Learning Games & Toys for Preschoolers

Corinne Bower, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral research fellow working with Dr. Kelly Mix in the Learning and Cognition Lab at the University of Maryland. Her research interests include creating, implementing, and evaluating playful, hands-on, educational interventions in both formal and informal educational contexts with the goal of facilitating children’s STEM learning. Corinne authors academic papers on the evaluation of childhood interventions designed to facilitate STEM learning as well as writes articles for parents, educational practitioners, and administrators on best STEM-educational practices for young children—including a blog post for the Brookingshttps://www.brookings.edu/blog/ education-plus-development/2019/07/09/schools-out-block-out-time-for-spatial-learning/ Institution. She is currently working on a longitudinal project that explores children’s development of place value understanding in mathematics and how it relates to later mathematical learning. Corinne was previously a postdoctoral research fellow with Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Dr. Roberta Golinkoff examining the effectiveness of a puzzle-assembly intervention and its implementation strategies to increase preschoolers’ spatial skills and facilitate math learning. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology with a minor in Curriculum and Instruction, Science Education from Penn State in 2017 and completed a five-year B.S./M.S. program in Experimental Psychology at Saint Joseph’s University in 2011.

Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek is the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Faculty Fellow in the Department of Psychology at Temple University and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her research examines the development of early language and literacy as well as the role of play in learning. With her long-term collaborator, Roberta Golinkoff, she is author of 14 books and hundreds of publications. She is the recipient of the AERA Outstanding Public Communication for Education Research Award, the American Psychological Association’s Bronfenbrenner Award, the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Service to Psychological Science, the Association for Psychological Science James McKeen Cattell Award, the Society for Research in Child Development, Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development Award, the APA Distinguished Lecturer Award, and the Simms/Mann Whole Child Award. She is a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society and the AERA (recently, she has been selected as a 2020 AERA Fellow). She is the Past President of the International Society for Infant Studies and served as the Associate Editor of Child Development. She is on the advisory board for Nickelodeon, Vroom, the Boston Children’s Museum, Disney Junior, The Free to Be Initiative, and Jumpstart. She is also an advisor to NCECDTL Research to Practice Consortium that advises Head Start.  She is the co-developer of the QUILS Quick Interactive Language Screener that assesses early language competence in 3 through 5 year olds in English and Spanish. She also pioneered global initiates like Playful Learning Landscapes and  was on the founding committee of the Latin American School for Educational and Cognitive Neuroscience. Her book, Einstein never used Flashcards: How children really learn and why they need to play more and memorize less (Rodale Books) won the prestigious Books for Better Life Award as the best psychology book in 2003. Her recent book, Becoming Brilliant: What the science tells us about raising successful children, released in 2016, was on the NYTimes Best Seller List in Education and Parenting. Kathy received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and is a frequent spokesperson for her field appearing in the NYTimes, NPR and in international television outlets.