On the Impact of the Self in a Complex Knowledge Network

This paper is devoted to establishing the place of the ‘self’ in the complex experience of learning. It is well known that we are most engaged in the classroom when the subject underdiscussion is of personal interest or something we recognize to have meaning to our lives; in other words, when the discussion is about ourselves. The current work aims to validate thisanecdote through brain studies experiments which implicate the different parts of the brain (such as Meical Prefrontal Cortex (MPFC), the right PFC (rPFC), the right Temporal Parietal Junction (rTPJ)) with self-awareness. In particular, we wish to understand how self-awarenesscan impact the learning of a subject like precalculus, a subject taken by a large number of students at most universities. These brain studies are supported by classroom surveys which allowed us to investigate how students’ knowledge networks and topics learned in class wereconnected to their own personal experiences. While this is the start of a series of studies to unravel the various complex issues in learning and teaching, it points to the fact that evenlearning a subject like mathematics is a highly subjective experience. Therefore, in addition to focusing on ‘what’ we are teaching, we ought to equally consider ‘who’ is learning.Keywords: networks; precalculus; self-awareness; neuroscienc