Foundations of a new science of learning

During the ECTEL-Conference last year Mike Sharples had pointed to an interesting paper which has been published in the highly recognized journal Science. Due to the fact that this journal does not publish often articles related to Technology Enhanced Learning I was curious what the paper “Foundations for a new Science of Learning” is about.

photo credit: epSos.de

The paper proposes a new science of learning based on 4 contributing disciplines: Psychology, Education, Machine Learning and Neuroscience. The authors stress the aspect of social learning of children on the one hand, on the other hand they discuss the similarity between machine learning research and learning processes of children (e.g. pattern recognition, covariation or frequency distributions).

While psychology, neuroscience and machine learning contribute the hard facts to the new science of learning education is mostly seen interesting because of three activities: Early intervention programs for their so called “cascading effects”, non-formal learning approaches and classical 1-to-1 face to face teaching. For the last aspect the use of intelligent tutoring systems is mentioned as a promising research direction. The article ends with the following sentence:

A convergence of discoveries in psychology, neuroscience, and machine learning has resulted in principles of human learning that are leading to changes in educational theory and the design of learning environments.

The article collects a wide range of interesting findings from the disciplines mentioned above. On the other hand it left me with unease since the authors must be aware that there must be more then just a ‘convergence of discoveries’ to build a new science of learning. Also their account that “new learning technologies are being developed that embody key elements of individual human tutoring while avoiding its extraordinary financial costs” was surprising since I did not yet realize that ITS have become a cheap activity. Anyway, an interesting paper with many current and important findings and references.