STORIES ABOUT SCIENCE OF TEACHING AND LEARNING:
Op-Ed for The Seattle Times
Liberty and justice mean nothing without literacy
Without re-engineering children’s brains to learn to read, some can expect to live shorter, less healthy, less happy and less prosperous lives than their better educated fellow citizens.
Stories from The Seattle Times’ Education Lab project:
Seattle-area Somali community unites to embrace state’s new child-care standards
When the state introduced higher standards for child care, many feared that home-based centers, including those run by women from Somalia, would close. But a group of them joined together to make sure that didn’t happen.
Study reveals how baby talk boosts language development
A new study creates a mathematical model of teaching to show how the exaggerated sounds of “parentese” helps babies learn language.
We expel preschool kids at three times as often as K-12 students. Here’s how to change that
Preschoolers get expelled at three times the rate of students in elementary, middle and high schools. But when teachers get regular help from mental-health coaches, they expel at half the rate of those who don’t.
Risky change in teaching pays off at Bellevue’s Sammamish High
Teachers at Bellevue’s Sammamish High School led a five-year, schoolwide change that increased participation in challenging courses without sacrificing test scores.
Between the ears: What stone-age toolmaking tells us about learning
Scientists are replicating the toolmaking skills of prehistoric people to better understand the ways we teach and learn today.
Knowledge about the natural world in kindergarten predicts later success on science tests
New study shows that gaps in what kids know about the natural and social world in kindergarten persist through middle school.
How to help struggling readers get the most from advanced coursework
High schools are lowering the bar for enrollment in advanced courses that give kids a leg up for college, but many students need help boosting their reading skills.
Will more money for schools really help kids? New study may have long-term answer
While research is mixed on whether increases in school spending lead to better results for students, a study suggests that influxes of dollars from court decisions lead to higher graduation rates and earnings, especially for low-income students.
Between the ears: Is teaching part of human nature or just plain WEIRD?
Washington State University researchers find that traditional African hunter-gatherers teach children as young as 12 months old to use knives, machetes and digging sticks.
Between the ears: Basic ideas from cognitive science not reaching teachers
A review of commonly assigned textbooks for aspiring teachers shows that few cover strategies proven to help students remember what they learn.
Between the ears: When to teach, when to guide and when to get out of the way
Teachers are sometimes told to be the “guide by the side” instead of the “sage on the stage,” but research shows that this is a false choice.
Buildings with fresher air linked to better thinking
A new study showing that office workers did better on cognitive tests when they had fresher air to breathe underscores growing evidence that physical environments matter for performance at work and school.
Between the ears: In the brain, Chinese and English are more similar than they look on paper
A new brain-scan study of college-age speakers of English, Spanish, Hebrew and Chinese shows that the same speech regions of the brain are activated when they read, regardless of the language.
In class, out of court: How one school district triumphed over truancy
Sending kids who habitually miss school to court under the state’s 20-year truancy law hasn’t helped them stay in school. But a school-court-community effort in Spokane County is having impressive success.
Between the ears: Moderate anxiety may help math performance
A new study finds that kids who are motivated to do well in math perform best with a moderate amount of anxiety — too little may bore them and too much may overwhelm.
UW Brain-wave study: social babies get more out of Spanish lessons
The babies who learned the sounds of a foreign language best were the ones who were better at looking back and forth between Spanish-speaking tutors and the toys the tutors described.
Brain study: Noticing symmetry in numbers helps kids grasp difficult math concept
Tapping the brain’s natural ability to perceive symmetry in the physical world can help children make sense of negative numbers.
More green space, less noise linked to better learning
A growing body of research shows a relationship between the physical environment of schools and student achievement.
New brain study sheds light on how best to teach reading
Sounding out new words appears to spark more efficient reading circuits in the brain than memorizing them.