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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Watson
Andrew began his classroom life as a high-school English teacher in 1988, and has been working in or near schools ever since. In 2008, Andrew began exploring the practical application of psychology and neuroscience in his classroom. In 2011, he earned his M. Ed. from the “Mind, Brain, Education” program at Harvard University. As President of “Translate the Brain,” Andrew now works with teachers, students, administrators, and parents to make learning easier and teaching more effective. He has presented at schools and workshops across the country; he also serves as an adviser to several organizations, including “The People’s Science.” Andrew is the author of "Learning Begins: The Science of Working Memory and Attention for the Classroom Teacher."
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The Best Book on Cognitive Load Theory: Ollie Lovell to the Rescue
Teaching ought to be easy. After all, we have a functionally infinite amount of long-term memory. You don’t have to forget one thing to learn another thing — really. So: I should be able to shovel information and skills into
The Bruce Willis Method: Catching Up Post-Covid [Reposted]
Because of Covid, our students have fallen behind. How can we help them “catch up”? As I argued back in June, Bruce Willis might (or might not) have helpful answers to that question. In the third Die Hard movie, Brue Willis
Do Classroom Decorations Distract Students? A Story in 4 Parts… [Reposted]
As we prepare for the upcoming school year, how should we think about decorating our classrooms? Can research give us any pointers? This story, initially posted in March of 2022, paints a helpfully rich research picture. Teacher training programs often
Is “Cell Phone Addiction” Really a Thing? [Reposted]
A well-known Education Twitter personality claimed that “cell phones are as addictive as drugs.” Are they? What should we do when someone makes that claim? Reposted from November of 2021 I recently read a tweet asserting “the fact that cell
The Best Teaching Advice We’ve Got
I’m on my annual vacation during this month, so I’ll be posting some articles that got attention during the last year. This post, initially from December of 2021, looks at a proposed different way to “put all the research pieces
It’s All in the Timing: Improving Study Skills with Just-Right Reminders
Some research-based teaching advice requires complex rethinking of our work. For instance: We know that “desirable difficulties” like spacing and interleaving help students learn. At the same time, this strategy might require a fair amount of reorganization in our unit plans.
An Amazingly Simple Way to Help Struggling Students (with Potential Controversy)
Imagine that you work at a school where these students consistently struggle compared to those students. As teachers and school leaders, you’d like to help these students do better than they currently do; maybe do as well as those students. (Lower down in the post,
“It’s Good for the Brain!”: The Perils of Pollution, the Benefits of Blueberries
When I talk with teachers about psychology and neuroscience research, I frequently get a question in this shape: “I’ve heard that X is really good for the brain. Is that really true?” In this sentence, X might be blueberries. It might
Getting the Order Just Right: When to “Generate,” When to “Retrieve”?
When teachers get advice from psychology and neuroscience, we start by getting individual bits of guidance. For instance… … mindful meditation reduces stress, or … growth mindset strategies (done the right way) can produce modest benefits, or … cell phones
The Bruce Willis Method: Catching Up Post-Covid
In the third Die Hard movie, Brue Willis and his unexpected partner Samuel L. Jackson need to get to Wall Street a hurry. They commandeer a cab. An experienced cab driver, Jackson suggests taking 9th Avenue south, but Willis insists on
