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Conference Overview
Need
In the current Age of Biology, society is looking to neuroscience, genetics,
and cognitive science to inform and improve education. Scientists and scholars
need to take responsibility for building strong connections of mind, brain,
and education to provide usable research-based knowledge for education. Many
of the efforts to relate biology to education have been at best useless and
at worst pernicious, including most of what is called "brain-based education." To
create better research and practice, we must build a reciprocal relationship
between educational practice and research on learning and development, analogous
to the relationship between biology and medicine. In this relationship, research
informs practice, and simultaneously practice informs research.
Neuroscience has provided fascinating glimpses into the brain's development
and function. Recent technological advances have enabled neuroscientists and
geneticists to discover more about the brain than ever before. The remarkable
progress in basic brain research over the last ten years has created high hopes
for applying this knowledge to education—advances in our emerging knowledge
of the brain hold promise for improving the education of children. The intersection
of biology and cognitive science with pedagogy is becoming a new focus in higher
education and public policy as well. Recent developments include a Mind, Brain
and Education (MBE) Conference held at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in
the Vatican in November 2003, new MBE programs forming at graduate schools,
and the creation of a new MBE journal and society. However, and not surprisingly,
progress bridging the gaps between basic research and classroom needs has not
and cannot come without effort. Part of the challenge is fostering collaboration
of biologists, cognitive scientists, and educational researchers, in order
to meet the newly increased demand for thoughtful application of scientific
findings to educational practice.
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Purpose
Our goals for the Usable Knowledge conference on Mind, Brain, and
Education are:
- to assess current successful academic models in the emerging
field of MBE
- to examine how basic research relating biology and cognitive
science to learning and emotional development can contribute
to teaching practice, and
- to determine how educational practice and assessment can inform
research agendas and test applicability of scientific findings.
The focus of this meeting is academic domains
of learning (such as literacy, language, and mathematics), issues
of emotional
development, especially as they relate to learning and school
engagement, methods
for assessing learning and development, and potential developments
in educational policy.
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Content
We will hold the conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
on October 7th and 8th, 2004. About eighty people will participate,
by invitation only. Prior to the conference, twelve of the researchers
participating will develop short commissioned papers about their
work that all attendees will read in advance. Each of these papers
will describe research that centers on issues and models for
integrating basic sciences and educational practices; these papers
will provide the foci for initial conference sessions. At the
start of these sessions, the scholar will give a brief summary
of his or her paper, and a guest invited by the scholar will
present additional perspectives on this research agenda and/or
its applicability to education. The bulk of the session will
center on discussions of the research and how it relates to educational
improvement.
The ideas and experiences of the participating
scholars exemplify
leading-edge research about challenges of developing successful
educational and developmental interventions, particularly but not
exclusively, related to cognitive neuroscience.
At the conference, HGSE faculty members and conference organizers
Kurt Fischer and Tami Katzir will deliver the opening address Later
sessions at the conference will focus on discussing the research
being conducted and its relation to practice, identifying important
directions for connecting future research and practice, and delineating
the implications of the research for educational practice and policy.
Based on this, the group will develop an agenda for further research
needed on this topic. A central theme will be how to use the regular
assessment done in education to feed back to research in cognitive
science and biology.
HGSE faculty (including Catherine
Ayoub, Catherine
Elgin, Kurt
Fischer, Howard
Gardner, Paul
Harris, Tami
Katzir, David
Rose,
Catherine
Snow, and John
Willett) and visiting scholars and practitioners
(including Mahzarin Banaji, Antonio Battro, John Bruer, John Gabrieli,
Usha Goswami, Reid Lyon, Laura-Ann Petitto, Robert Plomin, Elizabeth
Spelke, Paul van Geert, and Maryann Wolf) will participate in the
two days of conference activities and aid in orchestrating the
various synthesis discussions (including chapters in the conference
volume).
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Contribution
All the presenters at the conference have been asked to frame their
presentation guided by these general questions:
- What is the potential role that basic sciences can play in
this domain of education?
- How can current findings benefit educational practice?
- What are the areas of educational achievement that cognitive
and brain sciences cannot help with?
Answers to these questions and related insights
that emerge at the conference will aid policymakers and practitioners
as they
seek to apply findings from cognitive neuroscience to classroom
practice in a concrete way. The research community will benefit
through the dissemination of models of successful educational
interventions related to cognitive neuroscience and hopefully
through establishment
of models for practice-based research on cognitive and brain
processes.
HGSE's Kurt Fischer and Tami Katzir will serve as editors of
the conference volume—a book of the commissioned papers and other
chapters, each preceded by a paragraph written by the editors.
(With this conference and one preceding it, HGSE has initiated
a series of conferences on "Usable Knowledge: Linking Research
and Practice" and anticipates a series of similar publications
under this heading.) Back to Top
Intended Audiences
The audience for the knowledge obtained from this conference is
a broad range of practitioners, scholars, and policymakers who
seek the thoughtful application to educational practice of scientific
findings in this area. The conference volume will have four target
audiences:
- faculty members who teach courses on cognitive neuroscience,
development, learning, and/or educational practice
- faculty members and higher-education administrators designing
new MBE programs
- practitioners and policymakers seeking insights about integrating
basic science with successful educational interventions, and
- scholars seeking models and methods for understanding how cognitive,
emotional, and brain development relate to learning and teaching.
Back to Top Dissemination
This Web site has been designed to ultimately serve as a national
knowledge portal on mind, brain, and education. Part of the
Web site is private, only for conference participants, and
will serve as a vehicle for reading the draft conference papers
in advance. The knowledge portal open to the public will phase
into existence over a period of half a year, starting about
a month after the conference. This portal will feature resources
and a network for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners
to learn about and discuss basic scientific findings in mind,
brain, and education and how to connect research in cognitive
science and biology with educational practice and policy.
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