Future Research on Child Development and Learning

2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the Jacobs Foundation. The Board of Trustees of the Foundation has, therefore, decided that the 2019 Jacobs Foundation Conference should be used to develop and discuss a research agenda for future research on child development and learning.

The international conference aims to bring together leaders in the field to engage in a discussion on the future of research in child development and learning.

This conference should be a different kind of intellectual enterprise. It is not a conference of research papers, but a conference of ideas. While individual sessions will focus on some key issues of current research, the overall emphasis will be on considerable open discussion and debate. This rather open and unstructured conference design requires motivated participation and contribution from all attendees, including spontaneous inputs and assumptions of roles and responsibilities, e.g. as group leaders.

The conference wants to help to point to a path of moving from the current fractured state of knowledge to a more universal perspective. If successful, the conference will help to set the stage for a visionary future research agenda on child development and learning.

The annual conference will take place from the 12th to the 15th June 2019. It will bring together more than 60 researchers and professionals.

Since 1991, distinguished experts and young scholars in child and youth development have discussed such issues. Invited by the Jacobs Foundation, leading experts in the fields of psychology, educational and economic sciences and sociology as well as media sciences, political science, linguistics and neurosciences meet every year for two to three days.