About the LSI
The Learning Sciences Institute (LSI) is a Peabody College's leading center dedicated to stimulating and supporting interdisciplinary research and development in the learning sciences. The mission of the Learning Sciences Institute (LSI) is to support the advancement of research on policies, practices, and procedures that influence human learning and development. Through this work, the LSI seeks to improve education while developing a new generation of educational scientists and leaders.
With over $119 million in external support, the LSI's 100+ investigators are currently exploring a wide variety of topics such as conceptual and cultural change, education leadership assessment, embodied mathematical cognition, teacher professional development, the role of culture in learning, the improvement of methods for assessing students with disabilities, and much more.
In addition to fostering interdisciplinary research on assessment, learning, teaching, intervention, curriculum, and policy, the LSI works to build community and provide opportunities for scholarship in the learning sciences.
LSI Goals
- Stimulate and support interdisciplinary work in the learning sciences at Vanderbilt,
- Connect the disparate pockets of work on the learning sciences into a coherent whole, making connections along the continuum from basic research in neuroscience and psychology to applied work in education,
- Strengthen the ties between research and development at the university and practice in the field (e.g., preK-12 and higher education, commercial products) ,
- Invigorate graduate and postdoctoral programs in the learning sciences and educational psychology at Peabody College, and
- Shape the direction and character of the evolving field of learning sciences
The LSI seeks to connect learning sciences research and development along the continuum from the applied to the very basic. The LSI's work focuses on:
- the learning of disciplinary content
- assessment,
- structure of disciplinary knowledge,
- pedagogical content knowledge,
- learning in formal and informal educational settings, and
- equitable access to learning.
- learning of strategies for synthesizing solutions to open-ended or ambiguous problems such as those that occur in engineering design
- the motivational, emotional, and social context of learning
1. including the roles of developmental,
2. social/cultural, economic, political, historical, and environmental factor, and
3. indigenous knowledge systems.
- learning technologies
1. including intelligent tutoring systems,
2. visualization tools,
3. computer-supported collaborative environments,
4. digital libraries, and
5. real-time assessment tools.
- machine learning
1. learning algorithms,
2. knowledge representations,
3. robotics,
4. adaptive systems, and
5. computational simulations of cognitive systems .
- mathematical, statistical, and computational modeling
- the development of new tools and technologies to support the learning sciences
Currently, the projects in the LSI primarily cluster into five areas: (1) learning studies, (2) assessment studies, (3) intervention studies,(4) policy & management studies, and (5) training.
View the list of awards beginning July 1, 2009.