Strategies Schools Can Use To Become More Trauma-Informed
(KQED – Mind/Shift)
Many teachers are working to modify their classrooms and schools to offer a more supportive environment for students who have experienced trauma in their lives. They’re taking heed of research showing that adverse childhood experiences like poverty, neglect, and exposure to violence affect children’s brains and may have a negative impact on learning and behavior.
Playing With Stats: Ideas For Incorporating Fun Into The Teaching Of Statistics
(TeachPsych.org)
The first day of school was approaching and I braced myself for impact. After a few weeks of getting the hang of the course, I realized that teaching statistics is actually WONDERFUL. No one had told me that it could be enjoyable! Or maybe they did tell me, and I just didn’t listen (and now that I think about it, that’s way more likely). Thus, this blog post is about throwing out misperceptions and infusing fun into your stats class.
Bias Starts as Early as Preschool, but Can be Unlearned
(Edutopia)
A new study finds that children show bias at a surprisingly young age. But teachers have ways to address this and create a welcoming classroom.
How the Internet May Be Changing the Brain
(Science Daily)
An international team of researchers has found the Internet can produce both acute and sustained alterations in specific areas of cognition, which may reflect changes in the brain, affecting our attentional capacities, memory processes, and social interactions.
Schools Reckon with Social Stress: ‘I’m on My Phone so Much’
(Associated Press)
High school biology teacher Kelly Chavis knew smartphones were a distraction in her class. But not even her students realized the psychological toll of their devices until an in-class experiment that, of course, was then spreading on social media.
‘It’s OK to not be OK:’ How One High School Saved Lives with a 34-Question Survey
(KQED – Mind/Shift)
In classrooms around the building, the school’s ninth-graders whizzed through an online mental health survey that would soon deliver real-time data to the group in the conference room. They were a triage team of sorts — particularly interested in the answers to question 24, which asked how often students had had thoughts of hurting themselves within the past week.
Believing In Learning Styles Is Detrimental
(Teacher Toolkit)
What if I told you that teachers still believe in learning styles? Particularly at primary school level…
Tackling Misconceptions Through Conceptual Change – Part I
(3 Star Learning Experiences)
A while back, we discussed why some things are easy to learn and some are difficult by looking at learning through an evolutionary lens, based on David Geary’s work. In this blog, we’ll look at some of the same questions through a different lens; a conceptual change lens. We now explore why some concepts are more difficult to learn than others and discuss how we can support learners when learning new concepts.
Desperation And Broken Trust When Schools Restrain Students Or Lock Them In Rooms
(NPR’s Morning Edition)
“What kind of parent lets this happen to their child? … I just trusted the school. I thought that it would work — we were at our wits’ end with the behaviors and stuff. But it actually just made it worse.”
Early-Life Challenges Affect How Children Focus, Face the Day
(Science Daily)
Experiences such as poverty, residential instability, or parental divorce or substance abuse, can affect executive function and lead to changes in a child’s brain chemistry, muting the effects of stress hormones, according to a new study.
Sticking to Sports Can Help Kids Adjust
(Science Daily)
Thinking of getting your child to take up a sport that involves a coach or instructor? Good news: a new study finds that children who engage in organized physical activity at a young age are less likely to have emotional difficulties by the time they turn 12.
Is Summer Learning Loss Real?
(Education Next)
Every summer, the news is filled with stories about summer learning loss. The warnings sound dire: two months of math learning lost for most students every summer, and two to three months of reading learning lost for low-income students, according to the National Summer Learning Association.
Want Teachers to Motivate Their Students? Teach Them How to Do It
(Education Week – Subscription Required, Free Trial)
A study released in May by the Mindset Scholars Network, a collaborative of researchers who study student motivation, found most teacher education programs nationwide do not include explicit training for teachers on the science of how to motivate students.
Communing With Nature
(Inside Higher Ed)
In their new book, a professor and a counseling center director show how being outdoors can improve students’ mental health at little cost to colleges.
Dual Coding and Learning Styles
(The Learning Scientists)
Dual coding and learning styles sound similar, but are not quite the same thing. While dual coding has scientific evidence backing its use, learning styles has been repeatedly tested and shown not to improve learning.
The Making of an Edu-Myth: The 30-Million-Word Gap Has Not Been “Debunked”
(Flypaper)
Try this experiment. At your next professional development session, conference, or perhaps on social media, mention the famous “30-million-word gap” study, which demonstrated that low-income children hear far less spoken language before their first day of school than their affluent peers, setting in motion dramatic differences in vocabulary attainment and academic achievement.
Psychology Has Been Greatly Enriched by Concepts From Non-English Languages (And Why It Should Engage Cross-Culturally Even More)
(The British Psychological Society)
A century of research on the linguistic relativity hypothesis (LHR; also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) has shown that the language we speak profoundly affects our experience and understanding of life, impacting everything from our perception of time and space to the construction of our self-identity.
Vaccinations and Learning Styles
(Effortful Educator)
I wish I wasn’t writing this…really…I’ve had my fill of learning styles. It’s a bit like the recent measles outbreak in the US…we’re all vaccinating and everything’s going well, but some people decide they’re not really into the science and research of it all and go about doing their own thing…so the once well under control infection is making a small comeback.
Making Learning Simpler, not Easier
(Effortful Educator)
I often see the terms ‘simple’ and ‘easy’ used synonymously during discussions on twitter. For me, the two are quite different. I want to make learning simple, but I do not want to make it easy. As the name of my blog and twitter handle state, it should be effortful.
Growing PhD Funding Shortfall ‘Requires National Debate’
(Times Higher Education)
V-c who chairs financial sustainability group warns that deficit on doctoral training raises major questions.
Principals, Teachers Prioritize Social-Emotional Skills For Students
(Education Dive)
The new RAND Corp. survey results come as Congress proposes $260 million in funding for SEL programs and whole-child initiatives.
