Next Steps for Mind, Brain, and Education: Strengthening Early-Career Development
ABSTRACT
An increasing number of scholars are being trained in the field of mind, brain, and education (MBE), yet discussions of trainees' needs and how to meet them are rare. We, the inaugural International Mind, Brain, and Education Society (IMBES) Trainee Board, identify three broad needs of MBE trainees: guidance and support, greater access to and connections among the MBE community, and professional development. We report a first step to address these needs: a daylong trainee conference, which included sessions to foster connections among trainees, provide mentorship from MBE leaders, and provide knowledge and skill building for careers. Attendees' survey results suggest the conference successfully supported trainees' development. As substantial trainee needs remain, we offer specific ways that principal investigators, institutions, funding agencies, future IMBES trainee boards, and the MBE community can further address trainees' needs to support early-career development and strengthen the MBE field generally.
Mind, brain, and education (MBE) is the interdisciplinary study of human learning, development, and teaching by leveraging knowledge from education research; the experience of education practitioners and policymakers; and social, developmental, cognitive, and affective psychology and neuroscience (Fischer, 2009). Through a collaboration among these stakeholders, individuals in MBE attempt to understand learning across basic and applied settings, gain further insights into the functioning of the human mind and brain, and improve education. Some scholars refer to this field as educational neuroscience (EN), or use MBE and EN synonymously. We argue that MBE is broader and encompasses EN work, which attempts to use cognitive neuroscientific methods—sometimes in conjunction with behavioral methods—to understand how the human brain learns (Szűcs & Goswami, 2007; Varma, McCandliss, & Schwartz, 2008).
The nature of MBE work requires an interdisciplinary approach. Young people's bodies, brains, minds; and familial, community, and global contexts change and interact as young people develop. Because of the numerous and complex ways in which society may improve how it supports youth development, a single discipline or area of practice is inadequate for studying development and learning. Rather, the path toward understanding and fostering healthy development is made possible through the integration of tools, perspectives, and theories, and the reciprocal exchange of knowledge among stakeholders across MBE fields. Indeed, interdisciplinary approaches to research are increasingly common and impactful (Van Noorden, 2015). Trainees in interdisciplinary fields must be prepared to address complex challenges, but also need multiple potential career paths through which they could specialize and contribute. To date, articulated visions for how MBE trainees can prepare for this work are rare.
Conceptual writing about the field of MBE has centered on debates about the merits of the field (Bowers, 2016a, 2016b; Gabrieli, 2016; Howard-Jones et al., 2016), affordances and risks of conducting MBE work (Carew & Magsamen, 2010; Christodoulou & Gaab, 2009; Stein & Fischer, 2011), and characterization of the state of the field (Bruer, 2016; Schwartz, 2015; Thomas, Ansari, & Knowland, 2019). Although MBE work aimed toward training scholars in the field is beginning to emerge (Schwartz & Paré-Blagoev, 2018), relatively rare are discussions about how best to train MBE professionals who will conduct, utilize, or translate MBE research. These professionals would be grounded in and work across the neuro, psychological, and educational sciences (Fuller & Glendening, 1985; H. Gardner, 2008; Sheridan, Zinchenko, & Gardner, 2005) or conduct interdisciplinary research on learning and development (Fischer, Goswami, Geake, & the Task Force on the Future of Educational Neuroscience, 2010). Conceptions of training for such professionals have ranged from bidirectional approaches where cognitive neuroscientists and educators train each other (Ansari & Coch, 2006), to interdisciplinary training in faculties of education to focus on multiperspectivism and translational science (Blake & Gardner, 2007; Fischer et al., 2010), to unique EN programs, rather than interdisciplinary training across MBE fields (Pincham et al., 2014). As this literature shows, at present there is no consensus on a broad approach for preparing MBE trainees (i.e., postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, undergraduate students, and preservice and early career educators) or an understanding of their needs.
Within this context, how do MBE trainees acquire their training? Internationally, formal training programs exist, a subset of which illustrates the current interdisciplinary and multifaceted nature of MBE training. EN or MBE programs may be housed in psychology departments (e.g., University College London, University of Graz, and East China Normal University) or education schools (e.g., University of Texas at Arlington, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Alabama), or may be interdisciplinary across neuroscience and education departments (e.g., Vanderbilt University). Programmatic foci span research with neuroimaging, practitioner training, and applications of MBE research in educational contexts. Informal programs also exist, such as the Latin American School on Education and the Cognitive and Neural Sciences (LA School), which provides a retreat on research and considerations for MBE work (Bruer, 2014). Beyond these opportunities, many trainees, like the MBE scholars in the generation before them, learn to conduct MBE research from within more established fields, with primary affiliations in the education or psychological sciences. Trainees may be one of the few MBE-oriented scholars in their departments or schools (several of us serve as examples). The diverse range of training paths for graduate students or preservice educators in MBE provides varied entry points for trainees from diverse backgrounds and produces scholars with different constellations of skills that span and integrate the MBE sciences. These are strengths of the field, yet in practice they pose substantial challenges for mentors and trainees to identify the necessary field-specific skills for productive MBE careers, for trainees to acquire those skills, and for trainees to build networks of peers and advisors in MBE.
As such, the MBE field could benefit from guidelines for field-specific opportunities to support trainees. We, as the 2016–2018 International Mind, Brain, and Education Society (IMBES) Trainee Board, argue here that MBE trainees have three broad needs: guidance and support, access to and connections within the MBE and trainee communities, and development of skills and knowledge for productive workforce entry. After detailing each need, we provide an example of an initiative we undertook to address those needs: a daylong trainee preconference at the 2018 IMBES Conference that we designed and executed in partnership with Jacobs Foundation. We conclude by offering suggestions for how principal investigators (PIs), institutions, funding agencies, and the MBE community can support trainee needs moving forward. Addressing these needs is vital to supporting the development of MBE trainees and strengthening the field of MBE as it continues to mature.
MBE TRAINEE NEEDS
To acquire proper MBE training, trainees need guidance and support, access to community, and professional development opportunities. These needs are not unique to MBE trainees; however, they may manifest in unique ways given that the field is young and interdisciplinary. Successful training in MBE entails, at a minimum, (1) basic knowledge of the subfields of MBE, (2) an appreciation of why an MBE approach to studying learning, development, and teaching is fruitful, (3) the ability to use the research tools of at least one MBE subfield, and (4) fluidity in integrating ways of knowing across MBE disciplines.
Trainees Need Guidance and Support
To navigate the unique challenges of MBE training, trainees require support from peers who share common training challenges and experienced mentors who can support trainees' development. Peers contribute to one another's training by providing emotional fortitude and fresh perspective that can facilitate knowledge integration from across MBE fields. Mentors provide domain expertise in MBE fields, ways of refining skill in synthesizing across fields, and wisdom about the value of an MBE approach.
Peer Connections
Peers play a critical role in trainees' career development, especially in a field as interdisciplinary as MBE. Peers may learn, publish, and attend conferences together. Peer discussions expose trainees to new ideas or surface previously overlooked weaknesses in their research (Flores-Scott & Nerad, 2012). Peer connections also facilitate socialization into the academic, university, or departmental culture; information sharing about relevant opportunities; or psychological support for graduate school challenges (Grant-Vallone & Ensher, 2000; Weidman, Twale, & Stein, 2001). Indeed, trainees may place greater importance on peer support than faculty support (S. K. Gardner, 2007). Furthermore, emotional support from peers may be critical to the health and well-being of trainees. Approximately 40% of graduate students suffer from moderate to severe anxiety and depression, and more than half who report having an unhealthy work–life balance, which can be compounded by a lack of peer connections, experience these mental health issues (Evans, Bira, Gastelum, Weiss, & Vanderford, 2018).
Peer connections may be especially valuable for trainees whose identities are traditionally underrepresented in academia. Trainees are more likely to have diverse identities in common with each other than with faculty, given that a majority of tenure-track faculty in the United States are male and nearly three-quarters are white (Digest of Education Statistics, 2017), a trend that is likely similar for MBE faculty. Faculty can support trainees from underrepresented groups by understanding the challenges they face, helping them navigate those challenges, and helping trainees capitalize on their unique strengths in their career (e.g., the Spelman model; Jackson & Winfield, 2014). Nonetheless, many faculty members have not had first-hand experience with some of the identity-based challenges that trainees experience. As such, peer connections may be especially valuable in MBE, in which there may not yet be established channels for identity-based supports (for an example initiative, see Increasing Women in Neuroscience (IWiN), n.d.).
Based on our experience working with MBE trainees, they may be the sole MBE scholar in their school or department. This suggests that it may be more challenging for MBE trainees to benefit from peer connections, such as knowledge sharing across diverse experiences and skills. Given the roles that peer connections play during training (e.g., mental health support, socialization, identity-based support, and collaboration), the potential for such connections to persist throughout one's career, and the particular value of peer connection for MBE trainees, it is crucial to emphasize peer connections in MBE training.
Mentorship
Mentorship is crucial to trainee success. It is associated with academic retention, improved attitudes toward academics, faster degree completion, and improved career and employment outcomes (Eby, Allen, Evans, Ng, & DuBois, 2008; Sambunjak, Straus, & Marusić, 2006; Valero, 2001). The relationship doctoral students have with their advisors1 may be the most important professional relationship of their training (Baird, 1995) and yet the quality of these relationships is quite variable (Golde, 2005; Johnson, Koch, Fallow, & Huwe, 2000). Especially as the nature of the professoriate changes, trainees may need more support in early career stages to promote success and foster a sense of professional identity (Austin, 2002). Both government and private research funds aim to support diverse types of mentoring initiatives (Rhodes, 2005). Mentorship skills can be enhanced with evidence-based mentorship guides for faculty (e.g., Wilson-Ahlstrom, Ravindranath, Yohalem, & Tseng, 2017) and tools for assessing effective mentorship (Berk, Berg, Mortimer, Walton-Moss, & Yeo, 2005). Yet, because faculty are typically not rewarded as highly for mentorship as for research, it can be challenging for faculty to devote the time to mentorship that they might wish and that trainees need.
As a nascent field, MBE has additional mentorship considerations. Most current MBE professionals were not trained in MBE per se (rather, they launched the field). As such, MBE trainees may not have sufficient examples of how to intentionally navigate a trajectory for a successful career in MBE (Immordino-Yang & Gotlieb, 2017). Therefore, MBE trainees might need especially intensive and creative mentorship, such as with peers, across disciplines, and further into early-career stages. Effective mentorship in MBE needs to align with the essential elements of MBE training. As such, it must span crucial knowledge and expertise, skill development, and professional networking and career exposure within and outside academic contexts (especially as MBE careers increasingly occur outside of academia). Just as one of the main intellectual tasks of MBE professionals involves synthesizing across levels of analysis, so too must MBE mentors help their mentees think across time and levels of detail about how to do impactful MBE work.
Trainees Need Access to and Connections Among the MBE Community
Equitable and productive MBE training necessitates access to the aforementioned key elements of training for all trainees and aspiring trainees (i.e., qualified individuals wishing to enter a graduate program), regardless of country of residence, racial, ethnic, or gender-minority status, or the type of MBE stakeholder. We laud the efforts that have been made since the inception of IMBES to serve its international mission, to embrace diversity, and to bring together researchers and practitioners. For the benefit of MBE trainees and the community more generally, we need to remove additional barriers to access and to further promote connections among MBE stakeholders.
Access to the MBE and Trainee Communities
As the flagship organization for MBE work, IMBES has strived for international inclusiveness and connection building (Fischer et al., 2007), including with the LA School and the Neuroscience and Education Special Interest Group of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI). Indeed, the IMBES conference in 2020 will be jointly hosted with the EARLI special interest group. IMBES, with the support of the National Science Foundation, has also created opportunities for U.S. trainees from racial and ethnic minority groups to engage in MBE work or to showcase MBE work about racial and ethnic minorities.
These efforts have successfully engaged the IMBES membership (including trainees) in North America, and trainees across Latin America and Western Europe. We have connected with trainees around the world (e.g., Malaysia, Turkey, and Iran) who are eager to participate in the IMBES community. Clearly, MBE continues to broaden in its international representation through IMBES and other scientific societies based in different parts of the world.
For this internationality to flourish and in light of sociopolitical and historical contexts, the MBE community must reach trainees from currently underrepresented populations. Factors such as country of origin or racial/ethnic background may impact opportunities for MBE training or work. As examples, logistics or high costs may limit opportunities for these trainees to gain experience with some of the most commonly used tools in MBE research (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging) or attend a conference that requires international travel. To address this inequity, and because the entire IMBES community benefits from increased connectedness with these international scholars, trainees outside of North America and Western Europe need additional ways to engage with MBE training.
Connections Among Research, Policy, Practice, and Community
A central goal of MBE work is to foster connections among researchers and educational stakeholders, as a way to produce usable knowledge and educationally relevant insights (Christodoulou, Daley, & Katzir, 2009; Fischer, 2009). Accordingly, successful training in MBE can include learning from and being trained to become diverse stakeholders and conducting work that can advance theory and contribute to education policy, classroom practice, and modes of community engagement. Yet, forging connections across disciplines and professions can be challenging because of nonoverlapping knowledge, different vocabularies, and different goals. Based on our experience in and with the trainee community, MBE trainees rarely receive formal or explicit instruction in how to build connections outside the university or how to communicate ideas to practitioners and policy makers. Unsurprisingly, changes in education practice have been slow, despite a proliferation of knowledge in the learning sciences and awareness about how to support decision making about scientific evidence (Newcombe, 2013). Training scholars in how to effectively produce and consume research is critical to the success of MBE, yet challenging to do.
Trainees Need Professional Development
Successful training in MBE should prepare trainees for successful employment. As such, MBE trainees need to build both skills to do MBE work and knowledge of potential employment opportunities.
Skill Development
There are several challenges to skill-building in MBE. The field spans various disciplines (i.e., at least psychological and biological sciences, and educational research and practice) with epistemological, ontological, and methodological gulfs among them (Stein, Connell, & Gardner, 2008). Consensus on the MBE-specific skills that are most useful for MBE trainees to develop may be difficult to attain because of the inherent variability in MBE work and its connection to discipline-specific advancements, policy and practice goals, and international and cultural contexts. Partly because of the wide range of skills and large body of knowledge that is applicable to MBE work, it may often be unclear to trainees where or how to pursue opportunities for successful skill development. Trainees may also face opposition when pursuing opportunities outside of their home department (e.g., a department administrator may question whether a cognitive neuroscience graduate student needs to learn educational research methods). For successful MBE training, trainees need support in identifying the skills to cultivate from one or more of the MBE subfields, finding opportunities to develop those skills, and actively developing them.
Career Development
The interdisciplinarity of MBE work makes navigating career pathways both within and outside of academia challenging. Across fields, opportunities for academic jobs are becoming rarer and trainees have limited knowledge about other career options (Golde & Dore, 2001; McAlpine & Emmioğlu, 2015). For MBE trainees specifically, finding academic jobs may involve additional challenges: job descriptions may not specify that a position would be suitable for someone with MBE training, and relevant jobs may be housed in varied university departments or schools. Likewise, MBE-related jobs outside of academia may be difficult to identify and explaining the benefits of MBE training to a potential employer may be challenging. Therefore, MBE trainees need support to identify potential avenues for employment inside and outside academia, and to convey the value of their specific MBE training.
TRAINEE PRECONFERENCE
During our tenure, we sought to identify the above needs so we could better address them. To address these needs, we worked on behalf of IMBES and with Jacobs Foundation to design and execute a daylong preconference entitled “Navigating Mind, Brain, and Education: A Preconference for Aspiring Leaders,” which preceded the IMBES 2018 Biennial Conference in Los Angeles, California, United States. In what follows, we describe the preconference and the ways in which it met trainee needs.
The four preconference goals aligned with trainee needs, and included (1) connection building among MBE trainees, (2) mentorship from MBE leaders, (3) opportunities for connecting with diverse MBE groups, and (4) knowledge-building related to career trajectories and career-relevant skill building. The preconference included a career panel and breakout session, two sets of award presentations, a lunch with MBE leaders, a peer mentorship session, and a communication workshop.
Attendees
Nearly 80 trainees attended the preconference. Roughly two-thirds were doctoral students and roughly a quarter were postdoctoral researchers. The remaining attendees included undergraduate students, master's students, and recent graduates from MBE programs. Attendees hailed from 14 different countries, including countries traditionally underrepresented at IMBES, such as Malaysia, Mexico, and Brazil. About two-thirds of conference attendees, roughly representative of the attendees overall, completed an online postconference survey. We draw on this survey to discuss how the preconference addressed trainee needs.
Providing Guidance and Support
Peer Connections
We integrated peer connections throughout the preconference. First, a peer-mentoring session provided an opportunity for trainees to discuss affordances and challenges of MBE. Attendees were paired in advance of the conference on the basis of: (1) a novice trainee seeking advice from an advanced trainee, (2) shared research interests, or (3) similar challenges as a function of having an underrepresented aspect of identity in academia (e.g., people of color in neuroscience). We encouraged peer pairs to exchange emails before the preconference and provided pairs with suggested discussion questions. In the postconference survey, 87% of the respondents reported the peer-mentoring session as a valuable opportunity to give or receive mentorship, and 75% believed their peer connection was likely to persist beyond the conference.
Second, we recognized trainees doing exceptional work consistent with the IMBES mission through “Exceptional MBE Trainee” Awards in research, and policy and practice. We purposely selected six presenters who would expose trainees to peer-reviewed, high-quality MBE trainee work from different countries and disciplinary backgrounds. Almost all (94%) respondents agreed that the presentations offered an opportunity to learn about exemplary trainee work, showcased a diverse range of MBE scholarship, and reflected impressive, rigorous research. These examples reinforced the notion that all trainees can produce rigorous and impactful research.
Third, we hosted an informal social gathering at a pub at the end of the day. This event was intended to promote social bonds between trainees and facilitate professional and personal connections within the MBE community. We encouraged trainees to follow up on conversations from the preconference and meet other trainees without having a work-related agenda.
Mentorship
We designed two discussion-based events to connect trainees with potential mentors. First, in groups of about 25, trainees met with one of three midcareer scholars with MBE backgrounds working as either (1) an education policy researcher at a research organization, (2) a head of research at an education technology start-up, or (3) an assistant professor and nonprofit director. Discussions focused on potential career trajectories and how to pursue them. Second, trainees had lunch with one of eleven MBE leaders from academia, funding agencies, and a nonprofit science translation organization. Attendees signed up in advance and connected to their leader via email before the preconference. We limited group size to about six, to facilitate personal connections.
These sessions were extremely well received. Many trainees and lunch table leaders expressed that the Lunch with Leaders session was a highlight of the entire IMBES conference. Around 95% of attendees found the lunch discussions valuable to learn about a topic of interest, and to connect with an MBE leader. These sessions were so popular and the need for mentorship so great that the primary feedback was a request that future such events be longer to provide more time with mentors.
Providing Access to and Connections Among the MBE Community
Access to the MBE and Trainee Communities
We used social media and other technologies to increase access to preconference content for trainees who were unable to attend in person because of financial restrictions, health concerns, or other personal factors. In many cases, these initiatives spanned the preconference and main conference, which provided trainees access to both the trainee and larger IMBES communities. Specifically, we broadcast trainee award presentations and main conference keynote sessions on Facebook Live. Live-streamed videos were also saved on the official IMBES Facebook page for later viewing, which further accommodated trainees across time zones and facilitated interactions via a comment thread for each session. One week after the conference, these videos each had reached about 400 people. To connect with the main conference, we created a poster repository viewable by all IMBES members, in which presenters (often trainees) could upload shareable electronic files of their posters. This initiative aimed to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and research dissemination among trainees and with other IMBES members. Finally, we included preconference and conference funding support for five international trainees, including from under-resourced countries and countries historically under represented at IMBES.
Connections Among Research, Policy, Practice, and Community
Across multiple preconference events, we consciously engaged MBE scholars who shape educational policy and practice. Three of our exemplary trainee presenters conduct research with teachers. The career panel and lunch discussions likewise featured leaders with policy and practice experience. However, we found engaging policy makers and practitioners challenging. Despite a wide call and personal outreach efforts for the policy and practice trainee awards, we received few applications—about one-sixth of the applications as from researchers. Similarly, our research into possible MBE leaders in policy and practice to invite to trainee sessions yielded a small pool of candidates. These challenges underscore the need for greater policy and practice representation in the trainee community and in MBE more broadly.
Providing Professional Development
Skill Development
The preconference included a scientific communication workshop that focused on communication across disciplines, an essential part of MBE work that applies to most potential career paths. The workshop introduced trainees to principles of translational writing, included advice about best practices for communicating research to a general audience, and provided captivating examples of the perils of communicating science ineffectively. Ninety-eight percent of survey respondents thought the session effectively provided concrete skills for communicating with an interdisciplinary audience across diverse venues. Many indicated that they would like to see similar events at future conferences. A few trainees showcased their effective communication skills by contributing blog posts on Jacobs Foundation's Blog on Learning and Development (Albelda, 2018; Brookman-Byrne, 2018; Kim, 2018).
We further supported trainees' skill development during the trainee award application process. We provided all applicants with extensive, individualized feedback on the strengths of their application and areas for improvement. Additionally, we provided awardees with guidance for effective presentations.
Career Development
To support trainees' career development, we included a career panel with the three mid-career scholars mentioned above (i.e., education policy researcher, education technology start-up researcher, and assistant professor/nonprofit director). The panelists discussed their paths, careers, and fit with MBE. Nearly all survey respondents (96%) thought the career panel offered new insights into the range of MBE career paths; 92% believed it offered concrete advice about the skills needed for MBE careers, and over 85% thought the career panel provided concrete leads to investigate for employment opportunities. Trainees found the panelist who was a recent graduate to be especially relatable and valued her insights into research opportunities outside of academia, because attendees reported experiencing a cultural taboo around discussing career options outside of academia.
We also connected trainees to potential employment opportunities during the main conference. We provided conference badge identifiers that job seekers could wear to indicate that they were looking for opportunities. We also provided badge identifiers to potential employers (e.g., advisors accepting new graduate students, lab managers, or postdocs; employers whose organization was hiring). Such initiatives may promote, or remove barriers to, discussions about potential career development opportunities.
SUPPORT FOR TRAINEES MOVING FORWARD
The trainee preconference was one way to strengthen early-career development in MBE. Trainees unanimously reported that the preconference effectively fostered connections among trainees and provided mentorship from MBE leaders, and almost all (94%) thought the preconference helped them build career-related knowledge and skills. Future trainee boards will continue addressing these and related trainee needs through some of the aforementioned initiatives, as well as by starting new ones. We also invite PIs, colleges and universities, funding agencies, and the IMBES community and leadership to further emphasize support for trainees, and consequently bolster the health of the MBE field more broadly. Here, we offer suggestions for how interested stakeholders may address trainee needs, so that together we can make great headway in supporting MBE trainees' development. Importantly, we do not aim to prescribe what stakeholders should do nor argue that these suggestions are all new. Rather, we hope these suggestions will act as a springboard for how interested parties may support early-career development. Below, we highlight a few of the most promising ideas for guidance and support, access to the community, and professional development (for a full list, see Table 1).
| MBE community and leadership | Principal investigator | Institutions | Funding agencies | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Improving guidance and support for trainees | ||||
| Peer connections |
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| Mentorship |
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| Improving access to and connections with the MBE community | ||||
| Access to the MBE and trainee community |
|
|
|
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| Connections among research, policy, practice, and community |
|
|
|
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| Professional development | ||||
| Skill development |
|
|
|
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| Career development |
|
|
|
|
- Note. GRE = Graduate Record Examination; IMBES = International Mind, Brain, and Education Society; MBE = Mind, Brain, and Education.
- a This is an international network of scientists supported by a U.S. National Institute for Aging grant to Dr Samanez-Larkin at Duke University.
Improving Guidance and Support
There are several ways the IMBES community can support trainees' development. Future trainee boards could continue to support trainees' peer connections by building upon existing initiatives such as fostering discussion between peer partners and reinvigorating online trainee discussion groups. As a new initiative, the Trainee Board could create a database of abstracts for in-progress theses to connect trainees across universities and countries who are studying similar topics. A similar model at a large research university led to productive cross-departmental research and formation of writing groups (Flores-Scott & Nerad, 2012).
PIs are the primary people to serve as mentors. As such, they are crucial actors for improving the state of mentorship for MBE trainees. Resources such as the William T. Grant Foundations' guide for mentoring junior scholars (Wilson-Ahlstrom et al., 2017) can support PIs who seek to develop their mentorship skills. Consistent with others' (Barnes & Austin, 2009) calls, we urge university deans to clarify advisor expectations and put high value on mentorship to incentivize PI investment. We further encourage universities to provide more opportunities for joint advising. For example, a PhD student might be advised by one PI based on a shared research interest and one PI who enculturates the trainee into academic life. Universities and funding agencies might consider funding such programs that help trainees diversify their support network. For example, funding mechanisms for developing secondary advisors outside of the school and/or field with which the trainee is primarily affiliated can foster multiple perspectives and a wider network of colleagues. The Scientific Research Network on Decision Neuroscience and Aging offers a career transition award that could serve as an example.
Improving Access to and Connection Among the MBE Community
We offer several suggestions for stakeholders in higher education to increase the diversity of trainees within MBE. Improving educational experiences is a central goal of MBE. One of the most important ways to do so is by addressing educational inequities, which requires greater diversity among MBE trainees, who as researchers and practitioners can address opportunity and achievement gaps. PIs need space to evaluate trainee candidates holistically. Oftentimes, professors state that they value diversity in graduate school applicants, but to minimize risk they make decisions based on criteria imbued with long-standing inequities, such as whether an applicant attended an elite school or obtained an unusually high Graduate Record Examination (GRE) score (Posselt, 2016). IMBES leadership could work with funding agencies and philanthropic organizations to increase access to IMBES conferences for trainees from historically underrepresented countries or demographic groups. As one example, Jacobs Foundation supported preconference awards with travel support to the 2018 IMBES conference for international trainees traditionally underrepresented in IMBES.
Connecting research, policy, practice, and community is challenging, and yet since its inception IMBES has been an intellectual and professional home for many researchers and practitioners. We encourage future trainee boards and IMBES to work together to continue such efforts and create analogs that explicitly engage trainees. Recent examples, such as the Wellcome Trust 2016 IMBES preconference that facilitated dialogue among stakeholders and the 2018 IMBES conference call for symposia that encouraged researcher–practitioner collaborations could be adapted for, or explicitly target, the trainee community. As another example, PIs could involve trainees in connection-building events. Trainees could join PIs at events where they speak to nonacademic audiences, provide teacher professional development, inform education not-for-profit organizations about emerging work, or present to the general public. Perhaps advanced trainees can join PIs in speaking to these audiences. When MBE leaders accept these invitations, trainees benefit from seeing the example the leaders set of honoring the important work that takes place outside the academy.
Improving Professional Development
To support skill-building, IMBES leadership and the Trainee Board could codevelop guidelines on skills that are most relevant for MBE training. Although such an undertaking would require substantial consensus building and flexibility, a framework of broad, key MBE skills could empower trainees to take charge of their training. We offered here a preliminary set of key elements for successful MBE training. This set could serve as a starting point for a consensus statement from MBE experts that would clarify and provide a framework for the minimum elements of MBE training.
The Trainee Board and MBE leaders could also co-create systems to connect trainees with career opportunities, such as a career guide that details potential career trajectories for MBE scholars both inside and outside of academia. Funding agencies could consider supporting initiatives to develop this content.
CONCLUSION
The establishment of the IMBES Trainee Board and a preconference focused on trainees were valuable first steps to strengthen early-career development in MBE. Harnessing this momentum requires a concerted effort among the Trainee Board, IMBES leadership, PIs, institutions, funding agencies, and the broader MBE community. A continued investment in MBE early-career development is crucial for a strong and sustainable field that will prepare current trainees to train a third generation of MBE scholars.
MBE will benefit from providing trainees with guidance and support, access and connection to the MBE community, and professional development. Through stronger connections with peers and more comprehensive mentorship, the field can implement findings from MBE research on the importance of social relations to learning (Immordino-Yang, 2015). Increased access to MBE, especially for historically underrepresented groups, can expand our community's understanding of how cultural perspectives shape views of how people learn. Strengthened connections among researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and communities will better position MBE to realize its mission as a translational science. Subsequently, as MBE trainees successfully enter the workforce, relationship building among stakeholders will be easier because trainees will have experience cultivating the necessary skills. In sum, greater investment in early-career development not only supports trainees, but also moves MBE closer to its goal of supporting learning and healthy development informed by the cross-talk among our bodies, brains, minds, and cultural contexts.
Acknowledgments
We thank Jacobs Foundation for financially supporting the preconference, and Gelgia Fetz from Jacobs Foundation for her support. We thank Mary-Helen Immordino Yang, Daniel Ansari, and Bea Goffin for their support, and the MBE scholars who participated in preconference mentorship activities.
