Panel will discuss new perspectives on formative education

Four distinguished scholars will examine formative education and what it means to support students’ intellectual, emotional, ethical, and spiritual development—in the classroom, on campus, and beyond—at a panel discussion, “New Perspectives on Formative Education” on October 8 at 4:30 p.m. at the Yawkey Athletics Center Murray Family Function Room.

Organized by the Transformative Education Lab (TLab) at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, the event will address the critical question of how colleges and universities can foster learning that forms the whole being.

Panelists include William Damon, emeritus professor of education at Stanford University; Howard Gardner, the Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Professor of the Practice Suzanne Shanahan, who is the Leo and Arlene Hawk Executive Director of the Institute for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame; and Oon Seng Tan, director of the Centre for Research in Child Development at Singapore’s National Institute of Education.

“As the leader in formative education, it’s appropriate that Boston College should host this panel, discussing challenges and future directions in the project to educate whole people,” said Stanton E.F. Wortham, the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean of the Lynch School, who will moderate the discussion. “We’re thrilled to have such distinguished colleagues from Stanford, Harvard, Notre Dame, and Singapore’s National Institute of Education join us for this important conversation.”

A psychologist and a retired senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Damon is one of the world’s leading scholars of human development across the lifespan and has pioneered the scientific study of how purpose in life develops.

Gardner, a recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, is an American developmental psychologist who is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, outlined in his 1983 book Frames of Mind.

Shanahan leads the Virtues & Vocations Initiative, a national forum seeking to cultivate character, purpose, and meaning in pre-professional and professional education.

Tan’s expertise includes teacher education, early childhood education policies, learning sciences, education psychology and problem-based learning. He has authored or edited more than 20 books and over 150 scholarly articles and chapters in the areas of instructor training, cognitive psychology, and problem-based learning.

The Transformative Education Lab, founded in September 2025, is a hub for research on holistic, formative human development, and the curation of educational approaches that both support young people’s development as whole persons and prepare them to pursue purposeful lives. Deoksoon Kim, a professor in the Lynch School’s Teaching, Curriculum, and Society Department, is the lab’s director.

To attend the panel, register at this link.