Imagine a future where the limits of today’s knowledge are the starting point for unlocking critical scientific insights and technical capabilities that push us just beyond what we believe is possible in education – that’s where our work at the Advanced Education Research and Develop Fund (AERDF) begins.
In a recent conversation with Mike Palmer for the Trending in Ed podcast, Auditi Chakravarty, CEO of AERDF, explained how AERDF’s R&D model starts at the edge of what the science of learning tells us we know. It is from that edge that we consider what must be proven or unlocked today, so that in three to five years what’s happening in the classroom looks very different. And not just different, but better. Where far more students are positioned to thrive in the economic and global conditions they will face.
In this podcast episode, you will hear how our programs are using R&D to bridge scientific research with real-world applications by co-designing solutions with educators, students, and caregivers to produce scientific knowledge, technical capabilities, and scalable classroom-ready prototypes:
- With a focus on mathematical conceptual understanding and complex problem-solving, EF+Math, in its final phases as an AERDF program, explores strengthening executive functioning (EF) while innovating math teaching and learning. EF+Math’s R&D teams, Fraction Ball, MathicSTEAM, and CueThinkEF+, are generating evidence-based solutions proving that creating math learning experiences that bring out the innate skills inside every student can improve math outcomes.
- By leveraging the power of AI and the expertise of learners, Assessment for Good is creating a more seamless and game-based assessment experience that encourages students to want to use these tools because they learn more about who they are as learners and that provides educators with instructional strategies in real-time.
- Reading Reimagined aims to better support older students who need to develop foundational reading skills, like decoding by breaking down and sounding out unfamiliar words to understand their meaning. Having confirmed the decoding threshold, Reading Reimagined is now working to develop, test, and implement tools to assess students’ decoding skills and curriculum that bolsters foundational reading skills.
- While much of today’s conversation centers on using AI to make current approaches to education more efficient, AugmentED, our newest program, will bring together expert teachers, researchers, and technologists to reimagine education for the AI era, developing and testing new teaching approaches and AI-powered tools to nurture every student’s potential.
Take a listen to the podcast to hear about the distinct ways that AERDF is using R&D to catalyze and expedite advancements in teaching and learning.
