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Dr. Kağnıcı is one of the leading Turkish researchers of counseling psychology who is interested in the relationships between multiculturalism and teaching counseling. She has published articles about learning and teaching multicultural skills to enhance the outcomes of counseling relationship.

David Perkins has conducted long-term programs of research and development in the areas of teaching and learning for understanding, creativity, problem-solving and reasoning in the arts, sciences, and everyday life. He has also studied the role of educational technologies in teaching and learning and has designed learning structures and strategies in organizations to facilitate personal and organizational understanding and intelligence. His inquiries reflect a conception of mind that emphasizes the interlocking relationships among thinking, learning, and understanding. The three depend deeply on one another. Meaningful learning aims at understanding and depends on thinking with and about what one is learning. Effective thinking in the subject matters and in general involves understanding the resources of the mind and learning to deploy them sensitively and systematically

Here are some ideas for integrating CSCL to language teaching. You can also find practical activities.

This is a useful source for language teachers including benefits, elements and sample activities of CSCL.

İbrahim thanks for sharing this source, I believe we should make use of CSCL while both teaching and learning a language. Especially the role of interaction is really important, as teachers our mission is to make this interaction possible I think and there are some good sources for activities.

Schank is one of the leading pioneers in artificial intelligence, cognitive science and learning theory. One of his quotes has gripped my attention when I had a look at his page. He states "Education must remain a process where an individual learns to discover oneself and, in doing so, endeavour to improve the human condition. For our future, it is important that we teach our children that reading and learning can be enjoyable and intrinsically rewarding." He emphasizes how important learning by doing is, and believes that we should put conventional teaching methods aside because these make school horrible. In order to make it less horrible, softwares,let's say, technology should be involved in existing educational system, which is already broken.

This is a popular journal focusing on all aspects of development, innovations and good practice in higher education teaching and learning, including the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and issues concerning the management of teaching and learning. You can check the abstracts from Abstract/Index part for such titles as educational research, educational administration, PsycINFO and so on.

"The purpose of the Discovery Retreat is to promote environmentalism through the practice of contextual teaching and learning among teachers and their sutdents. It is our practical and philosophic belief that teachers can play an important role in the preservatin of our environment." "The Discovery Retreat is a program within the Department of Workforce Education, Leadership, and Social Foundations, which ranked 4th in the nation by the U.S. News and World Report. The Department of Workforce Education, Leadership, and Social Foundations is also recognized nationally and internationally for its work in the development of contextual teaching and learning theories and practices in teacher education."

there is much more to learn when you are outside than when you are inside :)

The tedtalk related to how to learn things especially practical things is very enjoyful. In this video it is emphasized that everyone can learn whatever they want in twenty hours. But there are some requirements for this type of learning that are: deconstruct your skill, learn enough to self-correct or self-edit, remove practise barries, and prastice at least 20 hours. the only barrier to have any skill is only emotional.

2o hours to learn something sounds interesting. But, I don't think 20 hours would be enough to learn some practical things. Learning English can be a good example of that. Despite the many ads claiming to teach English in a short time, I have not come across any method to teach English in a short time.

It was really fun to watch.What drew my attention was the quote `The major barrier to skill acquisition isn`t intellectual...it`s emotional yet the quote reminded me of another quoate :)from the readings of this week `the journey to truly superior performance is neither for the faint of heart nor for the impatient.`Although both shares the view that once should be open, courageous,eager to learn, they differ in the sense that genuine expertise comes with struggle, sacrifice and there aren`t shortcuts as in learning how to play the guitar with `four chords`.Instead, one has to invest time wisely for a bit of a period of time to apply it as an expert.Take for example,art lessons.One cannot learn and paint in 20hrs if he/she is not very talented.

This article is from Journal of Educational Psychology describing an advanced learning technology used to investigate hypotheses about learning by teaching. The proposed technology is an instance of a teachable agent, called SimStudent, that learns skills (e.g., for solving linear equations) from examples and from feedback on performance. SimStudent has been integrated into an online, gamelike environment in which students act as "tutors" and can interactively teach SimStudent by providing it with examples and feedback.

http://ehis.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=62560df9-81f0-48df-9217-73a31d3da977%40sessionmgr14&vid=3&hid=6 This is the direct link to the article.

The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) has embraced TPACK in its professional development model. They decided to integrate the model in every aspect of classroom teaching and learning.

As the issues and problems that define contemporary education become increasingly complex, our collective need for new knowledge and innovative solutions for practice in diverse educational contexts increases. Yet classroom teachers and school leaders often struggle to see any meaningful connection between educational research conducted in universities and their real-world, complex and contextually rich experiences of teaching, learning and leading in schools.

As the issues and problems that define contemporary education become increasingly complex, our collective need for new knowledge and innovative solutions for practice in diverse educational contexts increases. Yet classroom teachers and school leaders often struggle to see any meaningful connection between educational research conducted in universities and their real-world, complex and contextually rich experiences of teaching, learning and leading in schools.

The first problem is defined by Dan Lortie in The Apprenticeship of Observations (1975) as being acquainted with the task of teaching.The professor on the video emphasizes that in the countries where immagrants are most successful, teachers spend 50% of their work planning lessons, observing other classes and negotiating about the lessons. She also touches the problem of 'Toxic Environment' of schools for teachers where they gossip about their students and colleagues. She gives a successful school example in which professional development is a part of school culture. Can you list additional problems for teacher expertise faced in schools?

Although sharing ideas and instances about the classroom hours and students can be accepted as components of adult learning for teachers, gossiping about them can be a real barrier to develop on those areas. In my teaching experience, we prohibited the conversations about the negative issues happened in the school.

There are many theories in this page that we should be interested in in this page as learning sciences students. An example of two groundbreaking research results in learning sciences is (1) Entwistle's Phenomenography theory This conceptual framework focuses on the experience of learning from the student's perspective and is based upon a phenomenological approach to research. Entwistle explains: "Our task is thus to describe more clearly how learning takes place in higher education and to point out how teaching and assessment affect the quality of learning. From these descriptions teachers should be able to draw their own lessons about how to facilitate their students' learning" (Marton, Hounsell & Entwistle, 1984, p.1). (2) Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.

They say "No one else does what we do" while mentioning their interdisciplinary approach. They say that "The learning sciences field emerged more than two decades ago after researchers found that what worked in a laboratory simply did not hold up with real children, teachers, classrooms and workplaces. They saw that learning technologies, which held great promise for solving education's problems, were not being transferred to classrooms and schools. Cognitive scientists, educational and instructional psychologists, and computer scientists worked together to put their ideas and knowledge to use to improve the learning outcomes for a diverse group." The institute basically do two things: 1 - They identify the critical challenges in education, literacy, mathematics, science and the social sciences. 2- They work to find solutions. Their main aim is to create learning systems for 21st century classrooms thanks to interdisciplinary research in teaching and learning. They believe that learning is a complex process and so they get benefit from different disciplines (e.g. anthropology, computer science, education, linguistics, psychology and sociology) to share knowledge and best practices on education. At their another webpage, they define learning science as a science which "focuses on how to create new, improved and equitable learning environments for 21st century learners.". In order accomplish this, they focus on four questions: 1- How do people learn? 2- What do we want them to know and be able to do? 3- How can we design learning environments that help them learn? 4- How can we monitor what they are learning? They offer a Ph.D. program to raise future learning scientists.

I have seen this post when I was searching for how can interaction with peers contribute to learning maths. It is written by ROBERT SUN who is the CEO of Suntex International and inventor of First In Math, an online program designed for deep practice in mathematics. The things that are mentioned felt very similar with our country's situation actually, as learners how do we use concepts of maths (or any other courses) except from school? May be the first reason for our students cannot learn and hate maths is behind this question.

"Teachers can encourage their students to express themselves verbally using mathematical terms; even in the early grades, children can be asked to explain what they want or mean using numbers, or relationships between numbers. Anything that encourages them to talk about math and mathematical concepts is beneficial." Social math!. It looks like article emphasizes the importance of language in information exchange. It reminds me Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory in which he also believed that language is important for learning. He also purported that language is culture-dependent so each cultures' learning may be different from each other. In addition, providing opportunity to students to express themselves verbally can give us clues about current mental maps of students as to a specific topic (what is correct, what needs improvement, etc.). In addition, students can transfer their transformed ideas (ideas transformed from scholarly language to level-appropriate language) to their friends which can facilitate their learning.

Yasin, I am curious to hear about some of the contemporary approaches towards teaching Math, a subject generally taught with more traditional methods. Regarding mathphobia, we also need to think about the culture that stimulates that.

They arrange activities in the forest to boost children's creativity, and develop and manage their social and physical skills.

Children learn to manage the risk! It is very important for us as humans surviving through nature. Therefore it sounds good because it contains decision making as well. However preparing such an environments can be so much risky!! Preparation and implementation should be carried carefully.

Many of the approaches implemented in Nordic countries focus on child's development as a responsible individual of himself/herself and of the environment. This is a great example that connects children to nature.

The article is about Generation Y which is the students in our classes now. In his article, Peter Reilly mentions about a new generation called "Generation Y " and its features. Firstly he talks on four different generation types which are "the baby boomer generation", "generation X", "generation Y" and "generation Z" respectively. He takes generation Y especially because I think they are the young people of our world and there isn't enough knowledge about them. He mentions about some features of generation Y members who prefer multitask rather than focusing one thing in a time. Also they are more concerned about what their employer can do for them rather than what they can do for a company.In the school, Gen Y wants technology integrated multitask ways rather than traditional old-way.

Many UK children have become less confident about succeeding in life by the time they leave school, a report says. The study by think-tank Demos says some pupils feel school is just preparing them for exam success. It urges the government to help schools and colleges explore how self-belief, perseverance and resilience can be instilled in pupils.

I think that not only UK chidren but also our children less confident and unhappy in real life. If same research is done in Turkey, I think that similar results can be obtained. Students spend 12 years in school (primary school, secondary and high school). And they learn socialising, success, failure in school. In traditional classrooms, success is gaining high score in exam, ranked in first three in competition and failure is gaining lower scores on exam. When students leave the school, they face with new environment that is not similar to school. I think, therefore, they can not adopt to this new environment they feel unhappy and less confident. For this reason, schools should bring the skills and qualities that are needed for out of the school. Community service course, role playing, field works should be done in the schools to introduce real life experinces to students. In addition, changing the laerning activites, assesment procedures in school also can be helpful for real life experinces.

In several videos it was said that we start to prepare our pupils for jobs that are not invented yet. It is because there are lots of information production and exchange throughout world now, which makes lots of jobs become obsolete in short period of times. Our students need to have skills to locate, synthesis, and evaluate information and adapt theirselves to new contexts instead of having static knowledge about specific jobs.

Today's guest post is written by Zachary Walker, a faculty member at the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore. Who works hardest in your classroom? ......... waiting for you to really think about it........ still waiting patiently.............. If a visitor walked into your class unannounced and watched what was happening for 30 minutes, who would they say worked hardest? Do you agree the idea emerging from this article that when teachers let student be more active in their learning process, teachers work less?

We have heard some ideas or theories about better learning from our teachers during the school years. I had organized some science fairs during my past teaching years. However none of them was in the project settings. In this project students learn how to carry out a research about how we learn by reading and listening. In your opinion, which one results in more information retained, reading or listening?