Typical and Atypical Brain Development: A SEPA Project for Grades 3-6
Our aim is to provide children with curricular learning experiences that will establish the foundation for broad, socially connected understanding of how the brain works and how brain functioning relates to behavior. To do so, we take advantage of the environment and resources of the Shriver Center and its program of interdisciplinary scientific research, training, and clinical service. Shriver scientists have partnered with educators at several area public and private schools with the goal of producing an integrated, practical, responsive curriculum for science education in primary grades 3-6. Our project may be unique in that there is an explicit, hands-on focus on showing how various scientific disciplines (neurobiology, behavioral neuroscience, genetics, etc.) work together to understand scientific problems that none could understand alone. The project is also unique in that its curriculum emphasizes both typical and atypical development. By doing this, we hope to teach children that variations in development are normal and determined by understandable or potentially understandable interactions between genes, brain development, and environment. During the two years of this Phase 1 project, we developed and have begun field tests of our curriculum. If the reviewer is interested in further details, they can be found on the project website.