Mind, Brain, and Education Speaker Series 2008-09

MIND THE GAP:
A Model for Progress in Neuro-Education Research

E. Juliana Paré-Blagoev, Ed.D.
The SERP Institute

Wednesday, Dec 3, 2008
Planetarium Conference Room (CRB 303)
3:00-4:30 pm

Educational research has a long history of being interdisciplinary. Methodological and theoretical approaches from many disciplines have been adopted and adapted to help address educationally relevant questions.  Strong arguments have been made both for and against the potential value of adding neuroscience to the mix.  This talk presents a strategy for identifying educational issues that can be addressed by neuroscience and applies the strategy to two examples: one where education questions can be addressed by neuroscience and a second example, where neuroscience is used to study learning, but not in a way that has direct educational relevance. The talk paves the way for a new methodology capable of connecting neuroscience and education and contributing to the knowledge base of both fields of study.

Juliana Paré-Blagoev, Ed.D
Dr. Paré-Blagoev has a long-standing interest in effectively integrating educationally relevant research with educational practice.   She recently joined the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) Institute as their Assistant Director.  SERP creates and facilitates productive long-term relationships between researchers and school districts to solve critical classroom challenges.  Before joining SERP, her primary research focus was on skill and language learning using a combination of brain and behavioral methodologies.  This work was conducted with the explicit intent of hastening the translation of neuro-imaging results on developmental and learning disorders to hypotheses that were useful and testable in a classroom environment.  She is a founding Board Member of the International Mind Brain and Education Society.  Juliana received her Ed.D from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.