SYM 05: Applied cognitive science in the classroom: The role of educators in children's cognitive and socioemotional development
| Thursday, June 12, 2025 |
| 2:30 PM - 3:50 PM |
| Boardroom 1 |
Overview
Symposium organiser: Riikka Svane
Details
The aim of the symposium is to achieve a better understanding of how teachers and educators across formal education systems, from Early Childhood Education to schools, contribute to the development of children’s cognitive (e.g., language and memory) and socioemotional (e.g., emotion understanding) skills. The symposium summarizes findings on how (a) how high-quality interactions and high teaching quality each support children’s language, memory, and emotional skills; (b) how educator-child interactions can be enriched through intervention; and (c) the role of the education system and policy initiatives in supporting the application of the cognitive and developmental sciences to educator training and development.
Speaker
PhD Elaine Reese
Professor
University Of Otago
The New Zealand Best Start study: Evidence-Based Training with Early Childhood Educators to Promote Toddlers’ Oral Language and Self-Regulation
Symposium Presentation
Kia Tīmata Pai (Best Start study) focuses on evidence-based training with ECE educators to support children’s oral language and self-regulation skills. A total of 136 ECE centres (1889 educators; 1481 toddlers, M = 20 months) were randomly assigned to an oral language enrichment (ENRICH) or an active control condition and followed for 18 months. Parents and teachers rated children in ENRICH centres as higher in both oral language and self-regulation skills by age 3, controlling for earlier skills and demographic covariates. Educators supported toddlers’ oral language and subsequent self-regulation through responsive book-reading, reminiscing, and sound play interactions.
Paper Number
517
Dr Rebecca Andrews
Director Of Education
Macquarie University
Talking emotively and elaboratively: An intervention to promote emotive reminiscing talk by early childhood educators.
Symposium Presentation
Early childhood educators increasingly play a key role in children’s development. While little research has considered how educators and children reminisce about the past together, educators themselves report reminiscing to enhance children’s memory and emotion skills (Van Bergen & Andrews, 2021). In this randomised control trial we adapted a successful parent reminiscing intervention to teach educators (n = 20) and their children (n = 40) elaborative and emotion-rich reminiscing. Educators in the intervention provided more open-ended questions and emotion references during reminiscing than did educators in the control, with differences maintained across 4-month delay. We discuss implications for children’s development.
Paper Number
545
Prof Penny Van Bergen
A/Prof In Educational Psychology
Macquarie University
THE BRAIN AND LEARNING: NEW DRIVES TO INTEGRATE APPLIED COGNITIVE SCIENCE IN AUSTRALIAN EDUCATION
Symposium Presentation
Insights from the cognitive and developmental sciences have important implications for school teachers (K-12) and education systems across the age-span. These include understandings of memory, cognitive load, spacing and interleaving, elaborative encoding, and desirable difficulty, among others. Nonetheless, concerns have emerged in a range of countries that insights may not be shared with teachers. In this applied policy paper, I discuss new policy initiatives in Australia which mandate the implementation of core curricula focused on “the brain and learning” for teacher education students. I discuss both opportunities and risks, including concerns regarding generalizability and the importance of context.
Paper Number
455
