A blog about education, psychology, and the links between the two.
I bet you give some talks, classes or lectures where you explain your material really well. You have nice slides, you give an eloquent and passionate account of the material, and most of it is pretty interesting. The thing is – how much will your learners remember in a few weeks time?
Read MoreA is for active learning. That is to say, learning that involves the students doing something, rather than sitting and listening to a teacher or instructor talk/lecture. Of course, it’s a little difficult to define what that something should be – what counts as active. If listening to a talk isn’t considered active, then is reading? What about filling in a worksheet? In short, there is near universal agreement that active learning is a good thing, but defining it is another matter. A pragmatic approach is to ask, ‘what does the learner need to do?’ If it is the teacher/instructor that is doing all of the work, then the activity is probably not an example of active learning.
B is for brain, and there are no shortage of people who will tell you that educators need to understand the brain better, or that their preferred education ideas are ‘brain based’. Of course, the brain does underlie all of a student’s…
Read MorePerhaps surprisingly, what people believe about learning and memory is often very different from the scientific consensus.
For example, in a large-scale survey of members of the public, Simons & Chabris (2011) found that over 80% of participants believed that amnesia sufferers forget their own name. This is actually not the case – the memory loss tends to affect recent events rather than their personal identity or childhood memories. In the same study, 63% of members of the public agreed with the idea that memory works like a video camera, while 48% agreed that once you have experienced an event and formed a memory of it, that memory does not change. None of these ideas are supported by mainstream psychological science; a linked study of psychology researchers found 0% endorsement in every case.
Memory seems to be fundamentally counterintuitive, and there are many other myths and misconceptions…
Read MoreHumans have evolved over the course of millions of years. Since we last shared a common ancestors with chimpanzees more than 6 million years ago (White et al, 2009), a number of hominin species have evolved - most, of course, have died out (as recently as 100,000 years ago, 4-5 homo species existed concurrently).
For most of this time, our ancestors and near relatives probably lived in grasslands environments, hunting and gathering. This environment has shaped...
Read MoreI believe that memory is very important in education. This might seem obvious - of course children and students need to remember things. Perhaps it also seems threatening - reducing education to mere passive memorisation?
I don’t think so.
Improving how we use memory is not threatening, in my view, because remembering is essential regardless of your view of how teaching should be done, or what the syllabus should consist of. Whether…
Read MoreCoursework, data analysis, revision... It can be hard to concentrate on a task all day, or even for an hour or two! Which, of course, can lead to procrastination, and to short breaks that become long breaks.
The pomodoro technique is a method of time management that encourages us to focus for 25 minute spells, each followed by a shorter break of 5 minutes or so.
The exact time can depend on the individual - each of us has a...
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