplish- ments as well as learners and teachers are evaluated. The purpose of this work is to explore—and to encourage others to explore—a new definition of learning that is based on neuro-cognitive research and how such a definition might change the nar- rative of school. In the use of neuro-cognitive, the curriculum theory toward self- reflection authors link existing theories of cognition to new research emerging from neuroscience. When cognitivism was proposed in the 1950s, the study of the brain was in its infancy. Now, however, scientific understanding of the brain is growing exponentially. Therefore, it is reasonable to explore the link between our growing knowledge of neuroscience and our understanding of cognition.