Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group has partnered with The University of Queensland (UQ) to publish npj Science of Learning, a new open access research journal that will explore the neurobiology of learning in experimental and educational environments.
UQ researcher Professor Pankaj Sah of the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the new journal. Prof. Sah's work centres on understanding the amygdala, an area of the brain involved in emotional processing, and he is Deputy Director (Research) at QBI, and Director of the Australian Research Council's Science of Learning Research Centre (SLRC).
Despite record funding – $63.7 billion was invested in Australian schools over three years from 2009-10 - educational outcomes have not improved, with Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures showing that Australian educational results have slipped behind.
Prof. Sah said that education needs to be treated like health, and the outcomes of new teaching strategies should be tested and evaluated before implementation in classrooms.
The open access format of the journal means that all articles will be free to read upon publication, enabling greater reach to the wider community interested in this topic, from researchers to school teachers.
UQ is currently collaborating with universities and state governments across Australia under the SLRC, with funding until the end of 2016, and has built its own Educational Neuroscience Classroom to understand the biological processes that occur during learning situations.
To launch the journal, UQ, QBI and Nature Publishing Group, will hold a symposium on the Science of Learning on April 24, 2015 in Brisbane, Australia, attended by Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief of Nature, Mariette DiChristina, Editor-in-Chief and Senior Vice President of Scientific American, as well as Dr Jonathan Sharples from the Institute for Effective Education, The University of York and other leading academics and researchers.
The journal is available online at http://www.nature.com/npjscilearn/, and open for submissions now.
