Da investigação sobre o cérebro e a cognição para escola: projeto de divulgação e de promoção de estratégias para alunos e professores

Abstract

Introduction: The need to bring the mind, brain and education research field to the classroom has been widely recognized. Setting a weekly activity with students and teachers was proposed to share neuroscientific knowledge and to promote effective learning techniques by opening a space for interdisciplinary debate and future projects. Aim: To share the preliminary results of our qualitative evaluation in the first year of a two-year project. Materials and Methods: Participants are 148 Portuguese students from 10 to 13 years old, attending elementary school (5th and 6th grade, four classes from each year) and 16 school-teachers. Every week on Tuesdays this day was dedicated to mind, brain and education talks, with debate and several activities. These work sessions are informally called Mind Gym (Ginasio Mental, in Portuguese). Each session was hosted by a facilitator trained in cognitive science. Results: Our results suggest student engagement is higher but not reaching our goals of using the knowledge in their study organization. Teachers highlight the problems of schedule (colliding with their classes) and meeting curriculum goals to implement this kind of project. Conclusion: The first year’s results suggest a gap between the initial design and its implementation. Students’ engagement is better than knowledge transfer to better practices. The activity is lacking teacher’s engagement and there is an absence of interdisciplinary work. To further develop this kind of project it is vital to improve the connection between schools and research, highlighting evidence-based practice as a result of good interdisciplinary work, and to enable building informal relationships with all participants since the design phase. Since it is an ongoing project, these results are going to be translated into the second year of the project.