[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: neuroscience

[Greg Brooks]

... and for even deeper scepticism about neuroscience and education see
this article by my Sheffield colleague Peter Hannon:

https://www.paediatricsandchildhealthjournal.co.uk/article/S0957-5839(03)90410-6/abstract

Greg Brooks


On Sat, 20 Feb 2021 at 16:46, Colin Harrison <
Colin.Harrison at nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hi all
>
> Thanks so much for sharing some great insights on neuroscience.
>
> Here is my one cent’s worth (or to be more forward-looking,
> 0.00000017463588 Bitcoins-worth).
>
> Here at the University of Nottingham, we are justly proud of Professor Sir
> Peter Mansfield’s Nobel Prize-winning work to develop MRI in the 1970s, and
> of course our Psych department has worked with the Med School and Physics
> departments on fMRI brain imaging. One important fact to note is that the
> latest hardware delivers no fewer than 400,000 pieces of imaging data a
> second, and it can produce a ‘slice’ of multicoloured imaging showing
> neurone activity in any plane. Our colleague Professor Shaaron Ainsworth,
> does a telling presentation that shows an image of the brain activity of a
> person who is reading, and guess what? As we expect, there are lovely
> highlighted spots in the left superior temporal and bilateral
> supplementary motor regions, etc, etc, but hold your applause- Shaaron then
> showed other ‘slices’, from the same instant of imaging, and these
> suggested that during one instant (not even 'one second') of ‘reading’
> there are about fifty areas of the brain that are active, and they are all
> flashing like an over-decorated house at Christmas. In other words, you can
> use the ‘slice’ you prefer, and then superimpose multiple shots of the same
> area, to increase the ‘activity’ profile, and then create your
> own ‘simplified’ image for your presentation…
>
> In an interesting Damascene conversion, Prof Ahmad Hariri at Duke has
> questioned 15 years' worth of his own publications on MRI, basically
> revealing that when you do replication studies, even with the same
> participants, you not only get different results, you get correlations that
> are not only weak, they are poor
> <https://today.duke.edu/2020/06/studies-brain-activity-aren%E2%80%99t-useful-scientists-thought>.
> He went so far as to say “The bottom line is that task-based fMRI in its
> current form can’t tell you what an individual’s brain activation will look
> like from one test to the next”.
>
> So of course fMRI will continue to be valuable for generating hypotheses
> about cognition and learning, but with Hariri, I would suggest that at
> present such research is precisely as valuable as papers in the 1970s on
> quantum mechanics- i.e. they are unproven theories- but unlike CERN, we
> haven’t yet built our equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider for brain
> research.
>
> David, you now have a nickel, or a total of 0.0000008731794 Bitcoins. O
> darn it, by now those bitcoins are probably now worth 6 cents!
>
> As ever,
>
> Colin
>
> From: <reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> on behalf of
> P Pearson <ppearson at berkeley.edu>
> Date: Saturday, 20 February 2021 at 04:57
> To: Carol D Lee <cdlee at northwestern.edu>
> Cc: Shirley B Heath <sbheath at stanford.edu>, reading hall of fame <
> reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>
> Subject: [Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: Walter MacGinitie
>
> Interesting perspective from Carol in response to Shirley’s concern that
> neuroscience is lined up on the context-free cognitive side of the ledger
> and will end up casting doubt on sociocultural and sociocognitive
> understandings of literacy and language.
>
> Because I have been working on a project (the NAEP Reading Assessment
> Framework) in which this very issue is prominent, I have been, through
> Carol, introduced to a completely different neuroscience perspective from
> the one that those of us in reading research see so prominently displayed
> in the so-called Science of Reading debate, which is focused on the
> neuroscience (read FMRI) research demonstrating that even (maybe
> especially) expert readers recode orthographic representations into a
> phonemic/phonological representation in the journey to a semantic
> representation of meaning.
>
> The neuroscience perspective that Carol has brought to my intention is
> well documented in the Science of Learning and Development literature that
> is carefully reviewed in several papers by Carol and others AND featured
> prominently in the 2018 How People Learn II volume. The fundamental move in
> these accounts is to demonstrate that context, culture, and situation
> actually shape the physical and neural processes that learners use in the
> search for coherent understandings of phenomena, including those inscribed
> in text.
>
> So rather than think of neuroscience as aligned with a narrower view of
> cognitive, language, and literacy development, we should think of
> neuroscience as reflecting the same tensions we encounter in developmental
> and pedagogical accounts of these three phenomena.
>
> That’s my 2 cents worth in support of Carol’s.  And endorsement would
> bring us up to a nickel.
>
> Pdp
>
> P David Pearson 510 543 6508 ppearson at berkeley.edu
>
> On Feb 19, 2021, at 6:41 PM, Carol D Lee <cdlee at northwestern.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> So I always find interesting these generational distinctions between who
> is old guard and not.  At 75 I like to push elderhood, except when I talk
> to Edmund Gordon, who will turn 100 in June,  for whom I’m still a
> youngin.   However, because I didn’t enter the academy until I was in my
> mid-forties, I guess I’m somewhere in that in between generational space.
>
>
>
> So thinking in response to Shirley’s comments --- I think emerging work in
> the neurosciences opens up interesting opportunities for more traditional
> language and literacy folks, just as the cognitive revolution and attention
> to the role of schema played a useful role in research around reading
> comprehension.  The uptake of that cognitive work was less so taken up by
> strict cognitive psychologists.  In the same vein, emerging findings from
> the neurosciences have deep implications for the practice of reading or the
> practice of teaching others to comprehend texts, it is not likely that they
> will be the folks to take up the implications of that work.  Dan Schwartz
> co-authored several articles a few years ago on the limitations of basic
> research in the neurosciences around brain functioning for the teaching of
> mathematics.
>
>
>
> I think the task of the emerging generation of language, literacy and
> culture researchers is to spread their wings to understand the basic
> research in relevant areas of the neurosciences, spread their wings to
> understand fundamental propositions in the field of human development, and
> then to test empirically the implications of foundational work in these
> areas.
>
>
>
> I have been deeply interested in the last decade in the implications of
> physiological processes we inherit from our evolution as a species for what
> it means on the ground to think about the design of robust learning
> environments – in my own area with regard to literacy.  I initially begin
> to explore these ideas in my 2010 AERA Presidential Address.  *That was
> the time when Dick Anderson and I were great dance partners at my
> presidential party !!!!*  Since that time I’ve spread my wings to
> co-author a handbook chapter with two folks in the neurosciences (Andy
> Meltzoff and Pat Kuhl).  Boundary crossing is challenging but really
> interesting.
>
>
>
> So Shirley I don’t think the neurosciences will take over our field.
> Rather I think they will make substantive contributions to our
> understanding of the sheer complexity of text comprehension, but we need to
> support and encourage upcoming generations to learn to cross intellectual
> borders.
>
>
>
> My 2 cents!
>
>
>
> Carol
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Carol D. Lee, Ph.D.
>
> Professor Emeritus
>
> School of Education and Social Policy
>
> Northwestern University
>
>
>
> Member, National Academy of Education
>
> Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
>
> Fellow, American Educational Research Association
>
> Fellow, National Conference on Language and Literacy
>
> President-Elect, National Academy of Education
>
> Member, Reading Hall of Fame
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *<reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> on behalf
> of Shirley_Brice_Heath Heath <sbheath at stanford.edu>
> *Date: *Friday, February 19, 2021 at 4:34 PM
> *To: *Richard Anderson <csrrca at illinois.edu>, "Leu, Donald" <
> donald.leu at uconn.edu>
> *Cc: *reading hall of fame <Reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>
> *Subject: *[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: Walter MacGinitie
>
>
>
> You are so right, for he was such a gentleman, ever ready to help younger
> scholars.  I first met him in that role after I began seeing my work
> interpreted as related to reading research.  He seemed puzzled by that, as
> was I in many ways, but he was so helpful to me and many other scholars.
>
>
>
> Yes, I see the "old guards" leaving us with greater frequency than we
> could have imagined.  What we do not know is what will replace what we now
> think of as the "old guard" along with their ideas.  I predict it will be
> neuroscience research with more and more revelations about how the brain
> works in both oral language and in written texts.  That work now appears in
> many different journals, so we will see further division within that field,
> all to our advantage in learning more about the many miracles of just how
> we learn by taking in information from very varied sources.
>
>
>
> Thanks to all willing to share memories about the full humanity of the
> "old guard."  What will happen now that much of the research on reading and
> related activities has gone to neuroscience will be increasing divisions
> within that field.  Keeping up will get harder and harder, for sure.  My
> fear is that those working within departments with titles such as
> "language, literacy, and culture" will begin to feel either left behind or
> pushed in new and exciting (though challenging) directions.  I wonder if
> others are seeing similar patterns within their departments and among their
> colleagues in the age bracket of 40s-60s.
>
>
>
> Best to all, and thanks for the memories!
>
>
>
> Shirley
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk <
> reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> on behalf of Richard
> Anderson <csrrca at illinois.edu>
> *Sent:* Friday, February 19, 2021 1:59 PM
> *To:* Leu, Donald <donald.leu at uconn.edu>
> *Cc:* reading hall of fame <Reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>
> *Subject:* [Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: Walter MacGinitie
>
>
>
> I first met Walter MacGinitie in the late 1950s at a conference for
> graduate students held at Northwestern. He represented Teachers College. I
> represented Harvard. Another person I got to know at the conference was
> Gordon Bower, then a grad student at Yale. My first job was at New York
> University. We saw Walter and Ruth a couple of times in New York and I saw
> him at conferences in subsequent years. With the passing of Walter and
> other giants in the field, it seems we are at the end of an era. Or maybe
> just the end of my era.
>
>
>
> Dick
>
>
>
> Richard C Anderson
>
> University Scholar and Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois
>
> Member, National Academy of Education
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 2:53 PM Leu, Donald <donald.leu at uconn.edu> wrote:
>
> Sadly, I report that another member, Walter MacGinitie, has passed.  I
> never knew Walter personally, only his important work, but word travels
> among members of the environmental communities concerned about the San Juan
> Islands of Washington. Walter lived on San Juan Island and he and his wife,
> Ruth, hadgifted 13 acres of important land to the San Juan Preservation
> Trust, an organization that my wife and I, as boaters who enjoy the
> islands, contribute to.    A tribute recently appeared in the SJPT
> newsletter:  https://sjpt.org/remembering-walter-macginitie/
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/sjpt.org/remembering-walter-macginitie/__;!!DZ3fjg!uaQMx0MjECCG-H9dbMd8mJz9YP89SfkKyjksfaPQBvoVAsBA_a_1YG6sVnuNLOFe$>
>
>
>
> Be well.
>
>
> Don
>
> —
> Donald J. Leu, Ph.D.
>
> "Every  one of us is given the gift of life, and what a strange gift it
> is.  If it is preserved jealously and selfishly, it impoverishes and
> saddens. But if it is spent for others, it enriches and beautifies.”
>   -- Geraldine  Ferraro.
>      Acceptance speech at the 1984 Democratic Party National  Convention.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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