The article is concerned with the rapidly developing interdisciplinary field of knowledge known as neuropedagogy (sometimes also called educational neuroscience, pedagogical neuroscience, science of mind, brain and education, neurodidactics and so on). The article first offers a brief justification of the need to integrate neuroscience, psychology and educational theory (and hence the emergence of neuropedagogy) for a better understanding of the processes of human learning and education. It goes on to characterise the object and subject of neuropedagogical research: the object of neuropedagogy is understood here as human neural systems, people as individuals (psychosystems) and the social systems in which education of individuals take place, or pedagogical or educational systems. The subject of neuropedagogy is then understood as the investigation of the different aspects of these systems. The aims of neuropedagogy are then characterised: in first place this is the understanding of the connection between the properties, processes or laws existing at the level of neural systems (or at the level of components of these systems) and the properties, processes or laws at the level of learning individuals or the social groups in which education takes place. The article does not omit to formulate the basic ontological, epistemological and ethical principles of neuropedagogy (which are often not explicitly expressed, but still strongly influence the orientation of research in the scientific discipline) and characterise the problematic (or set of problems) with which the discipline is concerned (above all the search for the neural foundations of the processes of human learning and behaviour and how social environment affects them). We also briefly survey the methods used in neuropedagogy with an emphasis on imaging methods for the neural system especially the brain. Finally we list several internationally significant research institutions, organisations or societies that are working systematically in this field of knowledge, because without them no scientific research would be possible.
This article is one of the first written in Czech on the theme of neuropedagogics, but restrictions of space mean that we cannot go into much detail and so focus just on the basic questions of neuropedagogical research. We hope that the article with stimulate interest in the Czech Republic in this promising field of interdisciplinary research.