This article explores what happens when humans, objects, and digital technology collaborate in creating a short stop-motion film. It investigates how animation making as a hugely repetitive mechanical process interlinks with language, communication, and learning, and how it can affect our responsiveness and readiness to communicate. The article…

The content, skills, and understandings students need to learn today are as diverse, complex, and multidimensional as the students in our classrooms. How can educators best create the learning experiences students need to truly learn? "How Learning Works: A Playbook" unpacks the science of how students learn and translates that knowledge…

Background/Purpose: This study investigates the integration of neuropedagogy, neuroimaging, artificial intelligence (AI), and deep learning in educational systems. The research aims to elucidate how these technologies can be synergistically applied to optimize learning processes based on individual neurocognitive profiles, thereby enhancing…

It seems reasonable to suppose that educational practices should be informed by philosophical and scientific understandings of the character and operation of mental processes. Clark and Chambers' 1998 'The Extended Mind' is a seminal paper in the philosophy of mind, but has received limited attention by educational researchers. Their Extended Mind…

Title: What are the observable correlates of the Aha! moment, and how does this moment relate to moving from surface to deep thinking? Background: The purpose of this study is to provide reliable evidence of the observable correlates of the Aha! moment and what this means for moving from surface to deep thinking. This research can lead to the…

Approximately 40 to 60 percent of America's high school students are chronically disengaged (i.e., inattentive, exert little to no effort, do not complete tasks, and claim to be bored; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2004). Disengagement is so widespread that it has been labeled the "Silent Epidemic" (Bridgeland et…

In this article, Alden Blodget reflects on his more than 50 years of working in what he terms "the tragicomedy club of school reform," and suggests a need to rethink not just classroom teaching methods but the entire system. Blodget states that if the current system is built on faulty assumptions about learning, then there must be a…

Collaborative intellectual engagement is held in high regard in contemporary educational thought as a pedagogical practice of broad value to K-12 students. To what extent is this enthusiasm warranted? Is the practice uniformly productive, or does variability exist in the contexts in which collaboration is effective, the mechanisms involved, and…

Having spent over two decades training teachers, Iveta Kovalcíková writes in this editorial that she has lately been attracted by ideas bridging the growing gap between neurological and psychological research findings and their practical application in practice. Here she argues that outcomes of research on learning processes are insufficiently…

This study investigates problem-solving difficulties of novices in a classroom setting, using a German instructional tool, the Fischertechnik kit of approximately 400 parts. In order to analyse the students' thinking processes as they solved the problems, verbal protocol analysis (VPA) was used to record the students'' thinking processes and…

Executive function (EF) skills are the attention-regulation skills that make it possible to sustain attention, keep goals and information in mind, refrain from responding immediately, resist distraction, tolerate frustration, consider the consequences of different behaviors, reflect on past experiences, and plan for the future. As EF research…

In seeking an understanding of the teenage brain, this author was struck by the interplay between the development of executive functioning and the development of the system that controls emotions and memory. This in turn has impacted her work as a member of faculty at a seminary with responsibilities for both directing a program with high school…

Transformational learning, according to Mezirow (1981), involves transforming taken-for-granted frames of reference into more discriminating, flexible "habits of mind". In teacher education, transformative learning impacts on the development of students' action theories, self-efficacy and professional attributes. Although considered…

Investigations on the brain processes using a technology such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have led to the creation of a new field of research that bridges the gap between cognitive psychology and neuroscience: "cognitive neuroscience." Within this new field, studies examining the processes of learning and developing are…

Instructional design (ID) in its short life has been dominated by behaviourist approaches despite critique focusing on issues of practice as well as theory. Nonetheless, little research has addressed two fundamental questions: "What constitutes good instructional design?" and "How do instructional designers create good design?"…