The SLRC brings together neuroscientists, psychologists and education researchers with the common goal of understanding how we learn and remember; and determining how that understanding can be applied to improve learning outcomes for today’s and tomorrow’s students. The Centre was established because neuroscientists, psychologists and educators share a common interest and through the SLRC can collaborate on a range of programs and innovative experimental techniques to achieve that.
We believe that better understanding learning; developing evidence-based strategies and tools to assess and evaluate learning outcomes; evaluating existing strategies and dispelling myths will enable educators and policy makers enhance teaching and learning outcomes.
Neuroscientists have long been interested in learning and memory formation – which is one of the great unknowns in neurobiology today. How is it that the brain learns? How do you lay down memories? What are the optimal parameters under which that learning happens and how do you test it? Likewise psychologists have for many years been looking at the behavioural side of learning – how you do the testing, how you set it up and how you analyse results. And of course education researchers have been interested in the actual processes of education – teaching students.
All three groups are interested in the very same issue, which is how you learn things and remember them. Essentially what works best for students to learn, teachers to teach and programs that educational institutions deliver.
Within the Centre we feel that this uniting the perspectives of neuroscience, psychology and education, will help design and optimally test education approaches and ultimately improve outcomes through scientifically-validated learning tools and strategies. And that this approach will inform educational policy, producing an increasingly effective framework for formal and informal education environments.
Pankaj Sah