Dr. Pamela Cantor in Spotlight on Poverty & Opportunity

In Overcoming Childhood Adversity: A Conversation with Pamela Cantor, Dr. Cantor discusses the science of learning and development, the impact adversity has on student development and Turnaround for Children’s scalable approaches to helping children succeed.

Here is an excerpt:

What are some of your current priorities and areas of focus?

We are heavily involved in a collaborative effort called the Science of Learning and Development initiative. The initiative Is establishing a scientific consensus around a convergent literature which can serve as a guide for the design of a 21st education system. The first part of this was synthesizing current research which we did in two papers that were published in Applied Developmental Science earlier this year.

We want to take what was in those papers and work with practitioners to design practices based on the research. In a 21^st century education system we need students with a very different set of skills than what was needed in the 20^th century. They need skills like self-direction, tenacity, and perseverance. This collaboration is now building out an R&D effort focused on many of the same types of innovations that Turnaround does on a much smaller scale. Our hope through this initiative is to build a network of states that are adopting these new, innovative evidence-based strategies into policy.

Read the full conversation on Spotlight on Poverty & Opportunity here.