How “No Child Left Behind” Unleashed a Nationwide Epidemic of Cheating | Education | AlterNet.
Category: education
Mindfulness Improves Reading Ability, Working Memory, and Task-Focus
If you think your inability to concentrate is a hopeless condition, think again — and breathe, and focus. According to a study by researchers at the UC Santa Barbara, as little as two weeks of mindfulness training can significantly improve one’s reading comprehension, working memory capacity, and ability to focus.
Sorry, but practice alone does not make perfect
I’ve always dismissed Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hour” rule as oversimplified nonsense. So this comes as no surprise to me.
Practice only accounts for around one third of “perfection”…
How Yoga Could Help Keep Kids In School
Scientific evidence is mounting daily for what many have long sensed: that practices like mindfulness, meditation, and yoga can help us address certain intractable individual and societal problems.
Preschoolers Inability to Estimate Quantity Relates to Later Math Difficulty
Preschool children who showed less ability to estimate the number of objects in a group were 2.4 times more likely to have a later mathematical learning disability than other young people, according to a team of University of Missouri psychologists. Parents may be able to help their children develop their skills at approximating group sizes by emphasizing numerals while interacting with young children.
Playing Video Games Can Boost Brain Power
Certain types of video games can help to train the brain to become more agile and improve strategic thinking, according to scientists from Queen Mary University of London and University College London (UCL).
The Most Depressing Discovery About the Brain, Ever
Say goodnight to the dream that education, journalism, scientific evidence, or reason can provide the tools that people need in order to make good decisions.
Sudden Interest in Math — How Teachers Can Motivate Pupils
The lack of interest in math or natural sciences is one of the most frequently voiced causes for concern in the debate surrounding education, at least in Germany. It has been seen time and again that pupils lose their enthusiasm for physics, chemistry and math once they reach eighth or ninth grade. But is this inevitable? And if not, how can teachers steer a different course?
To Keep Teenagers Alert, Schools Let Them Sleep In
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Jilly Dos Santos really did try to get to school on time. She set three successive alarms on her phone. Skipped breakfast. Hastily applied makeup while her fuming father drove. But last year she rarely made it into the frantic scrum at the doors of Rock Bridge High School here by the first bell, at 7:50 a.m.
Then she heard that the school board was about to make the day start even earlier, at 7:20 a.m.
“I thought, if that happens, I will die,” recalled Jilly, 17. “I will drop out of school!”
That was when the sleep-deprived teenager turned into a sleep activist. She was determined to convince the board of a truth she knew in the core of her tired, lanky body: Teenagers are developmentally driven to be late to bed, late to rise. Could the board realign the first bell with that biological reality?
Able readers damaged by phonics, academic says
The interests of able readers are being threatened by an insistence primary school pupils are taught to read using phonics, an academic has said.