Research may provide the tools to create better schools
Just as clinical trials are critical to enhancing human health and medicine, field experiments are critical to understanding human learning and education, according to a new paper published in the online journal Science. A team of economists and psychologists at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), working together with organizations focused on enhancing education and reducing poverty in India, have demonstrated both the feasibility and the necessity of such experiments, the study noted. “Research in cognitive science has taught us a great deal about what children know and how they learn,” said Harvard Professor Elizabeth Spelke, the Marshall L. Berkman Professor of Psychology and one of the paper’s authors. “Much of that work applies to all children, worldwide, and it gives us methods for assessing children’s knowledge that are robust enough to work when implemented by adults with only high school education, working with children in hot and noisy slums. This...