I’m rereading How People Learn II as I prepare to use it with some students (who are teachers). The authors have provided clear and concise reviews of some of the recent findings in the cognitive and learning sciences. Perhaps most useful is the section in which the authors summarize what we know about studying. (Wise Read More
In his 2010 book Wisdom, Stephen Hall who is an award-winning writer about science and society, posed the question, “How do we make complex, complicated decisions and life choices, and what makes some of these choices so clearly wise that we all intuitively recognize them as a moment, however brief, of human wisdom?” (p. 6). Read More
A liberal arts education, the primary purpose of higher education for many generations, was originally intended to prepare young people to be able to understand complex problems and apply their skills to solving problems in diverse fields. The value of liberal arts education is lost on many stakeholders, including many who advocate for coding, STEM, Read More
Among the studies summarized by Gary Small, a cognitive scientist who works at the University of California Los Angeles, and his co-author Gigi Vorgan in the 2008 book iBrain: Surviving the Technological Modification of the Modern Mind, were several documenting the effects of technologies on human brains. They described research in which scientists measured a Read More
In biology, the Baldwin Effect was proposed in 1896 to suggest that learned behaviors could become a part of the biology of individuals and populations. Although this hypothesis did not stand the test of empirical observation and has been discredited as an effect in biology, it has been resurrected as a model helpful for understanding Read More
I have been workin with faculty who are trying to learn to use a new web service recently. They have been growing frustrated as the interface is not intuitive (and it is poorly designed, but don’t tell anyone I said that). Many have said they would stop using the service if they could but they Read More
I have been talking with teachers about the role of technology in their courses and the changing nature of the schooling experience. This one particular English teacher is realizing the traditional curriculum is no longer sufficient for her students. She described her recent realization: We have to face the fact that things like reading are Read More
How People Learn (National Research council, 2000) has been an important resource for scholars and educational practitioners for almost two decades. Google Scholar indexes more than 24,000 items that have cited the book. In 2018, a second version of the book was published. I am preparing a review of the book to be posted here Read More
Educators appear to have an incomplete and inconsistence awareness of autonomy as a factor that affects learning. Blumenfeld, Kempler, and Krajik (2006) define autonomy to include the “perception of a sense of agency, which occurs when students have the opportunity for choices and for playing a significant role in directing their own activity” (p. 477). Read More
My grandfather graduated from the University of Vermont in 1939 and I have some of his textbooks on my bookshelves along with the textbooks I used while an undergraduate student at the same institution 49 years later. The content of the textbooks (we both studied biology) is vastly different, but the literacy skills useful for Read More