El espacio empático en la educación: representación del espacio y empatía, de Piaget a la didáctica de la “simplicidad”

Abstract

This work aims to provide a perspective on the relationship between space and education, on the assumption, developed by Alain Berthoz, that the many problems posed by the advancement in space has been used, during evolution, also for higher cognitive functions. Neuroscience research, in fact, identified the neurobiological basis of the insights of Piaget on the representation of space in the child, and revealed links between the management capacity of spatial reference systems, the ability of mental rotation and the empathic mode of intersubjective relationship . The work develops by presenting a framework on the idea of space in Western thought, and the relationship between the manipulation of spatial reference systems and cognitive processes, finally analyzing the consequences, in education, of the spatial theory of empathy, developed at the Collège de France in the path of the phenomenological tradition.