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In the fifty years since the Laboratory for Human Development at Harvard was founded in 1949, the social sciences have transformed the way we humans now understand ourselves. Feminism and multiculturalism destroyed the idea that the workings of white males' minds could define what it is to be human. Technology radically altered, among other things, the way we transmit and consume information. And modern cognitive scientists proved what was previously considered an impossibility: that we can rigorously and scientifically study what goes on inside people's heads. And in all these areas, HGSE's Human Development and Psychology (HDP) area—an outgrowth of the 1949 laboratory—has distinguished itself as a leader.
Today we're on the verge of changes at least as revolutionary as those
of the past 50 years. Invoking HDP's track record for seeing what's ahead,
we've challenged several distinguished
faculty and alumni of HDP to look into the future. We asked them: "What
are the key issues and questions just around the corner in your fields?
What are the big dangers, the big promises?" This response was written by Laura Ann Petitto, Ed.M.'81, Ed.D.'84, faculty member in Dartmouth College's education department. Revolutions have a way of beginning in the most unlikely places. Some 15 years ago, a revolution in our understanding of how the human brain works was launched in hospital subbasements where researchers discovered that they could look inside people's brains while they were still alive and kicking—a definite improvement over the previous technique of examining slices of dead brains! By suspending a person's head within an opening, affectionately called "the donut," of a machine that measured the brain's blood flow, researchers watched which brain tissue "drank in" more oxygen as a person thought about very specific things. Since then, by correlating specific blood-greedy areas with specific mental activity, there has been an explosion in our understanding of the neural pathways that underlie our ability to think, reason, learn, remember, read, and use language. Moreover, contemporary neuroimaging research has yielded insights into the brain's stunning ability to reorganize itself in early childhood and identified the crucial time periods in child development during which neural plasticity is at its peak. Imaging research has also shown the way that everyday learning can alter the neural architecture of the developing brain, and helped identify the key factors of the child's environment upon which normal cognitive growth depends. The Coming Revolution (and Its Dangers) With these factors in mind, a new understanding of how children's mental worlds develop and change over time promises to revolutionize our methods of teaching and learning in education. The future will shed new light on when and what to teach children, and how children can best be guided to conceptual change, insight, and discovery. About the Article
HGSE News, Harvard Graduate School of Education
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