Learning Sciences

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.

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.

In this video, a teacher shows that using technology (smartboard) and concrete materials/manipulatives help students learn geometrical concepts. Especially in early ages, children can learn abstract concepts better with the proper use of hands-on activities and concrete manipulatives. If we add visualizations to words in our lessons, we can enhance students' learning. Furthermore, using such instruments in class may prevent misconceptions that make difficult to learn new concepts.

I like this video because of two reasons. Firstly, it is good example of effective lesson and good example for using materials.Different types of materials are used in this video and lesson materials are support each other by this way lesson becomes enjoyable and interesting for students who has different learning styles. Secondly, in this video, manipulatives, paper pencil actvities and technogical tools are used together and a good example of how technology should be used in the lessons. Studies shows that in our classrooms, smart board used like projectors and teachers even do not know the function of document camera. Therefore, I think that this video should be used for teacher training in Fatih project.

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?

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?

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.

This paper is about functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a groundbreaking research for learning sciences. It allows learning scientists to understand which brain parts are activated during learning. For example "lateralization of brain" hypothesis (it was saying that one hemisphere is responsible for wholistic-creative learning one is for analytical) is refuted using fMRI. Because both hemispheres were active no matter when people engaged in creative thinking or analytical thinking.

One of the key issues to look at when examining any Learning Theory is Transfer of Learning. Indeed, this is such an important idea, that it is a field of research in its own right. Researchers and practitioners in this field work to understand how to increase transfer of learning -- how to teach for transfer.

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.

Given the option, would you want to think faster and have sharper attention? Please see "more on this story" part at the end of www.bbc.com/health 27343047 page if you are interested in math teaching.

This study conducted in Standford University School of Medicine reveals that brain scans from 8-year-old children can predict gains in their mathematical ability over the next six years. That is a great development to learn students' math ability and provide proper type and level of education accordingly.

Theories, Models, and Frameworks of Learning for Educational Research and Practice. This knowledge base features learning theories, models, and frameworks that address how people learn. Each one is summarized and discussed in an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand format. This site is useful for students and scholars of various fields, including educational psychology, instructional design, digital media and learning, and more.

This paper can help us neuroscience week… It is too interesting New research indicates that glia cells are "the brain's supervisors." By regulating the synapses, they control the transfer of information between neurons, affecting how the brain processes information. This new finding could be critical for technologies based on brain networks, as well as provide a new avenue for research into disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy.

I found this short movie quite interesting to share with you. It has a lot of elements related to challenges, motivation and being a community. Enjoy it!

Thanks.. Seeing opportunity where a visible problem lies is a good habit.

This study is the latest one, to my knowledge, conducted in English language teaching field in Turkey in terms of TPACK. I do not think that this study is a powerful one because it fails to provide a vivid picture in terms of preservice EFL teachers' TPACK competencies. Nevertheless, it is a fresh one, it has been conducted in our country and it explores my target population's competencies: preservice EFL teachers. :) By the way, you can have an access to the full text through METUnique search. You're welcome. :)

"The results of the research suggest that males' technological knowledge was higher than females; however, females were better than males in pedagogical knowledge. Moreover, no significant difference was found between TPACK mean and academic achievement in terms of the correlation between TPACK scale and academic achievement of the participants". WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS MY FRIEND :)

At first glance, yes, you are the champions :), but this is only one study and it is conducted with a certain group of people. We don't know what kind of results we'll have with a different group. This means I expect you to show more evidences in favor of your "champion" title :).

I use this software so much while preparing animations and videos. Its interface is so easy to use and the videos created seems so professional. You can share the link with your friends and edit collaboratively the video.

The researchers think the presence of some narcissists helps generate healthy in-group competition =)