What If?

What if the researchers into brain imaging talked about in this NPR story were to focus their research on the influence of "reflection" on brain function?

Reflection has this belief surrounding it--it is magical. It has super powers. It is almost as if we were to put students/people into the telephone booth of reflection, and POOF! Out they come with a new understanding, even perhaps with a transformed view of the world.

I have been gravitated to reflection because I see it as the central mediating factor for learning (and action). Mediation. What does that mean? It means it has to be added, it has to be passed through, it is the lever to make something happen. I have particularly associated it with the classical notion of phronesis or practical wisdom. It is the application of knowledge to particular contexts.

What if... we were able to do brain scans of people engaged in reflective thinking? What would it show? What parts of the brain would be stimulated? How would this brain function differ from other kinds of brain function?

Wouldn't it be amazing if I were to talk these researchers into studying the brain on reflection! It seems like it would be a good idea. Reflection has this high and hollowed place in the kingdom of thinking; surely researchers would be interested in studying these kinds of higher order brain functions.

Oh--and could we detail physiologically developmental differences in reflective thinking? To confirm the research from King and Kitchener. Wouldn't that matter? If we knew better what our students were capable of cognitively, wouldn't that matter? It seems to me that it would.

I'm just dreaming here. Maybe I should try a letter to these folks doing this brain scanning research just for grins. Maybe the social sciences can join hands with the hard sciences.

What if?