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Dear All,

We are seeking a postdoctoral scientist to contribute to the UnLoCKE Project (Understanding Learning of Counterintuitive Concepts through Knowledge Interference Control in Science and Mathematics Education; www.unlocke.org) recently funded by the Wellcome Trust and Educational Endowment Foundation. The postdoctoral scientist will be a member of the CEN and based in CBCD, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck. The development of inhibition and control of interference has long been established as a central limiting factor in cognitive development. Children have the capacity to make inhibitory responses from infancy, but only gradually get better at using this ability. A central factor in mathematics and science education is the need for children to inhibit pre-existing beliefs or superficial perception in order to engage in acquiring and applying new and counterintuitive knowledge. In science education, this “conceptual change” is a formidable obstacle in acquiring knowledge that goes beyond popular belief or perception. In mathematics, the child needs to go beyond the perceptually obvious solutions to understand and apply formal logical solutions to a problem. Children’s ability to inhibit direct perceptual evidence or pre-existing beliefs in favour of counterintuitive, but correct, concepts, is thought to contribute to their science and maths performance. These ideas are being rolled out in a nationwide randomised control trial involving 6,000 children.
More details can be found at: 
Denis Mareschal


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