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Исследование представлений практиков сферы образования о науках, изучающих мозг: первый этап
The education system has been striving not only to ensure that students acquire specific knowledge and skills, but also to develop them as well -rounded personalities and support their subjective well-being during studying. In this regard, when making decisions about the use of innovations in education, the trend is to embrace the results of empirical research, including those from other fields of science. Most often, educational researchers turn to works in the fields of economics, sociology, and psychology. At the same time, neuroscience is actively developing on a global scale, while educational neuroscience is gradually gaining momentum with a mission to build bridges between educational practices and scientific facts about the capabilities and characteristics of the brain. The purpose of our study was to explore the beliefs of educational practitioners about neuroscience and their views on how neuroscience can benefit modern education. To achieve this goal, we began to conduct focus groups with educational practitioners. By now, we have conducted four focus groups (N = 30), mainly with school teachers and administration as well as additional education teachers, university professors, and methodologists from Moscow and other regions of Russia (Voronezh Region, Leningrad Region, Kaluga Region, Krasnoyarsk Region, Saint Petersburg, Sverdlovsk Region). The average age of the participants is 38 years, most of them (28 participants) are female. Focus groups are conducted using a specially designed guide based on G. Allport’s theory of attitude (1935). It includes three components: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. The focus group guide contains the following blocks: (a) understanding what neuroscience is; (b) attitude towards the attempts to combine neuroscience and education; (c) personal experience with neuroscience-based practices. This article summarizes the preliminary findings of our pilot study obtained through thematic analysis.