Twenty Years After Columbine, Mass Shooting Survivors Help Others Heal
(Reuters)
“People need to recognize that there’s multiple levels of people affected. It’s not just the people who directly saw something or were directly injured or lost someone that they loved,” Felix said. “It ripples through a community, it shatters a lot of people’s belief about the safety of your community, of the world.”
20 Years After Columbine, Principals Form Network to Cope With Shootings
(Education Week – Subscription Required, Free Trial)
Just days after two teenagers were shot and killed by a fellow student in a rural Kentucky high school, Principal Patricia Greer got a call from one of the few people who could understand exactly what she was experiencing.
Bullies and Black Trench Coats: The Columbine Shooting’s Most Dangerous Myths
(Washington Post)
“It’s frustrating because we’ve known so much for so long, but initial impressions are hard to change,” said Peter Langman, a psychologist who has studied school shootings so extensively that Sue Klebold contacted him for insight about her son Dylan while she was writing a memoir.
How to Talk to Your Kids About Threats Against School Safety
(Coloradoan)
With more than 1,000 schools shut down across the state of Colorado due to what lawmakers have called a credible safety threat, you might be wondering how to talk to your child about what’s going on.
How Columbine Went Viral
(The 74 Million)
At the time, little was known about the psychology of school shooters — a topic Langman has spent about two decades trying to understand. His website contains more than 500 documents related to 150 perpetrators of mass shootings, including journal entries, blog posts, classroom assignments and police records. Time and again, he found, perpetrators of mass shootings — in and outside of schools — emulated previous attackers.
For School Shooting Survivors, Trauma Has No Time Limit
(Associated Press)
Talking to therapists at the school in Parkland, Florida, didn’t help. Each session had a different counselor, and she found herself rehashing traumas she had already expressed. She would rather turn to her friends, who understand what she went through.
4 Ways Schools Help or Hinder Gifted Students
(Education Week – Subscription Required, Free Trial)
“Where special ed. has a federal mandate—you must meet these students’ needs—we don’t have that,” said Jill Adelson, a research scientist at Duke University’s Talent Identification Program and the editor of the journal Gifted Child Quarterly. “We don’t even have a common definition across states of what gifted education is.”
When It Comes to Learning, What’s Better: The Carrot or the Stick?
(Science Daily)
Does the potential to win or lose money influence the confidence one has in one’s own decisions? Researchers investigated confidence bias in a learning context through a system of monetary punishment and reward. They demonstrated that we become more confident in our choices when learning to seek rewards. However, this confidence evolves into over-confidence. Moreover, the monetary gains makes us less flexible, while the fear of losing money preserves our ability to adapt.
GCSES: 4 Revision Tips Backed by Research
(tes)
Rereading and making notes won’t cut it. Here’s what the science says about making information stick
Community Psychology
(Inside Higher Ed’s Academic Minute podcast – transcript available)
Most people think of psychologists in very traditional ways. For example, if you were to close your eyes and imagine one, there is a good chance you would think of a therapist. My field is called community psychology, and it is a wonderful blend of psychology and sociology.
UCLA Could Capitalize on Academic Potential to Provide Mental Health Instruction
(Daily Bruin)
But virtually no majors, with the exception of psychology, require students to take courses related to mental health. So while Bruin Walk may be teeming with mental health awareness flyers, and the university brimming with programs designed to help the student body, that all goes poof the minute most students enter a lecture hall.
How to Use Play for Learning
(Edutopia)
Play-based learning helps engage elementary students in their education and has cognitive, physical, social, and emotional benefits.
Expanding the Toolkit for Undergraduate Psychology Majors (And Their Advisors), Part 1
Expanding the Toolkit for Undergraduate Psychology Majors (And Their Advisors), Part 2
(The Novice Professor)
Eric Landrum delves into basic foundational ideas about how to talk to undergraduate students about their preparation for careers with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and new data from the 2019 Eastern Psychological Association meeting.
School-Based Mindfulness Programs Can Help Students Cope With Stress
(Child Trends Blog)
As mindfulness programs become more common, the evidence base in support of their effectiveness should continue to grow.
Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Congratulate Kids on Acing Tests, According to Experts
(PureWow)
“It’s natural for kids to see outcomes, without connecting the dots to the processes that brought them about.”
Is Social and Emotional Learning Encouraging Educators to Pathologize Childhood?
(Education Week’s Straight Up from Rick Hess – Subscription Required, Free Trial)
I’m a huge fan of schools that are doing much more to address the social and emotional realities of students and teachers (correcting for some bizarre excesses of the No Child Left Behind era), but we’d do well to wonder if and when such efforts may do more harm than good.
How Much Screen Time Is Too Much for Kids?
(Newsweek)
Kindergartners who use screens for more than two hours a day are more likely to show signs of behavioral problems such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a study by Canadian scientists.
Don’t Let Research Methods and Statistics Be a Barrier to a Future Career in Psychology
(Psychreg)
Most researchers will probably ask ‘what’s all the fuss about?’ But for the student, the fuss is pretty much about everything.
How College Students Can End up in Vicious Cycle of Substance Abuse, Poor Academics, Stress
(Science Daily)
college students toward a vicious cycle of poor lifestyle choices, lack of sleep, mental distress and low grades, according to new research.
Conducting Research Projects in Collaboration with Teachers
(The Learning Scientists)
These examples show that applied research is important and more applied research is needed. It can point researchers to limitations of research findings and at the same time motivate new research questions to tackle. Thus, applied research does not only help to provide teachers and students with practical tips, but also informs research itself.
Abundance of Information Narrows Our Collective Attention Span
(Science Daily)
Sociologists, psychologists, and teachers have warned of an emerging crisis stemming from a ‘fear of missing out’, keeping up to date on social media, and breaking news coming at us 24/7. So far, the evidence to support these claims has only been hinted at or has been largely anecdotal.
A Transgender Student Lost His ROTC Scholarship and Made Headlines. But the Defense Department Says Gender Has Nothing to Do With It.
(The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Days after the Pentagon began carrying out its new policy barring transgender people from serving in the military, a transgender student at the University of Texas at Austin lost a scholarship he had received from the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.
Our Students – and Our Teachers – Need True Project-Based Learning
(Real Clear Education)
When students see the relevance of what they’re doing—when they understand that what they are learning goes well beyond the classroom—they discover a motivation that can exceed even their own interest. “When will I ever use this” and “Will this be on the test?” are questions that go right out the window.
Want to Learn a New Skill? Take Some Short Breaks
(Science Daily)
NIH study suggests our brains may use short rest periods to strengthen memories
Climate Change Could Undermine Children’s Education and Development in the Tropics
(Science Daily)
A new study concludes that exposure to extreme heat and precipitation in prenatal and early childhood years in countries of the global tropics could make it harder for children to attain secondary school education, even for better-off households.
School Bullying Increases Chances of Mental Health Issues and Unemployment in Later Life
(Science Daily)
Victims of bullying in secondary school have dramatically increased chances of mental health problems and unemployment in later life.
What Schools Can Learn From OrangeTheory About Differentiating Instruction
(Flypaper)
Almost a decade ago, I wrote that “the greatest challenge facing America’s schools today isn’t the budget crisis, or standardized testing, or ‘teacher quality.’ It’s the enormous variation in the academic level of students coming into any given classroom.”
Aspen’s Newest Social-Emotional Learning Offering Gives Cause for Pause
(Education Next)
Our goal isn’t to point fingers—though that can be kind of fun. It’s because we see a clear and present danger that SEL could go off the rails in any number of ways, and wind up compromising academic instruction or serving to advance ideological causes and agendas.
Classrooms May Soon Shed Dated Desk/Chair Combo
(Education Week – Subscription Required, Free Trial)
With the influx of mobile technology—laptops, tablets, and other devices—comes a portability that could free classrooms from the desk/chair combo, arranged in rows, and used by millions of students over the decades.
How to Maximize the Odds You’ll Be in the Right Place at the Right Time for Your Career Advancement
(Inside Higher Ed)
Stephen J. Aguilar offers guidance for developing habits that will help you maximize the odds of being at the right place at the right time when it comes to your career.
For Kids With Anxiety, Parents Learn To Let Them Face Their Fears
(KQED’s Mind/Shift)
The program was part of a Yale University study that treated children’s anxiety by teaching their parents new ways of responding to it. “The parent’s own responses are a core and integral part of childhood anxiety,” says Eli Lebowitz, a psychologist at the Yale School of Medicine who developed the training.
Anxiety ‘Epidemic’ Brewing on College Campuses, Researchers Find
(Medical Xpress)
The number of 18- to 26-year-old students who report suffering from anxiety disorder has doubled since 2008, perhaps as a result of rising financial stress and increased time spent on digital devices, according to preliminary findings released Thursday by a team of UC Berkeley researchers.
Getting Students Through College Is One Thing. Here’s How Georgetown U. Helps Them Adjust to Life Afterward.
(The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Georgetown’s Red House is offering graduating seniors a set of minicourses to help them bridge the gap between graduation and working life.
Putting the Cart Before the Horse
(The Effortful Educator)
Simply put, one cannot be creative with information they do not have.
