Abstract

For many educators, the contemporary debate about what counts as good teaching has come around to the question: What is (good) learning? As with many educational debates, both the natural sciences and human sciences offer research-informed theories and practices to advance new and/or improved knowledge of or skills with teaching and learning practices. The authors of this text focus on neuroscience as one of those advancements in knowledge that has begun to shed light onto how to teach a learning brain. As such, the authors, as educators of teachers, in the pedagogic areas of curriculum and instruction and educational psychology, interpret recent neuroscience findings applicable to school-based educators who are wondering about learning, memory, and how environments and social structures may affect a learner’s brain physiologically or, in turn, affects the learning-teaching “mind”. The authors make a case for this pedagogic possibility: Perhaps, good learning and teaching is more sustainable – that is, learning and teaching has depth (it matters), has breadth (it spreads) and it endures (it lasts) – when our brain utilizes its natural “Mimetic” abilities. That is, our natural abilities to imitate and/or represent aspects or whole or part patterns of the sensible world and to do so via incorporation and transference within human actions.