Learning Scientists Blog — The Learning Scientists

Jun 25

Jun 25 Weekly Digest #65: The Case Against Inquiry-Based Learning

In a March blog post, Megan walked through the evidence against pure discovery learning, noting that direct instruction is needed for novices in particular and that, once a baseline of knowledge is established, inquiry-based approaches can be ...

Jun 20

Jun 20 GUEST POST: Disconnect in the Classroom

Learning Scientists

Guest Posts, For Teachers, For Researchers

The other day on Twitter, I found myself reading through a somewhat comical conversation among a few edu-twitterers/teachers/researchers concerning the compilation of education research: ...

Jun 18

Jun 18 Weekly Digest #64: Preparing a Learning-Focused Syllabus

Learning Scientists

Guest Posts, For Teachers, For Researchers, Digests

“... even the most detailed syllabus cannot save an instructor from being deluged with the same questions from students over and over. This is because, of course, even the most detailed information is useless to a person who does not take the time to ...

Jun 15

Jun 15 Classroom Blunders: When Learning Science Goes Awry

Cindy Nebel

For Teachers, For Researchers, Learning Scientists Posts

Sometimes we are contacted by instructors or students and are asked for a prescription for how to study or how to implement the strategies successfully. We have a lot of reasons why we can’t offer a simple answer to these questions, but today I want to offer you a personal ...

Jun 13

Jun 13 GUEST POST: Building Effective Learning Strategies into a Mathematics Curriculum

Learning Scientists

Guest Posts, For Teachers

Last year I started planning a scheme of work for our mathematics department with a couple of aims in mind. Firstly, I wanted it to follow the principles of a mastery curriculum (as explained here) and, secondly, I wanted to embed the learning principles I had ...

Jun 8

Jun 8 Not All Writing Leads to More Learning

Yana Weinstein

For Teachers, For Researchers, Learning Scientists Posts

I sometimes write to learn things. This involves me setting myself the goal of writing a paper (and submitting it for publication) on something I don’t really know very much about. In a new paper, Arnold and colleagues tried to address some of the inconsistencies ...