Departmental Colloquium - From the lab to the field and back: Toward a synergy between research in developmental cognitive science and in the economics of education

In developing countries like India, almost all children attend school, but many fail to learn up to their potential.  In this talk, I ask two questions.  First, can basic research in developmental cognitive science contribute to efforts to address this problem and promote Indian children’s learning in school?  Second, can field research, using randomized designs to evaluate the impacts of curricula that aim to promote such children’s learning, such as the curricula tested in India, contribute to efforts, in developmental cognitive science, to gain a better understanding of human minds and how they grow and learn?