student learning

Balancing the Teaching-Learning Equation

When I first started working on teaching and learning, I focused on teaching. The instructional development program I headed at Penn State had as its mission “to support faculty efforts to maintain and improve instructional quality.” I read, thought, and wrote about characteristics known to

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The Continued Tyranny of Content

“Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams wrote over 250 years ago. He was right in more ways than one—for our field of history and probably for yours too.

Despite all the manufactured uproar over the teaching of “divisive concepts” like critical race theory (Waxman 2021), history

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More Interactions and Less Content for Better Learning

We learn best by returning to the same content over and over, reflecting on it each time to deepen our understanding. This is because knowledge is stored as patterns of neuroconnections in the brain, and those connections are strengthened each time that pattern is activated

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Knowing What Students Don’t Know

It’s easy to get focused on how much students don’t know. We all have stories—such as my student who, when I said “paradigms,” heard “pair of dimes”—that we laughingly share with colleagues. Much more serious is the absence of all sorts of essential information and

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Exploring How Practice Affects Performance

“Practice makes perfect!”

Although the perfection part remains elusive, we’ve all experienced how practice improves performance. But why? What changes during practice? And why do those changes result in better performance? Those questions matter to teachers and students. As teachers we regularly advocate that students practice

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A Better Understanding of Failure

Paul Feigenbaum’s article (2021) on failure changed how I think about it. I’ve written a lot about failure—advocating for it and what it contributes to learning—and Feigenbaum agrees: failure plays a powerful role in learning. He calls it “generative failure” and describes it as an

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Education: The Fury of a Storm or the Music of a Drizzle

Two readings triggered my thinking about contrasting images for education. In Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, Mr. Thomas Gradgrind tells us that education is stuffing facts into the minds of students. The more, the better. The quicker, the better. In current terms he favors “information bombardment.”

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Answers to Student Questions

At the end of an article that summarizes research on self-regulated learning, Bjork et al. (2013) noted for their research on the topic, discuss evidence-based answers to questions that students frequently ask about exams, studying, and learning. I like the idea of being a bit

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Handouts: The Many Roles They Play in Learning

Last September, we issued a call for information on handouts—how do you use them, how well do they work, what learning goals are they especially well-suited to accomplish? As with previous calls, you responded with an array of examples, advice, insights, and opinions. What’s clear

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The Teaching Professor Conference 2024

June 7-9, 2024 • New Orleans

Connect with Fellow Educators at The Teaching Professor Conference!