Leveraging Neuroscience as a Tool to Advance Architecture Pedagogy

The brain alone is a complex organ in which all sensory, intellectual, emotional, and intuitive perceptions take place. Today, one of the research challenges in teaching-learning science is the answer to the question of how much the application of findings from neuroscience studies on learning can be effective in improving the quality of education. Where are the overlaps between the language of neuroscience and the science of teaching-learning? While previous teachings have emphasized the importance of schemas or mental formats as a new learning infrastructure, cognitive neuroscience looks at how knowledge, insight, and experience are processed in the brain and how neural connections in the brain provide new learning. The information encoded in the hippocampus can form schemas reliably in institutionalized neocortical networks. How can these mechanisms be used to improve education, especially architecture education? The current insights from the basic and applied research of cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and teaching-learning science research promise a change in educating architects. This article introduces the commonalities of neuroscience, cognitive studies, and architectural education. [For the full proceedings, see ED631133.]