The Power of Making Thinking Visible: Practice to Engage and Empower all Learners by Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church

Imagine how schools might be different if educators focused on the process rather than product of students’ thinking and tried to support students’ disposition to think. Ron Ritchhart, Senior Research Associate and Principal Investigator at Harvard Project Zero, and Mark



Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything by Barbara Oakley and Olav Schewe

With the school year starting in just a couple of weeks, Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything by Barbara Oakley and Olav Schewe is an excellent resource to help students start the school year with



Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycle of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind by Judson Brewer

Even before the increase in mental health challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we were living in an era of heightened anxiety. People experience feelings of worry, nervousness, or unease related to their futures or to life circumstances shrouded in



Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Why Don’t Students Like School? (2nd. ed.) by Daniel T. Willingham

Why don’t students like school? Daniel T. Willingham, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, addresses this and nine other significant questions about how the human mind works and the implications for teaching in his book aptly titled, “Why



Posted in Book Reviews | Leave a comment

The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention by Simon Baron-Cohen

Cambridge University professor of psychology and psychiatry, Simon Baron-Cohen, recently published The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention. Baron-Cohen argues that for the last 70,000-100,000 years humans have been the only species with the “Systemizing Mechanism,” or the ability



Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Game on? Brain On!: The Surprising Relationship between Play and Gray (Matter) by Lindsay Portnoy

Game on? Brain On!: The Surprising Relationship between Play and Gray (Matter)  is an affectionate, evidence-based, tribute to the importance of play for learning and preparing young people for their future. Author Lindsay Portnoy, who currently serves as an Associate



Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Teachers vs Tech?: The Case for an Ed Tech Revolution by Daisy Christodoulou

The dramatically increased reliance on technology to support students’ learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light educators’ need to understand how technology can support learning and how educators can make thoughtful decisions around the use of technology in



Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | Leave a comment

Active Learning Online: Five Principles that Make Online Courses Come Alive by Stephen Kosslyn

The COVID-19 global pandemic has spurred a massive and rapid increase in online education. Although it is possible to design effective learning experiences in online classrooms, often online education fails to take advantage of the strengths of recent technologies and



Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | 1 Comment

How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice by Paul Kirschner and Carl Hendrick

Bridging the research-practice divide is a perennial issue in education. Fortunately, Paul A. Kirschner and Carl Hendrick’s book— How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice — helps address this issue by presenting time-tested,



Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Power of Discord: Why the Ups and Downs of Relationships are the Secret to Building Intimacy, Resilience, and Trust by Ed Tronick and Claudia Gold

The famous, well-replicated “still-face experiment” involves an infant and parent seated facing each other. After a few minutes of play, the parent becomes completely unresponsive and shows a blank face. The infant tries an increasingly dramatic array of tricks to



Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment