“Our brains aren’t less active when we sleep, as was long thought, just differently active… In sleep labs, when people have been introduced to certain new tasks, mental or physical, their spindle frequency increases that night. The more spindles they have, it seems, the better they perform the task the next day.”
“This kind of diversity, diversity of thought, is the hidden advantage of diversity, because it better enables us to solve complex problems.”
“The senders of the thank-you letters consistently underestimated how positive the recipients felt about receiving the letters and how surprised they were by the content. The senders also overestimated how awkward the recipients felt; and they underestimated how warm, and especially how competent, the recipients perceived them to be.”
“Instead of focusing on who from the margins is able to get in, we would do better to direct our attention to the fundamental ways selective admissions and educational institutions maintain the privileges of whiteness.”
“It tracks every time a volunteer has a touchpoint with one of the students — driving to school, sharing a meal. Hemminger calls it the Fitbit of social relationships. Tapestry can track how often a student has touchpoints, who hasn’t had a touchpoint, how many touchpoints lead to what outcomes.”
“It’s a way of creating frameworks that ask to be expanded and drive us to learn more. It’s a way of formulating a question, linking it to others, and teaching us to find answers.”
A bottom group of about 750 small private colleges recording less than $100 million in total expenses is increasingly struggling to cover costs with revenue.”
“This recent surge of technology-enhanced schooling called “personalized learning” merges the polestars of school reform since the 1890s. First, there is a reunion of efficiency and effectiveness, and second, the two wings of the progressive movement—“administrative” and “pedagogical” reformers, under different aliases have reappeared, reunited, and now use similar vocabularies.”
“The shift from primary emphasis on “scientific management” to advance efficiency in schools and classrooms–what later critics called “the cult of efficiency“– to a focus on effectiveness, i.e., student outcomes, in the late-20th century to determine “success” and “failure” is prologue to what is now occurring in 21st century U.S. schools.”
Make yourself more interested in the sense that your students are making rather than the sense they aren’t making. Celebrate and build on that sense.”
“So 120,000 Twitter followers are rabid Beethoven defenders, outraged someone would take away their beloved music? Unlikely. We post heretical pieces on ArtsJournal almost every day – many far more outrageous than this, and they don’t go viral or provoke such reaction. So why this?”
“No scientific consensus exists on how tech addiction should be defined or even measured. Studies on the cognitive, behavioral, and social effects of smartphones and apps has been limited and inconclusive. Regarding the state of research on devices and childhood development, Collins says researchers are still gathering evidence on how best to balance technology's obvious benefits with its potential harms.”
“Eventually, after $100,000 in attorney’s bills, Glennon was able to unmask the culprit. It turned out to be a complete stranger who had been offended by a comment Glennon had made about a news article on Facebook.”
“Dividing attention between an electronic device and the classroom lecture did not reduce comprehension of the lecture, as measured by within-class quiz questions. Instead, divided attention reduced long-term retention of the classroom lecture, which impaired subsequent unit exam and final exam performance.”
“University of Virginia researchers who looked at data from more than 1,000 students found that all of the advantages supposedly conferred by private education evaporate when socio-demographic characteristics are factored in. There was also no evidence found to suggest that low-income children or children enrolled in urban schools benefit more from private school enrollment.”
“The researchers found that the more teachers immersed themselves in restorative practices, the better students rated their relationships with these teachers. And the strong relationships in turn linked to a greater sense of respect between teacher and student and fewer disciplinary referrals. Given these findings, it’s perhaps unsurprising that restorative practices are popular with students. In fact, at least some teens and kids adopt the techniques for their own use.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson