Student Learning
What’s Wrong with Educational Testing and How We Can Fix it
As quantitative psychologists who study education, teachers and parents often ask us, “What went wrong with all these tests, and how can we fix them?”
At best, educational assessments—from large-scale standardized exams administered over an entire state, to targeted cognitive diagnostic tests used by psychologists in schools—are considered a necessary evil by the teachers, parents, and students who are subjected to them.
Creative Teaching and Teaching Creativity: How to Foster Creativity in the Classroom
“Describe the tongue of a woodpecker,” wrote Leonardo Da Vinci on one of his to-do lists, next to sketching cadavers, designing elaborate machines, and stitching costumes. Da Vinci filled over 7,000 notebook pages with questions, doodles, observations, sketches, and calculations. He nurtured creativity as a habit and skill every day—and it paid off. Da Vinci’s work reshaped multiple disciplines, from science, to art, to engineering.
Increasing Student Engagement: Are You Up for the Challenge?
Sometimes, keeping students engaged in the classroom feels like an uphill battle. Teachers work long hours, are held to high standards for content delivery, and have a voluminous amount of preparation and grading to complete every day. We all know that experiential activities and inquiry-based strategies are related to student engagement. We are also fully aware that creating classroom environments that employ these approaches take a lot of time. Therefore, in spite of the research, “lecture continues to be the predominant mode of instruction.” [1]
Changing School Culture by Working to Change Existing Beliefs About Schooling
On the first day of school, my sister walks into her child’s second grade classroom to find that there are no desks. There’s one table with four chairs off to the side. A high-top table with a couple of chairs is near the front of the room, and on the other side is a table with no chairs, perfect for standing and doing projects. The rest of the room is dominated by a comfortable couch, an ottoman that can seat four kids, and padded chairs arranged facing different directions. It feels like an activity room, not a classroom, and the students are thrilled with the arrangement.
Using humor in the college classroom: The pros and the cons
The use of humor in the college classroom has been researched extensively (see Segrist & Hupp, 2015 who summarized 41 years of literature on humor in the college classroom) and has been shown to have many benefits for students (Banas, Dunbar, Rodriguez & Liu, 2011; Garner, 2006; Huss & Estep, 2016; Pollio, 2002), some of which are:
Learning through Blogging: Implications of Blog Psychology in the Classroom
It was estimated that in January 2017, there were more than 1.8 billion websites. And as most of us know already, a website can be a personal, commercial, governmental website, or a non-profit organisation. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social networking, to providing news and education.
Why It’s Important to Support the Psychological Well-Being of Early Childhood Educators
It’s the first day of class and Marie is a brand new teacher. She has just finished her professional degree and has had some experience as an assistant teacher, but this is her first time being the head teacher in an early childhood setting and being fully responsible for the children in her care. During her training she learned about developmentally appropriate practices and working with families and children from diverse backgrounds, but nevertheless she feels overwhelmed and underprepared to deal with the day-to-day challenges of being an early childhood educator. Marie is expected to provide a high-quality experience for her children but her own anxiety and stress is getting in the way of her ability to provide the children in her classroom with a nurturing and positive educational environment. Her anxiety sometimes spills over into her interactions with other teachers and parents which in turn affects the behavior and learning of the children under her care.
Technology in Education: Why Being a Luddite is No Longer an Option
On Twitter, educator Justin Tarte wrote about technology in education no longer being a luxury but a necessity. Larry and Laurie, the campus Luddites and technophobes will need to retire to make way for the new tech-savvy teachers of tomorrow. Technology will not be for the rich districts; it will be for everyone. Every school will have some form of 1:1 and all teachers and administrators will need to be able to adapt to changing software and technological tools in the future. Good teaching and good pedagogy will still be needed, but we are approaching the science of learning from a different place than when I began teaching. This is a great change.
Starting a Campus-Wide Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Program
“Take a Break,” says a small sign in a small corner of a second-grade classroom. A small corner that represents a big change at Dan D. Rogers Elementary School in Dallas, Texas. Last year we began small changes such as these as part of a school-wide effort to have a uniform approach to Social-Emotional Learning on our Campus. With the help of my leadership team, a group of core teachers, and our district’s Psychological and Social Services Department, we met over the summer and began to formulate lessons, gather tools, and purchase materials to begin our program which we now call, “Our Mind Time.” This a title that was coined by one of our district social workers, Veva Lane.