HANOVER - A group led by Dartmouth College researcher Michael Gazzaniga has won a $21.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a center that will study the science of learning.

Dartmouth scientists will partner with college educators from many subject areas, the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vt., and area schools to investigate the fundamental basis of how people learn core subjects such as reading and math, among other research topics.

Although the details have not been worked out, the project's leaders envision a mutually beneficial relationship, with teachers and students showing how things really work in the classroom, and the scientists providing information on how to improve learning.

Researchers are asking a wide range of questions, including: Why are some subjects difficult to learn? When should concepts be introduced? How is the brain mechanically involved in developing literacy? What is the impact of bilingual training versus monolingual?

The Center for Cognitive and Educational Neuroscience will be housed in a renovated wing of Baker Library.

Out of a pool of more than 60 institutions, Dartmouth was chosen as one of four sites for funding in the NSF's new Science and Learning Center initiative.

It is the largest peer-reviewed grant Dartmouth College has ever received. Peer-reviewed grants are given after others in the field evaluate the project's scientific principles.

Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington are also part of the NSF effort.

Dartmouth currently has four school partnerships in the Upper Valley for this project - with the Hanover, Lebanon and Mascoma districts in New Hampshire and the Hartford district in Vermont. School officials have met with college researchers during the last year to discover what research would benefit teachers and students most.

"The current partnership is really the initial design stages of creating and designing the type of collaborative that would be most beneficial to them," said Laura Ann Petitto, chairwoman of the Dartmouth Department of Education and one of the four co-principal investigators of the project.

Petitto said the meetings have served as a very useful "medium for dialogue," even between school systems."

At these partnership meetings, you have superintendents and principals talking to each other (saying), 'Oh, you're going through that too? Well, we are as well,'"Petitto said. "People understand that there's mutual issues that need to be addressed and there's this excitement that there are these shared overarching issues."

In these discussions, it became clear that long-term relationships were the most beneficial in schools, Petitto said.

"A one-shot professional development afternoon is not the optimal way to add new knowledge to a school system," Petitto said. "There's been the need for a longer relationship."

She sees the Dartmouth center as serving as a "relay station" for teachers and school officials, helping to find solutions and ideas that might not be apparent to schools or people working by themselves.

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