Time and time again I find myself coming back to an essay called "'How Obvious”: Personal Reflections on the Database of Educational Psychology and Effective Teaching Research" by Gregory Yates (2005). It is a rich piece of work that covers topics ranging from the process-product research of the 70's and 80's to the failure of … Continue reading Presenting Workshops that are Worth Attending
Why I Memorize
One little-known aspect of international teaching is that very few expat teachers end up learning the local language in the countries where they teach. This may vary by language, of course; I've heard that far more international teachers pick up Spanish than Kazakh, for example; but by and large it seems that most international teachers, … Continue reading Why I Memorize
Scheduling Remote Learning to Allow for “Flow”
There are few concepts in education more mystical than the flow experience, a state in which the learner becomes so deeply immersed in the activity at hand that time becomes distorted, the need for food or sleep disappears, and concentration reaches extraordinary heights (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). You've most likely experienced flow, or extended hyperfocus, before, perhaps … Continue reading Scheduling Remote Learning to Allow for “Flow”
Immersion Learning Fails Students In More Ways Than One
When I was 16, I attended high school in the French city of Rennes. Like many foreign exchange students before me, I was assigned the same classes as local French students - literature, math and science classes - all, of course, entirely taught in French. Despite my (and my parents') hopes that I would quickly … Continue reading Immersion Learning Fails Students In More Ways Than One
Teaching during COVID: Big Ideas and Eclectic Voices
Sometime at the beginning of January, a leader at my school in China who is in charge of these sorts of things informed us that there was a small outbreak of the Coronavirus in a nearby province called Hubei. Few of the expat teachers at the meeting, me included, knew where that was. With the … Continue reading Teaching during COVID: Big Ideas and Eclectic Voices
5 Steps to Becoming a Reader of Research
A lot of people have told to me at my workshops that they wish to start reading research but they don't know where to start. I usually respond by recommending popular books, such as How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice and How We Learn: Why Brains Learn … Continue reading 5 Steps to Becoming a Reader of Research
A Learning Pyramid Profession
This week I tweeted a thread that started with this learning pyramid: https://twitter.com/MrZachG/status/1262938445158117376?s=20 For anyone who didn't know already, everything about the Learning Pyramid is fake (Letrud & Hernes, 2018). There have been numerous iterations of it passed around at education conferences and, yes, Twitter too, for more than 160 years! Do a Google image … Continue reading A Learning Pyramid Profession
Reducing the Distance in Distance Learning
Educators continue to ask both the right and wrong questions about distance learning during this online learning period. In a recent post, I argued that instead of squabbling over which technology we use, or whether a synchronous format has advantages over an asynchronous format, we should look at distance learning through a different lens. Specifically, we … Continue reading Reducing the Distance in Distance Learning
How Rapid Prototyping in Schools can Fail.
How does your school solve problems, make changes, or figure out what works best? In my previous post I wrote about how important it is for schools to get used to the idea of conducting controlled experiments to generate new knowledge for how make decisions and solve problems. In this post, I am going to … Continue reading How Rapid Prototyping in Schools can Fail.
From Meetings to Prototypes: The Importance of Being Experimental
Educators are problem-solvers in a profession riddled with instructional and non-instructional problems. In any one school, countless problems need to be solved concurrently; Maybe one grade level needs help with improving students' decoding skills, while the specialist teachers are curious how adjusting class periods would affect learning, while at the same time, despite heavy investment … Continue reading From Meetings to Prototypes: The Importance of Being Experimental
