Temporal Dynamics of Learning

人们普遍认为美国的教育存在危机。有太多的学生学习困难，太多的学生不能阅读或做基本的算术，更不用说高等数学了。人们普遍不接受的是如何应对这场危机。学习时间动力学中心（TDLC）的研究人员认为，当前教育危机的一部分是缺乏对大脑如何学习的科学理解，以及缺乏将这种科学理解转化到课堂上。学习的一个重要但尚未得到充分研究的组成部分可能对教育产生重大影响，这就是时间和时机在学习中的作用。TDLC汇集了来自16个不同研究机构的40多名研究人员组成的跨学科团队，以便将研究精力集中在这一目标上。TDLC的目的是在多个时间和空间尺度、大脑系统和社会系统中实现对时间和时机在学习中的作用的综合理解，以1）创建学习的时间动态的新科学; 2）使用这种理解来改变教育实践;（3）创建一个新的合作研究结构，即研究网络的网络，以改变科学的实践。为什么要研究时间？时机对于每个级别的学习都至关重要，从学习语音的精确时间模式，到学习何时在课堂上给予反馈，再到学习新材料的最佳频率和时机。此外，十年的神经科学研究表明，大脑本身内在的时间动态也会加强和限制学习。例如，TDLC的工作表明，对一个蹒跚学步的孩子的脑电波（思维的时间动力学）的测量可以预测这个孩子几年后在语言任务中的表现。这提供了早期干预可以克服这些困难的可能性，证明了研究时间动态的有用性。这种规模和范围的研究计划显然只有通过中心资助模式才有可能，以便提供协调大型研究团队所需的资源。这项工作是通过将人员分为四个研究网络来组织的，来自多个学科的研究人员对共同的问题感兴趣，并围绕可以在人类，动物和计算模型中进行的实验同步他们的研究，从而使技术在单一问题上前所未有地融合。

It is commonly accepted that there is a crisis in education in the US. There are too many struggling learners, too many students who cannot read or do basic arithmetic, let alone advanced mathematics. What is not commonly accepted is what to do about this crisis. The researchers at the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center (TDLC) believe that part of the current crisis in education is the lack of scientific understanding of how the brain learns, and the lack of translation of this scientific understanding to the classroom. An essential, yet understudied, component of learning that could have a strong impact on education is the role of time and timing in learning. TDLC brought together an interdisciplinary team of over 40 investigators from 16 different research institutions in order to focus research energy on this goal. TDLC's purpose is to achieve an integrated understanding of the role of time and timing in learning, across multiple time and spatial scales, brain systems, and social systems, to 1) create a new science of the temporal dynamics of learning; 2) to use this understanding to transform educational practice; and 3) to create a new collaborative research structure, the network of research networks, to transform the practice of science. Why study timing? Timing is critical for learning at every level, from learning the precise temporal patterns of speech sounds, to learning when to give feedback in the classroom, to the optimal frequency and timing of studying new material. Moreover, a decade of neuroscience research demonstrates that the intrinsic temporal dynamics of the brain itself also reinforce and constrain learning. For example, work at TDLC has shown that measurements of the brain waves of a toddler-the temporal dynamics of thought - can predict how well that child will perform at language tasks years later. This provides the possibility that early intervention could overcome these difficulties, demonstrating the usefulness of studying temporal dynamics. A research program of this size and scope is clearly only possible through the Center Funding model, in order to provide resources at the scale necessary to coordinate the large team of researchers. The work is organized by dividing the personnel into four research networks, where researchers from multiple disciplines are interested in common questions, and who synchronize their research around experiments that can be carried out in humans, animals, and computational models, allowing unprecedented convergence of techniques on a single question.