Open Workshop: 

Embodied Brains, Social Minds: Neuropsychological Perspectives on Emotion, Learning and Self for Character and Citizenship Education in a Multicultural, Technological World


Date: 7 May 2014, Wednesday

Venue: To Be Confirmed

Time: 2pm to 5.00pm

Closing date: 25 April 2014, Friday

Workshop Fee: S$200.00 per participant which includes all training materials and 1 tea break.

For 2 or more participants from the same school/organisation who sign up, the cost will be S$150.00 per person. Fees do not include GST.

Registration is on a first come, first served basis. Register early to avoid disappointment.

Click here to download the Open Workshop Registration Form.

Workshop Synopsis

Today’s children are living in an in an age marked by unprecedented global immigration and intercultural mixing, and by unprecedented access to technology. How do these forces shape children’s social and intellectual development, and what can educators do to support beneficial patterns and meaningful learning? In this half-day workshop, participants will explore recent work on the neurobiology of emotions important for healthy social development and morality, such as admiration, compassion and gratitude. Using a cognitive developmental lens, we will come to understand what emotions are, why we have them, and how emotions are embedded in everything we learn. We will discuss emotions’ deep visceral roots in the feeling and regulation of the body and their neuropsychological ties to the feeling of one’s own subjective sense of self awareness and consciousness. We will examine cultural and individual differences in emotion processing, and what these differences mean for the role of social relationships and educational experiences in shaping children’s development. Based on cutting-edge findings from affective and social neuroscience, participants will:

• explore the roles of emotion and social interaction in learning, motivation, creativity and the culture of schools;
• inquire deeply into brain, cognitive and emotional development as dynamically intertwined processes;
• collaborate in facilitated discussions and analyses of case studies to develop scientifically grounded approaches for understanding and meeting the diverse cognitive, social and emotional needs of students;
• obtain ideas for fostering healthy, enduring development and learning through a focus on age appropriate curriculum development;
• develop strategies to become researchers in their own classrooms.
  
  

Target Audience
Classroom teachers of all levels, staff developers, teachers of leadership programs and institutes, and leaders of school systems

About the Trainer - Dr Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD is an affective neuroscientist and human development psychologist who studies the neural, psychophysiological and psychological bases of social emotion, self-awareness and culture and their implications for development and schools. She is an Assistant Professor of Education at the Rossier School of Education, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute, and a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program Faculty at the University of Southern California. She was formerly a postdoctoral fellow at USC under the mentorship of Robert Rueda and Antonio Damasio.

Immordino-Yang has an NSF CAREER award and is the inaugural recipient of the Award for Transforming Education through Neuroscience. She and her co-authors received the 2010 Cozzarelli Prize from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences for the most distinguished paper of the year in the behavioral and social sciences category, for the paper, "Neural correlates of admiration and compassion." PNAS, 106(19), 8021-8026. In 2011 she was named a "Rising Star" by the Association for Psychological Science, and received a Commendation from the County of Los Angeles for commitment to translational research in neuroscience and education. In 2012 she received an honor coin from the U.S. ARMY for educational contributions toward supporting soldiers' development of cultural literacy and compassion.

Immordino-Yang is the Associate Editor for North America for the award-winning journal Mind, Brain and Education. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General and Culture and Brain. She was elected to the governing board of the International Mind, Brain and Education Society, and serves on multiple school/educational advisory boards, among them Long Trail School (in VT), the Ross School Innovation Lab: Science, Math and Engineering Academy (in NY), and the University of New Mexico Family Development Program. She has served as a scientific mentor/adviser to several Los Angeles schools/districts, among them Troy High School, Marlboro School, Manhattan Beach Schools and Milken Academy. In 2012 she is launching a collaborative research project with ABC Unified School District, Cerritos College, Rowland Unified School District, and Huntington Park High School.

A former junior high school teacher, Immordino-Yang earned her doctorate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, where she was the recipient of grants from the Spencer Foundation and the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. She lectures nationally and abroad on the neural and psychosocial implications of brain and cognitive science research for curriculum and pedagogy. She is the content director for a new online, free course for teachers on learning and the brain, funded by the Annenberg Media Foundation.