Print copies and full PDF of Understanding the Brain: Birth of a New Learning Science are available for purchase only from the OECD Bookshop. To browse a read-only PDF of the report prior to making your purchase, follow the Bookshop link below and click on the icon of a page with an eye on it that appears to the right of the page. This will open the "browse-it" version.
Publication description:
This book provides new insights about learning. It synthesises existing and emerging findings from cognitive and brain science. It shows what the latest brain imaging techniques and other advances in the neurosciences actually reveal about how the brain develops and operates at different stages in life from birth to old age and how the brain is involved in acquiring skills such as reading and counting.
This enlightening publication is essential reading for all those involved in education as parents, teachers, learners or policy makers. It may confirm and illuminate what they already know from experience, but there will be surprises too. One of the aims of Undertanding the Brain is to encourage dialogue among educators and neuroscientists about what each can contribute to the understanding of how and when we learn. An international and interdisciplinary effort will play a decisive role in resolving recurring problems in education.
"Brain and Learning" project description:
Since 1999, CERI's "Brain and Learning" project has been working towards a better understanding of the learning processes of an individual's lifecycle. The first phase of the project (1999 &em; 2002) brought together an international group of researchers in several fora to review potential implications of recent research findings in brain and learning sciences for policy-makers. The results of this phase was synthesised into an OECD publication entitled: "Understanding the Brain: Towards a New Learning Science". The second phase (2002-2006), channelled its activities on three main issues: Literacy, Numeracy and Lifelong Learning within three trans-disciplinary and international networks, in which cognitive neuroscientists were challenged to tackle questions of direct educational relevance. The culmination of the Brain and Learning project is the publication "Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science"