Rochel Gelman - US grants

This project is being funded through the Learning and Intelligent Systems (LIS) Initiative. The focus is on learning as it occurs in complex environments, where the data have rich and potentially confusing structures. Nine investigators in five different disciplines - biology, chemistry, linguistics, psychology, and high school teaching of mathematics and science - will mount a collaborative, multi-level experimental and theoretical analysis of the mind's learning structures. The work integrates research on formal analyses of learnability, the evolution of complex natural and artificial adapative systems, the genetics of memory, the mind's ability to keep track of language learning data, perceptual learning of complex displays like equations and molecular models, and the creation of integrative math and science modules for use with interactive learning technologies. The unifying theme running through all of the projects, and across every level of analysis, is the interaction between the structure of the brain's learning mechanisms, and the structure of the data that support learning. Two related leitmotives cut across the planned work. First, the project itself is conceived of as a complex, interdisciplinary learning environment for people ranging from high school students and science teachers in the Los Angeles community, to senior faculty at UCLA. Second, the research efforts interact with and inform advancements in the rapidly evolving technologies for learning, instruction, genetic screening, and the development of artificial systems.

The overarching goals of the proposed project are to characterize the nature of early cognition as well as to continue the development of curricular and assessment tools. It will yield knowledge about how to design learning environments to nurture young learners in science and how to diffuse innovative science programs in early childhood settings. It will also provide the field with diagnostic research-based assessments that will enable us to understand starting points of different groups of learners, to track individual children's progress, and to assess the cumulative impact of high-quality science programs over time.

The proposed work builds on the PIs' programs for children in the target age range of 3 to 7 years. Gelman's Preschool Pathways to Science (PrePS), aimed at preschoolers, is to be partnered with Massey and Roth's Science for Developing Minds (SDM), aimed at kindergartners and first graders. Both programs are influenced by findings that science knowledge involves coherent and organized content, specialized vocabulary that is tied to the content, and tools of doing and communicating. The PIs will address the issue of diffusion by studying and documenting the introduction of PrePS with new teachers in three new demographically diverse sites. They will also develop sets of tasks, based on published well-tested developmental paradigms, to benchmark competence for ages 3-7 across a wide socioeconomic range of children in domains that are foundational for science and math learning. These include quantity and measurement; animacy, causality, and material kinds; and scientific reasoning. The PIs will conduct experimental studies investigating the learning impacts of re-representational