Educational Neuroscientist to Address UA Graduate Student Symposium

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Educational neuroscience is a burgeoning field that uses research about the brain to study how people learn.

But currently, the relationship between the two fields is one-way: neuroscience informs education, according to Dr. Firat Soylu, a Northwestern University post-doctoral fellow, who’ll explain how education can shape neuroscience research at the sixth annual Educational Studies in Psychology, Research Methods Graduate Student Symposium Friday at The University of Alabama.

The symposium is open to the public.

Soylu will deliver the keynote address “The Promises, Challenges, and Future of Educational Neuroscience” at 1 p.m. in room 118 of Graves Hall.

“For the future of the field, I argue that, in addition to methodological advancements that allow us to collect brain data in educational contexts, we need multi-level learning theories that incorporate perspectives at the socio-cultural, physical and brain levels,” Soylu said. “I argue that the embodied approach to cognition and its instantiations in educational theory can support this vision.”

Soylu will join the faculty in the College of Education in August. He is a post-doctoral fellow in the Center for Connected Learning and Computer Based Modeling at Northwestern. He’s worked closely with teachers and pre-service teachers to help them incorporate computational modeling activities in classrooms.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to get to know the community at UA and talk with them about the things that I love to study and learn about,” Soylu said.

The ESPRMC Symposium slate will include student panels at 2:30 p.m. and a poster session at 4 p.m. that feature graduate student research. Research topics include educational research, educational psychology, counselor education, and curriculum and instruction. Student panels will be held in Graves Hall 102 and 202, and the poster session on the first floor of Graves Hall.

Awards will be given at 5 p.m.