Quick math time! What’s -2 - 4?
As a first-year teacher, that was a question most of my eighth-grade students struggled with during the first week of school. We spent a full week going over various strategies to help …
Digest #151: Education Podcasts
Of course we love reading and think that blogs are great. But, we also love podcasts! Podcasts are a great way to digest information on the go. It can also be nice to take a break from screens, step outside and get moving while listening to a podcast. We have our own, The Learning Scientists Podcast, and …
Is Critical Thinking a Soft Skill?
Every so often articles like this pop up claiming that critical thinking is a soft skill and is surely not being taught in schools, despite its importance in the workplace and everyday life.
Increasing Academic Performance Through Mark Withholding
I have recently published a paper (with co-author Paul Gardner) on the effects of temporary mark withholding on academic performance and feedback views in university students (1). Temporary mark withholding is a feedback strategy whereby on assignments students are provided with the feedback first without their marks…
Guest Post: Why Every Teacher Should Be a Philosophy Teacher
In a perfect world, the curriculum we teach our students just clicks, there’s that ‘lightbulb’ moment where they not only understand the objective but they’ve applied it to other subjects as well. This is the interdisciplinary dream that we strive for, but if we want this to be a norm, teachers may need to add one more title to their ever growing list of professions: philosopher.
SQ3R or Read, Recite, Review
We have occasionally received questions from educators about the SQ3R method and so I did some digging this week into the theoretical benefits of this method and the evidence to support its use.