Center Funding Research on Math, Science Cognition

Rockville, Md.

Four years ago, federal officials launched an initiative to study the complex machinery of mathematics and science cognition, or in plain language, how students think, learn, and solve problems in those subjects.

Since then, that program has begun to exert its influence through the relatively modest but steady flow of public funding it provides for scholarly research, work that goes largely ignored by the public at large—and even most educators—but which, over time, can have broad influence in the classroom.

The federal center goes by the lengthy title of the Program on Mathematics and Science Cognition and Learning, Development and Disorders. It operates within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the same federal entity that has generated much of the research that strongly influences...