«En blanco» (Go Blank)

How to focus attention, memory and motivation to learn

License Creative Commons

Antoni Hernández-Fernández

The Garden of Learning

The words of Juan Fernández are like a balm of calm and reflection that is essential in today’s education. He adds personal seeds throughout his educational essays, allusions to his own, which are also ours since we transmute ourselves into reading spirits. In the same way, with simplicity, he universalizes his speech because he always knows how to structure his story with the solid column of scientific evidence, perhaps with the taxonomic clairvoyance of his botanist soul.

Together with Mariana Morales, he’d first provide teachers with practical strategies for the formative evaluation of learning (Morales and Fernández, 2022). On his own account, he uncovered the reductionism that certain polarized discourses pose in education, pondering on the complexity of teaching (Fernández, 2022); and, just like Berliner, in the daily life of his essential blog Investigación Docente  -Teaching research-, he shows us that education is perhaps one of the most difficult challenges that science can face.

We know about Juan Fernández himself through the autobiographical glimpses he randomly introduces along the book and humanize his pages, that he has taken some bumps in life and that he knows both the corridors of schools and research. He cares about helping, always empathetic, to take care of the garden of education. But in “En Blanco” –Blank- (Fernández, 2024), he has gone a little further: he has jumped over the fence going beyond the educational center.

In this essay, Juan Fernández has remembered all those who learn, beyond schools. Especially those who, at some fateful moment, went blank on an exam or a test and, then, collapsed by that blockage, succumbed and, eventually, gave up learning. “How to focus attention, memory and motivation to learn,” reads the subtitle, certainly suitable, although he forgets, perhaps on purpose, the emotions, wich are also deeply involved in his acurate manual.

That’s why ‘En Blanco’ is an enjoyable, practical and informative work, for all learners (students, families who want to help students at home…), whether they are enrolled in a school or not; but, as long as we pay attention to the unavoidable ambivalence of pedagogy, is in turn a manual for educators too, for teachers who are interested in knowing how to focus their students’ attention, how to help them to memorize, to understand their emotions and, of course, to accompany them so that they can motivate themselves, since they still lack sufficient autonomous motivation.

Finally, we reccomend to enter into Juan’s garden, and get fascinated with the knowledge distilled by the trees of science planted there, whether you require the remedies that are found in the pharmacy of its pages, or if your aim is to recognize, in the classroom garden, what sickness are its plants suffering. So then you might be able to apply the appropriate treatment to each one.

Book Title: En Blanco. Cómo focalizar la atención, la memoria y la motivación para aprender. (Go Blank. How to focus attention, memory and motivation to learn).

Author: Juan Fernández

ISBN: 978-84-10079-40-3

Publisher: Plataforma Editorial

Language: Spanish

Number of pages: 209

Publication Date: March 2024

References:

– Fernández, J. (2024). En blanco. Cómo focalizar la atención, la memoria y la motivación para aprender. Barcelona: Plataforma Editorial.

– Fernández, J. (2022). Educar en la complejidad. Barcelona: Plataforma Editorial.

– Morales, M. y Fernández, J. (2022). La evaluación formativa. Madrid: SM.

– Blog personal de Juan Fernández: https://investigaciondocente.com/

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons