The Birth of a Learning Science?

     

Read the quotation that follows very carefully. It is taken from a very measured academic study published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as recently as the 22nd June 2007: "Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science".

"Findings from brain research indicate how nurturing is crucial to the learning process, and are beginning to provide indication of appropriate learning environments. Many of the environmental factors conducive to improved brain functioning are everyday matters - the quality of social environment and interactions, nutrition, physical exercise, and sleep - which may seem too obvious and so easily overlooked in their impact on education. By conditioning our minds and bodies correctly, it is possible to take advantage of the brain's plasticity and to facilitate the learning process. This calls for holistic approaches which recognise the close interdependence of physical and intellectual well-being and the close interplay of the emotional and cognitive."

I find the underlined sentence thoroughly remarkable. If, in the general case, findings from brain research learning environments that promote "holistic approaches" are crucial to the learning process how much more crucial must such approaches be in the special case of the education of children with neurocognitive impairments such as cerebral palsy for whom the physical is to greater or lesser degree impaired?

But I find it remarkable in another sense. The authors, too, seem aware of how potentially radical a statement they are making: "This calls for ...." they say, implying that such holistic approaches do not currently exist. In fact, conductive education is precisely an holistic approach recognising the close interdependence of physical and intellectual, emotional and cognitive. I find the underlined sentence the most remarkable and compelling endorsement of conductive education from a major European research organisation that I have ever read.

Not only, as the title of the book suggests, are we monitoring the birth of a new learning science; we might also be witnessing the underpinning of conductive education by a body of research evidence. This will bring a whole new perspective on cerebral palsy and how children with cerebral palsy learn best. And that must impact on the training of teachers; on curriculum and on special pedagogy.

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