Helping Students Learn Maths and Science: New Research

Date/Time:: Monday 11 November, 2024, 5:30 to 7:30pm
Location:: Scienceworks
Cost:: $30 Museum Teachers
$40 for non Museum Teachers

Join Scienceworks & the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences (MSPS) to discuss educational neuroscience research on the development of science and mathematics skills.

This session is for teachers of Foundation to Year 9 science and mathematics.

Learning science and mathematics can be challenging for children and adolescents. This can be because these subjects rely on higher cognitive skills called executive functions, and also because many concepts in science and maths are counterintuitive.

This session, led by Prof. Iroise Dumontheil, a researcher in the Cognitive Neuroscience Hub at MSPS, will discuss the sources of individual differences in science and maths achievement, and possible strategies to support children’s science and maths reasoning.

Program covers

How the human brain learns maths and science
Sources of individual differences in maths and science achievement
Insight into brain and cognitive development
Strategies to support children’s science and maths reasoning
How Scienceworks programs support effective learning

Teachers will be provided

Light snacks

Curriculum Links

Science
Mathematics and Numeracy

AITSL Standards

Know students and how they learn
- 1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students
- 1.2 Understand how students learn
- 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities
Know the content and how to teach it
- 2.1 Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area
- 2.5 Literacy and numeracy strategies
Engage in professional learning
- 6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice
Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community
- 7.4 Engage with professional teaching networks and broader communities

Professor Iroise Dumontheil

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND ARC FUTURE FELLOW IN THE COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE HUB OF THE SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES

After obtaining a PhD from the University of Paris VI, Iroise was a postdoc in labs in London, Cambridge and Stockholm, eventually joining Birkbeck, University of London, in 2012, and then the University of Melbourne in 2023. She studies the typical development of social cognition, emotional regulation, cognitive control and metacognition, using structural and functional neuroimaging, cognitive and genetic data, as well as cognitive training interventions. She is interested in the impact of cognitive training, from computerised games to mindfulness meditation practice, on cognition in children and adolescents, as well as the potential implications of neuroscience research for education.