University of Talca participates in the Millennium Nucleus initiative

Academic integrates a team that will lead transdisciplinary research to achieve a deep understanding of learning.

Elba Fuentealba, Journalist UTalca.- Investigating the learning of children and adolescents from a socio-emotional, environmental, cognitive and neural perspective is the objective of the Millennium Nucleus for the Science of Learning (MiNSoL) project. in which the professor of the Faculty of Psychology and academic vice-rector of UTalca, Cristian Rojas Barahona, participates.

The team is also made up of researchers from the Universidad Católica del Maule and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, who will receive funding for three years from the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) to establish the first Latin American Center for Learning Sciences.

Rojas highlighted that the initiative merges three disciplines -education, psychology and neuroscience-, to address the challenges that arise from the current educational system from a comprehensive perspective.

“It is focused on learning sciences, a tremendously relevant topic, not only at the country level, but also in the region and worldwide,” he explained.

He added that “being able to approach the problem of how to learn through different disciplines enriches knowledge and facilitates the bridge on how to make the appropriate descent to schools and to the children who are ultimately the beneficiaries of these research”.

For his part, the director of the Millennium Nucleus project for the Science of Learning and professor at UCM, Roberto Ferreira, highlighted the importance of this center to achieve a deep understanding of learning.

“In the future we want to have an impact on education, on pedagogy programs and include cognitive science as part of teacher training. We want to create synergy with teachers and school directors, since they are ultimately the ones who are going to provide us with practice and be able to improve the cognitive experience in the classroom”, highlighted Ferreira.