Understanding emotions, learners and achievement
You’d be hard pushed to find a classroom that doesn’t have some kind of display, yet very little is known about their impact on achievement. Recently, however, a few studies have arisen that attempt to establish the extent to which classroom displays can help or hinder learning. Early research has discovered that putting up student’sContinue reading Should You Tear Down Those Classroom Displays?
The belief that people have certain learning styles has been with us for some time now, as has the controversy that surrounds it. However, despite the best efforts of psychologists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and education professionals, this myth persist. The theory of learning styles implies that there exist different ways of learning and that individualsContinue reading Why does the learning styles myth persist?
I don’t write much about classroom behaviour, or rather, I don’t write explicitly about classroom behaviour. In fact, this post is more about behaviour in general, with some comments on behaviour in schools, so please don’t assume that I’m setting myself up as a behaviour guru (there are plenty of those already). In fact, I’mContinue reading Why do we break the rules?
Far from being gullible, young children are capable of rejecting claims when they don’t match their experiences, but this doesn’t mean they’re always right. Making the distinction between what is real and what is not seems simple enough although multiple layers of fantasy can quickly complicate things. I, as an adult, no longer believe inContinue reading The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and Paul McCartney
‘I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination encircles the world’ – Albert Einstein I’ve seen the above quote numerous times, although it’s usually only the Imagination is more important than knowledge bit. It’s a real Einstein quote, unlikeContinue reading Can knowledge get in the way of creativity?
What does binge-watching the latest Netflix addition have to do with teaching and learning? Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a curious phenomenon. Initially, I put it down to the inevitable slow decline of my cognitive functions as I age, but being the curious kind of person I am (and not being entirelyContinue reading Netflix, binge-watching & the spacing effect
During the 1960s, Canadian psychologist Allan Paivio made an interesting yet seemingly simple observation; he discovered that people found it easier to remember concrete nouns that can be imagined compared to abstract nouns where images were harder to come by. For example, if I were to present to you a list containing only words likeContinue reading What is Dual-Coding?
I recently wrote about how we can manipulate our audience for personal gain. I was certainly being somewhat satirical, yet the main purpose of the piece was to highlight how easily we can be manipulated and how often we unintentionally wind up promoting the types of people we would rather not see become even moreContinue reading Framing Language To Promote Positive Behaviour
I think Nick Rose hit the nail on the head with his comments on resilience in What does this look like in the classroom? To paraphrase Nick, if you were to ask thirty teachers what resilience was, you would be likely to receive thirty different explanations. I’ve been mulling over the whole issue of resilienceContinue reading Resilience: A Love-Hate Relationship
Imagine you’re scaling a rock face, let’s call this particular rock face El Capitan and situate it in Yosemite National Park, California. It’s approximately 3000 feet in height and it’s a difficult climb, actually, it’s vertical. Many climbers have succeeded in climbing El Capitan, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t get scared, especially whenContinue reading Extreme Fear
