About this Event
Thursday 20 June, 5pm (ACST): The event will begin with a Welcome to Country – a cultural experience by the water, followed by drinks and nibbles.
Friday 21 June, 8.30am–5pm (ACST): One-day workshop.
This workshop will suit academics, philanthropists interested in education and skill formation, potential research partners, government officials, civil servants, and research staff in government.
Key presentations:
Early childhood education: The investment that works in unanticipated ways and times
Early childhood education has been celebrated as a means for policymakers to lessen wealth inequality and achievement outcomes. This lecture argues that our traditional understanding is incomplete: standard approaches to measure the effects of investment in early childhood education are missing two key channels of impact.
The potential of smart technology to support caregivers and optimise children’s early development
Science has revealed that nurturing talk and interaction with loving adults is what fuels children’s early brain development. Though this kind of interaction is firmly rooted in the human connection between child and caregiver, Dr Dana Suskind believes that artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other emerging technologies have a role to play as well.
In this session, Dr Suskind will demonstrate how such technology can be used to support parents and caregivers in their crucial roles as brain architects—in ways that allow for and celebrate cultural and linguistic diversity. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, technology need not drive people apart. In fact, as Dr Suskind will illustrate, it can help strengthen the bonds that allow children to learn, grow, and thrive. She will share examples of several tools developed by the University of Chicago's TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health that will help individual parents and caregivers, from all backgrounds, boost children’s development—and also enable Australia to better support all of its citizens in this essential task.
Key speakers include:
Professor John A. List
Professor List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, and holds the appointment of Distinguished Professor of Economics at ANU.
His research focuses on combining field experiments with economic theory to deepen our understanding of economic science. In the early 1990s, Professor List pioneered field experiments as a methodology for testing behavioural theories and learning about behavioural principles that are shared across different domains. His collective research has led to collaborative work with several different schools and charities, as well as firms, including: Lyft, Uber, United Airlines, Virgin Airlines, Humana, Sears, Kmart, Facebook, Google, General Motors, Tinder, Citadel, Walmart and several non-profits.
His research includes over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and several published textbooks. He co-authored the international best seller, The Why Axis, in 2013, and is author to best seller, The Voltage Effect. He is a current Editor of the Journal of Political Economy.
Read more here.
Dr Dana Suskind
Dr Suskind is Co-Director of the Thirty Million Words (TMW) Center for Early Learning and Public Health at the University of Chicago. She is a Professor of Surgery and is the Founder of the Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program, and Founder of TMW – an evidence-based intervention program designed to help narrow the language gap between children from lower-income families to those in wealthier households.
Dr Suskind’s research focuses on foundational brain development, with an overarching aim to affect a population-shift in the knowledge and behaviour of parents and caregivers in order to reduce the achievement gap and prevent early cognitive disparities at onset. Given the absence of any such tools in the field, she developed a parent knowledge assessment tool, the Scale of Parent/Providers’ Expectations and Knowledge (SPEAK), which influences all three areas of her research: behaviour change interventions, efficacy testing, and implementation scaling.
Her research includes over 35 peer-reviewed journals and 150 national and international speaking engagements. Author of the book Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain, she has been featured in New York Times, The Washington Post, Crain’s Chicago Business, National Public Radio, and other national media outlets in America.
Read more here.
Important information:
Registration is required to attend this event.
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Visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan
If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please contact the event organiser, [email protected].
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
CDU Darwin Waterfront, 21 Kitchener Drive, Darwin City, Australia
AUD 0.00
