Commentary on the Chapter by Ferdinand Rivera, “Neural Correlates of Gender, Culture, and Race and Implications to Embodied Thinking in Mathematics”

Abstract

In his chapter Neural correlates of gender, culture, and race and implications to embodied thinking in mathematics, Rivera discusses the fascinating and vivid, yet also hotly debated, association between research in neuroscience and mathematics education, by sketching various neuroscientific studies conducted within and outside mathematics education. Against the background of this volume on gender, culture, and diversity, Rivera pays specific attention to findings from the fields of cognitive and social-affective neuroscience, the latter of which is also gradually, but slowly, shedding further light on the neural correlates of gender, culture, and race. Echoing a more general movement to connect research in (mathematics) education and neuroscience (e.g., Ansari and Coch 2006; Howard-Jones 2008; Stern 2005), Rivera suggests that these neuroscientific findings may offer new perspectives on mathematics education research in general, and on individual and intentional embodied cognition in mathematical thinking and learning in particular.KeywordsMathematics EducationEducational ResearchNeural CorrelateMathematical LearningMathematical ThinkingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.