The Second Annual iSLC Student and Post-doc Conference will be a meeting of junior researchers from the NSF-funded Science of Learning Centers (SLCs). During this 3-day conference, participants will discuss their common interests for understanding and improving how people learn in a variety of settings and will share and learn about useful methods for conducting research to achieve these goals. The plenary theme for this year's conference is Social Foundations of Learning: Implications from Research on Brain, Behavior, and Experience.

The purpose of the conference is to foster research collaborations between SLCs and to build a network of junior researchers in the science of learning. Goals for the 2009 iSLC conference are following:

• Better understand the similarities and differences between the SLCs and how they contribute to the Science of Learning.
• Increase knowledge between and among Centers about current research and theoretical perspectives used in that research.
• Share research tools and theoretical frameworks that are being developed in each Center to shed new light on familiar open problems in learning.
• Share accumulated knowledge, procedures, and activities within each Center (e.g., promoting Center involvement and communication, organizing Center events, etc).
• Promote regular and substantive communication and interactions between individuals in the Centers to strengthen cross-Center relationships and promote interdisciplinary collaborations.
• Continue cross-Center research conversations and consider possibilities for cross-Center collaborative efforts.
• Build a human network of science of learning researchers that will be expanded and maintained as current students graduate and begin careers outside of their initial SLC.

Bringing together young researchers from different geographic areas, disciplines, and domains of expertise will foster an understanding of how problems in the science of learning can be studied from different angles, and create new, integrative ways of attacking those problems in hopes of reaching a sound solution. The solutions produced by these collaborations will simultaneously have a broader impact on science of learning research as well as the potential to inform educators, museum curators, parents, and others who are interested in how children, adolescents, and adults learn.

2009 Conference Planning Committee

• Tiffany Lee (LIFE)
• Roxann Harvey (CELEST)
• Mark Holden (SILC)
• Christopher Kanan (TDLC)
• Cecily Whitworth (VL2)
• Ruth Wylie (PSLC)