The New Revolution: Educational Neuroscience

Extraordinary discoveries about how children grow, acquire language, think, reason, learn a variety of skills and knowledge (including reading, math, and science), and how they conceptualize their social, emotional, and moral worlds, have yielded a revolution within the discipline of Education. Researchers have begun to converge on an educationally important set of basic mechanisms that dynamically interact and change over time. This research has taught us the best points of entry for teaching, motivating, and learning specific content at specific ages across development. Much of this research is coming from our understanding of the developing and learning brain. Furthermore, contemporary research is showing us that the growing child's social context is vital: Families, communities, and schools have the potential to influence positively children's development through systematic and well-timed interventions. This exciting new research endeavor is called Educational Neuroscience.

These research advances have welded a revolution in Education whereby research findings on developing children and young adults are being linked more directly to educational policy-making and classroom practice.

This new emphasis on controlled research can be seen in higher institutions of learning throughout the United States. Many colleges and universities are expanding their Departments and Schools of Education to include formal programs that wed research with educational practice. For example, see Harvard University's newly established program in their School of Education, entitled "Mind, Brain, and Education," or Temple University's new center called "CIRCL" (Center for Improving Resources in Children's Lives) that is dedicated to "bridging the gap between basic research on children's development and the policies and practices that affect children and their families." Dartmouth College is delighted to be part of this important revolution, one that will situate us as a bold new leader in this exciting advance in the discipline of Education, and one that will enable us to achieve our overarching goal: to contribute to our knowledge of the developing child toward building educational policy and practice that fundamentally improve children's lives.

Follow us along this important path over the next few years as we build our Department of Education with new faculty dedicated to "bridging the gap" between research and educational practice and policy.