Retrieval Practice and Bloom’s Taxonomy
By Cindy Nebel As researchers attempting to bridge psychological science and education, we come across several challenges. Each of us has expertise in the area of retrieval practice, where many of the classic studies take place in the laboratory with simple materials. Researchers have therefore attempted to answer several questions to address the extent to…
GUEST POST: The Emerging Consensus
By Mike Bell Mike Bell taught science in UK secondary schools and then became interested in evidence. He now runs EBTN: the Evidence Based Teachers Network. EBTN has run dozens of training sessions in UK schools and college and about 7000 teachers receive their newsletter. He has a contract with an education publisher to write…
Conducting Research Projects in Collaboration with Teachers
These examples show that applied research is important and more applied research is needed. It can point researchers to limitations of research findings and at the same time motivate new research questions to tackle. Thus, applied research does not only help to provide teachers and students with practical tips, but also informs research itself. Applied research…
Lessons from The Science of Learning in the Field
Over the past few months, I have had the pleasure of working on a Science of Learning grant through the Learning Agency, funded by the Overdeck Family Foundation (see here). Through this grant, professors and researchers with expertise in the science of learning have been paired with K-12 teachers across the country. Each team is…
Weekly Digest #130: SoTL Researcher Spotlight
Dr. Regan Gurung conducts health psychological and social psychological research on cultural differences in stress, social support, smoking cessation, body image and impression formation. He has also received numerous teaching awards, organized teaching conferences, and served on many different committees and executive boards with teaching organizations. For more information about Regan and the work that…
Hocus Focus
From a cognitive psychologist’s point of view, these results are particularly impressive because they demonstrate transfer. There are a number of training tools that are marketed as improving mental processes. While a number of these show improvement on the training task itself, very few show improvement on things outside of the task (4). In other…
Weekly Digest #129: Students Under Stress
When one of our very first guest bloggers reached out to us recently asking about resources for students under severe stress, we realized that we hadn’t broached this issue on our blog yet. This hugely important issues will take more than a quick digest to explore, so expect more on this topic in the future.…
Weekly Digest #132: Dual Coding, Visual Note Taking, and Sketchnoting
1. To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand by Robinson Meyer via The Atlantic Why should you take notes by hand? If you can’t imagine going without your laptop, or asking your students to go without theirs, then this interview with Mueller and Oppenheimer may change your mind. Mueller and Oppenheimer tell the…
Have You Forgotten Your Childhood?
By Yana Weinstein Imagine if I asked you this question: “Are there large parts of your childhood after age 5 that you cannot remember?”. How would you answer: Yes, or no? Are you sure? And what might influence your answer? (Note that the “after age 5” part is important, because most of us do not…
GUEST POST: Who Really Benefits from Retrieval Practice
So, what does this mean? First of all, although the benefits of testing have been extensively reported, it appears that not all participants, at least among college students, do benefit directly from testing. In fact, for about 1/3 of our participants, retrieval practice made them worse. Does this mean we should stop incorporating testing as…
