Guest Blogger – Education & Teacher Conferences

About Guest Blogger

The Learning and the Brain blog invites researchers, scholars, and teachers to share informed and thoughtful contributions. If you have an idea for a blog post, email the editor: [email protected]

Guest Blogger

March 23, 2025

Attention Must Be Paid

This guest review of Blake Harvard’s Do I Have Your Attention is written by Justin Cerenzia.

Having followed Blake Harvard’s “The Effortful Educator” blog from its very beginning, it feels especially fitting that his new book – Do I Have Your Attention? Understanding Memory Constraints and Maximizing Learning – poses a question many of us have enthusiastically answered “yes” to for nearly a decade.

Yet this book represents more than an extension of Harvard’s blog—it marks the culmination of his long-standing influence as a leading educator: one who connects cognitive science with classroom practice. Thoughtfully structured into two complementary sections, the book skillfully integrates theoretical perspectives on how memory functions with actionable classroom strategies, offering educators practical tools to foster meaningful and lasting learning.

Harvard deftly navigates the complexities often inherent in cognitive science research. His writing style is both approachable and authoritative, resonating equally with newcomers and seasoned readers alike.

Much of Part I leverages Professor Stephen Chew’s An Advance Organizer for Student Learning: Choke Points and Pitfalls in Studying. Harvard uses this foundational framework to clarify key concepts and common misunderstandings about memory and learning. Crucially, Harvard’s position as a classroom teacher lends him credibility and authenticity, grounding his insights firmly in practical experience rather than mere theory.

It’s as though we’re invited into Blake’s classroom, watching him expertly guide us through Chew’s graphic.

And this is precisely how he frames the opening of Part II, writing:

“It can be quite overwhelming to know just what is the best bet for optimizing working memory without overloading it while also making the most of moving the content to long-term memory. Compound that with the fact we are tasked with educating, not one brain, but a classroom full of them. That’s a job that only a teacher can understand and appreciate” (65).

Harvard then succinctly-yet-thoroughly guides readers through seven carefully considered strategies to maximize learning. In each case, he showcases a diverse array of tactics that enrich any skilled teacher’s toolkit—all with the ultimate goal of positively influencing student outcomes.

Throughout, he pulls back the curtain even further, transparently revealing how specific shifts in his own teaching practice improved student learning. Clearly, each change has been guided by careful investigation and thoughtful application of research.

That Harvard’s insights—long influential in the educational blogosphere—are now available in book form represents a win for educators everywhere. Rich in research yet highly accessible, this text serves as both an inviting entry point and a resource for deeper exploration.

So too does it underscore the essential role teachers can and should play alongside the research community, brokering knowledge and further bridging the unnecessary divide that sometimes impedes meaningful change. In an era rife with educational theory, Harvard’s concrete examples of classroom success help ensure that even hesitant educators find meaningful, practical guidance.

If Blake Harvard didn’t already have your attention, you’d do well to give it to him now.

If you’d like to learn more, Blake’s webinar on attention and memory will be May 4.

Justin Cerenzia is the Buckley Executive Director of Episcopal Academy’s Center for Teaching and Learning. A Philadelphia area native, Justin is a veteran of three independent schools over the last two decades, dedicating his career to advancing educational excellence and innovation. A history teacher by trade, Justin nonetheless considers the future of education to be a central focus of his work. At Episcopal Academy, he leads initiatives that blend cognitive science, human connection, and an experimenter’s mindset to enhance teaching and learning. With a passion for fostering curious enthusiasm and pragmatic optimism, Justin strives to make the Center a beacon of learning for educators both within and beyond the school.

Guest Blogger

June 02, 2021

Jerome Kagan: A Teacher’s Appreciation

A guest post, by Rob McEntarffer

I didn’t get to learn about Jerome Kagan (1929-2021) during my teacher’s college training. I regret that.

While I was a teacher, my contact with Kagan’s research was limited to teaching about temperament research during the developmental psychology unit of the high school psychology class I taught for 13 years.

Students learned about how Kagan measured infant temperament, and how those reactions predicted temperament later in life (Kagan, 1978). This research often helped my students think about how their thinking and behavior might be influenced by earlier factors in their lives, which opened a door for some of them in how they thought about themselves.

Kagan’s research helped us start great, research-informed discussions.

As a public-school administrator (assessment/evaluation specialist), I now realize that I could have learned much more from Kagan’s research.

I often focus exclusively on specific aspects of teaching and learning (like cognitive load, working memory, and retrieval practice) and ignore other important elements. As Chew (2021) and many others highlight, our models of teaching and learning need to include much more: student fear/mistrust, student mindset, and other self-perception and emotional factors that directly influence what students learn.

Kagan (2006) said:

“Although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness and envy, … they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture – especially toward those in need. This inbuilt ethical sense is a biological feature of our species.”

As I help teachers figure out how to create assignments that allow students to express what they are thinking, Kagan might remind me to think about how ethics, and an “inbuilt” ethical sense, could be usefully included in classroom discussions and assignments.

I experienced this sense often as a teacher: in my psychology classroom, our discussions about research often moved into discussions about ethics and feelings of compassion. We talked about what should be, not just what is.

As an administrator, Kagan can remind me to include these ideas in my current work. In the end, teaching and learning are also about ethics and care, not just about what environments create the most likely context for elaborative encoding.

I’m grateful for Jerome Kagan’s thoughtful, caring research, and thinking about this work will change how I work with teachers.

References:

Kagan, J., Lapidus, D., & Moore, M. (1978). Infant Antecedents of Cognitive Functioning: A Longitudinal Study. Child Development, 49(4), 1005-1023. doi:10.2307/1128740

Stephen L. Chew & William J. Cerbin (2021) The cognitive challenges of effective teaching, The Journal of Economic Education, 52:1, 17-40, DOI: 10.1080/00220485.2020.1845266

Kagan, J. (2006). On the case for kindness. In A. Harrington & A. Zajonc (Eds.), The Dalai Lama at MIT. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dr. McEntarffer is an Assessment and Evaluation Specialist with the Lincoln Public School System in Lincoln, Nebraska.

You can read more at his blog, Not For Points.

Guest Blogger

April 07, 2017

Learning and the Brain Stories, #2

Curiosity and Play: Snowflakes and Standards

by Dr. Debbie Donsky

Common themes ran throughout the Learning and the Brain conference in San Francisco, February 17-19, 2017 but the ones that resonated most strongly with me were the ideas of curiosity and play, and how they impact both learning and parenting. It makes sense that this should be the case given that I am a mother of two teenagers and an educator of almost 25 years.

Like most, I am drawn to the ideas that confirm my biases around learning. So much of what I have always believed can now be confirmed through brain science and not just my hunches! Some of these key beliefs include:

Standardized tests don’t improve learning.

Play and creativity are important at all ages.

Parenting and teaching have a significant influence on both.

Yong Zhao in his keynote, Counting What Counts: Why Curiosity, Creativity and Student-Centred Learning Matter, argued that the goal of “closing the gap” sounds admirable, but paradoxically results in making everyone average.

He suggested that, ultimately, the role of education is to help our children become who they are meant to be instead of working towards an average which testing promotes.

He explained that we claim to want to “close the gap,” but then challenged us to consider that the gap itself doesn’t matter. After all, the tests that determine where the gaps exist, are flawed in the first place.

Zhao noted that we use these flawed tests to determine:

the achievement of our children,
the skill level of our educators and ultimately,
the success of nations—

for instance, with the PISA test.

Yong Zhao explained that what we test is actually quite random; standardized tests evaluate students based on whatever success model is presently in vogue. We take this narrowed, biased model of success and try to replicate it in schools; yet these models further reduce diversity of thought, experience and creativity among our students.

(They also reduce diversity of thought among educators, who know that teaching to the test is the path of least resistance. )

Zhao’s clear message was, “success is about supporting each person to become unique. When we talk about closing the gap, we are narrowing the variability.” He fears that “education was created to suppress diversity” in a time when assembly lines were the prevailing job that workforce had.

If we are to support our children to become creative problem-solvers, then we need to move away from pursuing averages that are based on a single prescribed profile for all learners.

Eddie Brummelman’s message in his session, The Praise Paradox: How Well-Intended Words Can Backfire, was that we should not treat our children as “unique snowflakes”: an argument which initially seemed to contradict Zhao’s research–but, in fact, supports it.

At the core of Brummelman’s work was the belief that yes, of course, we can praise our children– but not in comparison to others.

The reason we praise our children should be the desire to support them in their growth. When praise is mixed with comparison to others, it confuses the message by implying that what makes the child special is related to others when in fact, it is only tied to the individual. So when we say, “You are a wonderful artist. I love the way you use colour to convey mood!” versus “You are a much better artist than _____!” Brummelman stresses that uniqueness relies on comparison but that praise should be connected to the child’s passions, interests and talents that will lead them towards their best selves.

In this way, Brummelman echoes Zhao’s argument. By creating norms and averages we are drawn to comparison and rank–rather than to our children’s curiosities about what they want to learn, become or aspire to be.

Brummelman’s research cautions parents against overpraising our children, lest we lead them to narcissism and entitlement. It isn’t that we should avoid praise, but that certain types of praise are more effective in raising children to be successful, functioning adults.

Specifically, he explained that when parents believe their children are struggling with low self-esteem, they tend to overpraise–believing that extra praise will in fact raise the child’s self esteem. But, his research showed that it does the opposite. Children with praise-boosted narcissism tend to be more perfectionistic. They seek more praise and therefore fear risks; in other words, they are less likely to embrace play and creativity.

If praise is tied to the child’s perception of success, and success is tied to narrow definitions of achievement, then children work towards that common standard against which Zhao cautioned us. If they are less likely to take risks then they will seek a single right answer rather than embrace both creativity and curiosity. The standardized test will always be the measure of success.

Brummelman explained that what has the most profound impact on our children is the experience of parental warmth, interest and shared joy. They don’t need praise–they need our presence and affection. Zhao stresses that as educators and parents we must guide and nurture our children and students so that they can grow into the unique people they are meant to become.

This complexity draws me to think about the scene in Pixar’s movie, The Incredibles, when Dash is being scolded for running too fast in a race. He is frustrated because he wants to engage with his superpowers but it isn’t safe, in the climate they live in, to let others know about their powers:

Mom explains to her son , “The world just wants us to fit in and to fit in, we just gotta be like everyone else.”

Dash challenges her with a “ya, but” as many kids do, “But dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of–our powers made us special!”

His mother tells him, her frustration obvious from her tone, “Everyone is special, Dash…”

He turns away to look out the window and replies, “Which is another way of saying no one is…”

Of course, Dash’s mom is doing this to protect him and her other children.

In other words, like Dash, we all have super powers, and as Dash’s mom stresses, we stay in our space of trying to fit in and be like everyone else because it is safer in many ways. When the time is right and she realizes the importance of her children’s powers, she encourages both Dash and his sister to use them.

When Dash is discouraged from standing out, he is falling in line with the average that Zhao argues is the problematic goal of education. When he moves out of the space and engages with his powers, it connects us to the ideas of Brummelman, who sees these powers as self expression and self actualization.

As a system leader, I understand how deeply important for us to consider what both Zhao and Brummelman are saying about the role of assessment, praise and student success.

I have taken their ideas and informed my own understanding of the vital role of assessment, reporting to parents and school/system improvement as a whole. I have made a commitment to question the status quo and the acceptance of average as the goal to ensure that our students are supported in finding who they are as creative and curious learners.

If you would like to see the sketchnotes and comments for all the keynotes and presentations I attended, you can see more of my thoughts about the conference here.

[Editor’s Note: Dr. Debbie Donsky is Principal of Curriculum and Instruction Services, Learning Design & Development, and the Arts, at the York Region District School Board in Ontario, CA. You can follow her on Twitter: @DebbieDonsky]

Classroom Note Taking: A Solution to the Technology Conundrum?

Guest Blogger

March 19, 2017

Classroom Note Taking: A Solution to the Technology Conundrum?

[Editor’s note: this guest blogger piece is by Cindy Gadziala, Chairperson of Theology at Fontbonne Academy in Milton, MA.]

I am a veteran teacher, and yet sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all that I am supposed to be doing in my 21st century classroom.

The “wave of the future,” instructional technology—with its one-to-one initiatives, and Google platforms—offers many benefits: for example, individualized instruction, or applications that promote problem-solving skills. I have had students demonstrate their learning by creating electronic posters and comic strips. I have even sent them on a virtual archaeological dig!

But, there are days where classroom 102 becomes a battleground; and my enemy appears to be technology. As a Theology teacher I am supposed to love my enemy, but I need the best help I can get.

Enter — brain science!

Technology Problems: Working Memory and Attention

Psychology researchers are working diligently to understand how we get information “in and out” of our brains, and working memory is now understood as an essential gateway for learning. We also know that working memory is both precious and limited. [1]

Part of our challenge in the classroom is to avoid overloading a student’s working memory, thereby causing a catastrophic failure…those glazed looks and blank stares that send a chill through the fiber of any teacher’s being!

So, teachers can employ proactive strategies to reduce the strain on working memory to facilitate learning. For example: lots of new information, or too many instructions, can create working memory burdens for overtaxed students.

And yet, paradoxically, classroom technology can sometimes require students to master new material, and to follow all sorts of instructions.

Just as it might overwhelm working memory, technology can also distract students’ attention.

For example: I often project images from my iPad to help my students focus. And yet, when the projector times out and kicks over to a screen saver, the swirling colors and images can disorient the very students whom I was helping focus.

These kinds of problems intensify all my questions about use of technology in the classroom:

Should I be allowing students to take notes on their laptops and tablets?
What happens to working memory when a student clicks a tab to go someplace else?
How does this affect the working memory of the student seated next to the web surfer?

While I hope that I am creating brilliantly engaging lessons to minimize such distractions, I have my limits.

Enter — “the conundrum!.”

Technology Possibilities

One of the boasts of technology in the classroom has been that students can use their devices for efficient note taking, yet the well-known Mueller and Oppenheimer study [2] suggests that laptops make note-taking too easy. Counter-intuitively, this ease reduces cognitive processing, and thereby reduces learning. Between the risk of distraction and the reduction to learning I hear the cry go forth from teachers everywhere: Victory! Ban technological devices in the classroom!

While tempting, this is not the best response. (Remember, I am trying to love my enemy!)

I have seen kids take amazing notes on a laptop. Often, they work quite thoughtfully with information, creating their own visual representations and mind maps as they go. I do not want to take this beneficial tool away from them.

So, my task is to teach appropriate use of technological devices, build note-taking skills and…oh, by the way…teach content: all without overwhelming my students’ working memory.

I wanted to know: how can I make technology my ally in the classroom to accomplish all these objectives? I have found an option that may help teachers to reduce strain on working memory in class, and facilitate cognitive processing both in class and at home.

Enter — the Rocketbook.

Paper, Improved?

The Rocketbook is a notebook, made from acid free fine grain paper with a dot grid pattern , that combines the benefits of handwriting and technology.

Because the Rocketbook has QR codes built into its pages, students can take handwritten notes in class, and then use a cell phone app to upload notes into the cloud. (Rocketbook supports Google Drive and Evernote, for example.)

Symbols on each page can be assigned to different destination folders, and so students can upload work for multiple disciplines to distinct places in the cloud. Once their notes are uploaded, students can re-work them into a mind map or graphic organizer.

From a teacher’s perspective, Rocketbook’s combination of paper and technology provides many benefits:

I reduce the strain on working memory in class because no devices should be open when students are engaged in note taking. In this way, I also make my classroom management easier.
I increase their cognitive processing, because they are writing by hand.
I increase their touches with content, because they are re-organizing their notes into the cloud.
I can use my LMS and Google Drive in concert to make this process part of their homework. When students provide me with a link to their uploaded notes, I can see their work from class, provide feedback on their note taking, see how they are processing and reorganizing the information, and create the opportunity to correct misinformation or redirect them to concepts they missed.

Of course, all innovations include some downsides; in this case, I sacrifice teaching my students about appropriate use of their devices in the classroom.

(A unique feature of the Rocketbook is that when the notebook is full, you can zap it in the microwave; the ink disappears and you start all over!)

Choices, Choices

While I have used the Rocketbook myself and find it both functional and cost effective (under $40.00 for pens and notebook!), there are some other interesting options available that teachers and students could use in a similar fashion. (My thanks to Learning and the Brain tech guru Scott MacClintic for these suggestions.)

First, there is the LiveScribe Echo Pen by Anoto. There are several versions of this product and the functions increase with the price tag. (Average setup cost comes in around $200.00.) The premise here is that as you write your notes, the pen records what is being said in class. This recording allows students to sync notes with the audio, review what was said and expand, revise and reorganize material from class.

While the Echo Pen’s marketing is often directed to LD students, their tagline “write less, listen more” speaks to all learners. If students are coached on how best to use the tool, hearing class again combined with re-working the material could reap cognitive processing benefits.

Equil’s Smartpen 2, (coming in around $160.00) does not offer the audio feature, but it does not require special ink or paper either. When students take notes with a special Bluetooth-enabled pen, those notes appear both on the paper where they write and on a Bluetooth-linked tablet. Like the Rocketbook, in other words, it converts pen-and-paper notes into a laptop version—eliminating potential distractions from websites, advertisements, and Facebook.

In Sum…

While technology offers both challenges and benefits to students and teachers, it is clear to me that there are no magic bullet solutions with technology alone. Teachers cannot abdicate their role to technology. To use it effectively, we need to know how it affects learning and the brain. We must be all the more deliberate in our lesson planning, classroom management, and relationship building with our students.

We equally must inform the art of teaching with the science of the brain. When we start integrating instructional technology, brain science and good pedagogical practice, as teachers we provide truly great opportunities for student learning!

Willingham, D. (2009). Why don’t students like school? A cognitive scientist answers question about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 1-10, doi: 10:1177/0956797614524581. [link]

Attention Must Be Paid

Jerome Kagan: A Teacher’s Appreciation

Learning and the Brain Stories, #2

Classroom Note Taking: A Solution to the Technology Conundrum?

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