Gabrielle Principe
Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the College of Charleston.
Education Editor
Gabrielle Principe is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the College of Charleston. She received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University. Her research has been federally funded by the National Institutes of Health and she has published her research in numerous scientific journals including Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, and Cognition and Development. She has a lifelong fascination with the implications of evolutionary ideas on cognitive development and a serious interest in translating the latest scientific research about human development into information that parents and teachers can use to better rear and educate children. She is the author of Your Brain on Childhood: The Unexpected Side Effects of Classrooms, Ballparks, Family Rooms, and the Minivan (Prometheus, 2011)..
Authored by
Gabrielle Principe
April 17, 2014
Series on Evolutionary Perspectives on Educational Research, Policy, and Practice
Humans have evolved over millions of years, yet formal education practices are of recent vintage. Given what we've learned about our brain's evolution, education practices need to evolve as well.
February 10, 2012
An Unnatural Childhood: An Evolutionary View of Teaching and Parenting
Evolution: This View of Life’s Education Editor Gabrielle Principe talks with WHYY’s Marty Moss-Coane on Radio Times about an evolutionarily informed approach to educating and rearing children. In the effort to give kids a leg up in life, parents bombard them with educational toys, rush them to chess, fencing, and piano lessons, and place them in preschool programs that stress academics in the earliest years.