If I could pick one topic from cognitive science for ALL TEACHERS to study, that topic would be working memory. This small mental capacity allows us to select, hold, reorganize, and combine bits of information (and other things). So, if you try to put the five days of the work week in alphabetical order, you’re […]
Some education debates focus on BIG questions: high structure vs. low structure pedagogy? technology: good or bad? how much should teachers focus on emotions? Other debatess focus on narrower topics. For instance: cold calling. (“Cold calling” means “calling on student who haven’t raised their hands.”) Proponents generally see several benefits: Cold calling helps broaden check-for-understanding strategies. […]
When our students learn, we naturally want them to show us what they’ve learned. Most schools rely, in varying degrees, on tests. The logic seems simple: if students know something, they can demonstrate their knowledge on this quiz, or test, or exam. But, what about students who feel test anxiety? These students might learn the material, but […]
For several years now, we’ve been talking about the benefits of “desirable difficulties.” For instance, we know that spreading practice out over time helps students learn more than does doing all the practice at once. Why? Because that schedule creates greater mental challenges. Our students must think harder. In other words: “spacing” creates “desirable difficulty.” […]
Few theories in education have had a more dramatic story arc than Carol Dweck’s “Mindset.” Based on research she started in the early 1970s, Dweck published her sumptuously-titled book Mindset, The New Psychology of Success: How We Can Learn to Fulfill our Potential in 2006. By the time I entered this field in 2008, it […]
Here’s a pre-Thanksgiving question: How much good news can you pack into one psychology study? Lots of psychology research focuses on human difficulties: Why is it hard to learn and develop? Why do people struggle to connect? What happens when mental health decays? The field of positive psychology — as the name suggests — turns […]
I had planned to write a post describing our most recent conference, last weekend in San Francisco (“where every day is cardio day”). However, one of our attendees — Mark Barrett — got there first. I thought he did such a good job of summarizing so many of the speakers that you’d enjoy reading his […]
We can’t wait to see you at our conference this weekend: Educating Anxious Brains. Various reports have found that many children and teens are experiencing significant stress, anxiety, and mental health issues. More than 1 in 20 children ages 6-17 (and one in three teens) suffer from anxiety disorders, according to a June 2018 study […]
Teaching is an emotionally and cognitively demanding job, a fact that the public does not always appreciate. To cope with these demands and help teachers feel and do their best inside and outside of the classroom Tina Boogren encourages teachers to engage in self-care by attending to their physiological and emotional needs in their daily […]
I wrote two weeks ago about our first 2020 education conference: Educating Anxious Brains, in San Francisco — February 14-16. As you saw in that post, educators have lots to concern us: trauma & stress, and their effects on minds and brains. (Dan Siegel will have lots to say on these topics.) Happily, the conference will […]
