A weekly collection of education-related news from around the web.

Tag: learning science

    • KQED
    • 01/08/25
    “The mentor’s mindset shatters the idea that influential adults must be either tough guys or a soft touch. “Neither approach is good,” Yeager told me. What adolescents need are corrections with encouragement. “Keep high standards and give more support,” he said. Honest feedback works when it is accompanied by moral support and clarity on how […]
    • New York Times
    • 09/05/24
    “Dopamine can sometimes sound like the bad guy in this conversation, but all in all, it’s an awesome neurotransmitter. It’s what drives us to create, to learn, to build, to improve. Dopamine pushes us to boldly go where no person has gone before… The problem with our culture today is not too much desire but […]
    • Shanahan On Literacy
    • 08/24/24
    “Yes, with research we can identify potentially positive practices. What we can’t do is tell teachers how best to implement these insights in real classrooms. Having everyone mindlessly read a purpose-setting script at the start of a lesson may be a no-brainer. Noticing that some kids are neglecting that purpose, seems more in the realm […]
    • Challenge Success
    • 07/29/24
    “The 2024 Student Voice Report presents a comprehensive analysis of high school students’ emotional and physical health, sense of connection and belonging in school, and engagement with learning, based on data collected from over 375,000 students from 2010 to 2023.  On average, high school students report receiving only 6.6 hours of sleep per night, far […]
    • Learning Scientists
    • 07/18/24
    “There was a clear benefit on performance for handwritten notes compared to typed notes. The researchers calculated how the strength of the benefit would translate to grades in a hypothetical scenario and suggested that 9.5% of the students who take their notes by hand would achieve an A whereas only 6% of the students who […]
    • ISTE
    • 06/25/24
    “The Transformational Learning Principles (TLPs) are a set of evidence-based guidelines highlighting the most essential elements of effective learning. Bringing together core ASCD and ISTE concepts and informed by learning science, they are a key part of our organizational mission and vision. They also bring focus and a common language to our collaborative efforts with […]
    • Law and Liberty
    • 11/21/22
    “Practice a lot with writing, and eventually, you can write without worrying about punctuation. Practice a lot with arithmetic operations, and you can do them without conscious thought, allowing the brain to focus its deliberate, conscious thinking on more complex ideas.”
    • Fordham Institute
    • 10/04/21
    “The findings are striking for such a simple intervention. How simple? The writing exercises were given just three times in each school year. Pencils, paper, and one hour of time spread out over seven or eight months—even doable virtually. It’s hard to get much simpler than that. Why wouldn’t schools want to jump on this even while the mechanisms […]
    • Hechinger Report
    • 08/25/21
    “Among the timely solutions the researchers have identified: having a structured daily routine and limiting passive screen time during the pandemic protects kids against depression and anxiety. Research is clear on the link between mental health and academics. Kids struggling with fears or having trouble regulating their emotions are more likely to experience challenges in […]
    • New York Times
    • 07/21/21
    “Spatial ability, defined by a capacity for mentally generating, rotating, and transforming visual images, is one of the three specific cognitive abilities most important for developing expertise in learning and work settings.”
    • Literary Hub
    • 05/24/21
    “Whether reading a book, playing a video game, or losing oneself in a daydream, these mental activities are not cognitive idling. Even a couch potato does more than just sit on the couch like a potato. As we experience and manipulate alternative realities—evaluating the universe of counterfactuals that we mentally construct—we ponder options and perhaps […]
    • New York Times
    • 07/30/20
    “Before the pandemic, I was a parenting expert… I told worried parents about the nine signs of tech overuse, like ditching sleep for screens. I advised them to write a “family media contract” and trust, but verify, their tweens’ doings online… Now, like Socrates, I know better. I know that I know nothing… I have […]

ADOLESCENCE

ARTS

ASSESSMENT

    • Inside Higher Ed
    • 04/18/24
    “The study, which analyzed more than 30 million assessment records from the Wolverine State’s flagship from 2014 to 2022, shows that students whose last names start with W, X,Y and Z received grades that were approximately 0.6 points lower than their peers whose names begin with A, B and C. Researchers attribute the discrepancy to unconscious […]

ATHLETICS

CHARACTER

CREATIVITY

CURRICULUM

DIVERSITY/INCLUSION

EARLY CHILDHOOD

HEALTH

HUMANITIES

LANGUAGE

LEADERSHIP

LEARNING SCIENCE

PEDAGOGY

READING/WRITING

SOCIAL MEDIA

STEM

TECH

WORKPLACE

Z-OTHER

GENERAL

    • Law and Liberty
    • 11/21/22
    “Practice a lot with writing, and eventually, you can write without worrying about punctuation. Practice a lot with arithmetic operations, and you can do them without conscious thought, allowing the brain to focus its deliberate, conscious thinking on more complex ideas.”
    • Fordham Institute
    • 10/04/21
    “The findings are striking for such a simple intervention. How simple? The writing exercises were given just three times in each school year. Pencils, paper, and one hour of time spread out over seven or eight months—even doable virtually. It’s hard to get much simpler than that. Why wouldn’t schools want to jump on this even while the mechanisms […]
    • Hechinger Report
    • 08/25/21
    “Among the timely solutions the researchers have identified: having a structured daily routine and limiting passive screen time during the pandemic protects kids against depression and anxiety. Research is clear on the link between mental health and academics. Kids struggling with fears or having trouble regulating their emotions are more likely to experience challenges in […]
    • New York Times
    • 07/21/21
    “Spatial ability, defined by a capacity for mentally generating, rotating, and transforming visual images, is one of the three specific cognitive abilities most important for developing expertise in learning and work settings.”
    • Literary Hub
    • 05/24/21
    “Whether reading a book, playing a video game, or losing oneself in a daydream, these mental activities are not cognitive idling. Even a couch potato does more than just sit on the couch like a potato. As we experience and manipulate alternative realities—evaluating the universe of counterfactuals that we mentally construct—we ponder options and perhaps […]
    • New York Times
    • 07/30/20
    “Before the pandemic, I was a parenting expert… I told worried parents about the nine signs of tech overuse, like ditching sleep for screens. I advised them to write a “family media contract” and trust, but verify, their tweens’ doings online… Now, like Socrates, I know better. I know that I know nothing… I have […]

A.I. Updates

    • Center for Curriculum Redesign
    • 01/01/25
    “The goal of this paper is to: 1. Determine which types of cognitive processes and procedures (aka “modes of thinking”) are used in human reasoning. 2. Determine which forms of human reasoning can be mimicked/reproduced by Generative AI–specifically Large Language Models (LLMs). Hereinafter, it will be referred to as “GenAI” unless otherwise indicated (in the […]

TECH/AI: EDUCATION

    • Center for Curriculum Redesign
    • 01/01/25
    “The goal of this paper is to: 1. Determine which types of cognitive processes and procedures (aka “modes of thinking”) are used in human reasoning. 2. Determine which forms of human reasoning can be mimicked/reproduced by Generative AI–specifically Large Language Models (LLMs). Hereinafter, it will be referred to as “GenAI” unless otherwise indicated (in the […]

TECH/AI: INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT

    • Noema
    • 09/03/24
    “Hybridization of life with technology is scary when you can’t quite lose the unspoken belief that current humans are somehow an ideal, crafted, chosen form (including their lower back pain, susceptibility to infections and degenerative brain disease, astigmatism, limited life span and IQ, etc.).”

Issues

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

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