The Journey From Child to Scientist: Integrating Cognitive Development and the Education Sciences (Decade of Behavior)

The impulse to investigate the natural world is deeply rooted in our earliest childhood experiences. This notion has long guided researchers to uncover the cognitive mechanisms underlying the development of scientific reasoning in children.

Until recently, however, research in cognitive development and education followed largely independent tracks. A major exception to this trend is represented in the multifaceted work of David Klahr. His lifelong effort to integrate a detailed understanding of children’s reasoning and skill acquisition with the role of education in influencing and facilitating scientific exploration has been essential to the growth of these fields.

In this volume, a diverse group of stellar contributors discuss such wide-ranging ideas as the evolution of “folk science” in young children and the mechanisms that underlie mathematical understanding, as well as mental models used by children in classroom activities.

The volume’s lessons will have profound implications for STEM education, and for the next generation of scientists.

Sharon M. Carver, PhD, is a developmental psychologist who serves as a teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the director of the Psychology Department's early childhood laboratory school, The Children's School. With David Klahr, she codirects the university's doctoral Program in Interdisciplinary Education Research (PIER).
 
Dr. Carver earned an AB in psychology from Princeton University and a PhD in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University, where her advisor was David Klahr.
 
Dr. Carver's research focus is on the explicit specification of learning goals, the alignment of instruction and assessment with those goals, and the application of diverse teaching strategies to facilitate transfer. She seeks to enhance the reciprocal impact of theory and research in multiple disciplines to strengthen the learning of children, educators, families, university students, and researchers.
 
Jeff Shrager, PhD, is a consulting associate professor of symbolic systems at Stanford University, and chief technological officer of CollabRx, Inc., a biomedical informatics startup.
 
A computational psychologist of science, Dr. Shrager seeks to understand how science works and to build human–computer networks that facilitate scientific discovery.
 
Dr. Shrager holds degrees in computer science and cognitive and developmental psychology from The University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon University, respectively, and has conducted research in cognitive and developmental neuroscience, informal science education, scientific computing, human learning, artificial intelligence, molecular microbial marine biology and genomics, nonlinear mathematics, and many other areas.