Speaker Series
The Center regularly invites lecturers of varying disciplines from all over the country to expand on the MBE education offered at The University of Texas at Arlington.
Helen Abadzi
Senior Education Specialist
Global Partnership for Education
The World Bank
December 2, 2012 · 4:30 p.m.
Chemistry Physics Building 303
"How Little-Known Virtues of Cognitive Neuroscience Can Educate the Poor
of the World More Effectively"
Education colleges in the US focus on instruction for students of high-income countries, where parents are literate and teachers are well educated. But in the poorest countries, children often start school without having seen a book, and many traditional assumptions about learning may not work. The international donor community has invested billions in the education of the poor, and it is important to find the fastest path to results. What principles can be used from learning research to bring this about? How to overcome dysfunctional environments and bring basic skills to the kids?
Helen Abadzi is a Greek psychologist who earned her doctorate in psychology from UTA in 1983. She has worked for 25 years as a senior education specialist and evaluation officer at the World Bank. She explores how application of ideas from the cognitive neurosciences can improve the education of the poor. Her publications helped raise early-grade reading fluency to a high-level international priority. On Tuesday, Dr. Abadzi will present the main challenges of her work, accompanied by video clips from various countries.
Michael W. Connell
CEO, Native Brain, Inc.
November 8, 2012 · 4:30 p.m.
Young Junior High School
Arlington, Texas
"Flipped Classroom v2.0: Empowering Learners, Teachers, and Education Researchers with Modern Learning Science and Technology"
The public dialogue around U.S. education is one of crisis and decline. Yet the opportunities for delivering high-quality learning experiences are greater than ever. In particular, there is a great deal of research on learning, motivation, and teaching available today to guide effective curriculum design and pedagogy. In addition, modern technologies like the iPad and Web enable new modes of teacher-student interaction that can support students to progress at their own pace while freeing up teachers to provide more individualized attention to each of them. Importantly, these innovations can be integrated into today’s classrooms and/or lesson plans, without the need for extensive retooling or retraining.
Joaquín Fuster
Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science
Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior
School of Medicine
University of California at Los Angeles
November 5, 2012 · 5:30 p.m.
Chemistry Physics Building 303
Dr. Joaquín Fuster talks with Dr. Marc Schwartz’s course, Theoretical & Conceptual Models of MBE. Students will look for connections between Dr. Fuster’s cognitive science work and education.
Dr. Fuster studied medicine at the University of Barcelona (M.D. 1953). In 1957 he emigrated to the United States to initiate a career in neuroscience at UCLA. During 1962-64, he worked as a visiting scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich. He received his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Granada in (1967), Spain. Dr. Fuster is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and a member of the Brain Research Institute and the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, at UCLA’s School of Medicine.
Jenny Thomson
Harvard Graduate School of Education
December 7, 2011 · 3:00 p.m.
Arlington ISD Mac Bernd Professional Development Center
Arlington, Texas
"The Neuroscience of Reading and Dyslexia: Insights and Possible Solutions"
This talk will discuss how neuroscience is being applied to questions of literacy, dyslexia and literacy instruction. A particular focus of the talk will be recent studies that explore how new digital technologies are changing what it means to be a successful reader and writer. The studies suggest that digital technology can both reduce the ability gap in certain academic domains, while increasing them in others. The implications of these findings for students of all abilities will be discussed.
