Articles

In the education world, fixed mind-set is usually contrasted with growth mind-set. In this context, fixed mind-set refers to students holding the idea that their cognitive abilities, including their intelligence, are set at birth, and they just have to accept their limitations. With a growth mind-set, however, the student recognizes that, although it might be difficult, they can grow their abilities.

A growth mind-set has been associated with a much better approach to learning and improved academic achievement, but new research suggests that this difference has been over-stated.

We all know that lack of sleep makes us more prone to attentional failures, more likely to make mistakes, makes new information harder to learn, old information harder to retrieve ... We all know that, right? And yet, so many of us still go to bed too late to get the sleep we need to function well. Of course, some of us go to sleep early enough, we just can’t get to sleep fast enough, or are prone to waking in the night. (Personally, I can count the times I’ve slept through the night without waking in the last fifteen years on my fingers).

Are you right-brained or left-brained?

One of the dumber questions around.

I think it’s safe to say that if you only had one hemisphere of your brain, you wouldn’t be functioning.

Of course, that’s not the point. But the real point is little more sensible. The whole idea of right brain vs left brain did come out of scientific research, but as is so often the case, the myth that developed is light years away from the considerably duller scientific truths that spawned it.

Humans are the animals that manipulate their cognitive environment.

What is it?

Frontotemporal dementia is a disorder of the frontal lobes and includes what was known as primary progressive aphasia. Although it occurs far less often than Alzheimer's disease, among dementia sufferers younger than 65 it is estimated to occur at about the same rate. In other words, frontotemporal dementia is, unlike the most common dementias, not a disorder of age. Most sufferers become symptomatic in their 50s and 60s.

Find out about the pegword mnemonic

Here are pegwords I've thought up in the Spanish language.

As with the original example, let's try it out with our cranial nerves.

En español, los nervios craneales son:

Having trouble sleeping is perfectly normal, especially as we age. It’s estimated that half of those older than 55 have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep.

What to do if your sleep is poor

Let’s start with the easiest situation: you’re not getting enough sleep because you wilfully go to bed too late to achieve your needs.

Frances Yates described the memory strategy valued by the ancient Greeks and Romans as the "Art of Memory" in her widely quoted and seminal book The Art of Memory. Today we know it as the method of loci. But the Art of Memory, as those of the ancient world and those of the medieval world practiced it, is far richer than is implied by that title.

Children’s understanding, and their use of memory and learning strategies, is a considerably more complex situation than most of us realize. To get some feeling for this complexity, let’s start by looking at a specific area of knowledge: mathematics.

Children's math understanding

Here’s a math problem:

Pete has 3 apples. Ann also has some apples. Pete and Ann have 9 apples altogether. How many apples does Ann have?

This seems pretty straightforward, right? How about this one:

This post is the third part in a four-part series on how education delivery is changing, and the set of literacies required in today’s world. Part 1 looked at the changing world of textbooks; Part 2 looked at direct instruction/lecturing. This post looks at computer learning.