Lately, I have been doing a lot of thinking about how I can better engage and challenge my students while making sure that they feel adequately inspired by the material we are covering. I am very interested in the idea …
Non Verbal Learning Disability (NLD) is an umbrella term that is used to describe students who are verbally proficient but struggle with non-verbal tasks. It is not a diagnosis in the DSM- IV TR with many psychologists preferring to use …
Here at Learning Diversity we are starting a new project, and we need your help!
We’re gathering up the best, most effective lesson plans, categorizing them by subject, and making them available to all our readers. If you’ve got a …
A new study from Princeton University claims that hard-to-read fonts actually aid in the process of reading comprehension. 
The premise of the study, entitled “Fortune favors the Bold (and the Italicized): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes,” focuses on …
Yet another study suggests that testing may be useful not only for evaluation but for learning. An earlier post on LearningDiversity.org pointed out other research that bashed the conventional wisdom about what makes for effective studying, including mention of earlier …
As part of an ongoing effort to employ more effective methods for meaningful learning, I decided to rethink my approach to teaching a section of my Civil Rights Movement class. I typically give students a lot of background information about …
Practically all things Kennedy brings out misty-eyed, blind patriotism in me. Show me John-John on his third birthday saluting his father’s casket and tears predictably cloud my vision. The 1812 Overture may give me the chills, but history makes me …
It is difficult to look at myself in terms of a historical presence unless I look at the state of education today. With standardized high stakes testing, union pressure on public schools, high teacher attrition rates, inequity of services offered …
A recent study examining the potency of self-affirmation in addressing the gender gap has shown some startling results that could be easily applied in any classroom. Women are often outperformed by men on test scores in many of the hard …
Back in the late 1980’s when I was a rookie student teacher, an experienced teacher told me, “You will learn to teach something after you have taught it.” At the time, those words did not help me, but as I …
Teaching and learning, in secondary schools in particular, are predominantly determined by the examination syllabi, and school activities at that level are very much oriented towards exam preparation. Subjects such as music and art, and in some cases even physical education, are removed from the timetable because they are not covered in the public examinations.
As educators I think we all struggle from time to time with finding a balance between laying out strict requirements and letting our students take the initiative. Each approach has obvious benefits. Structure facilitates clear communication, including the imparting of …
This intriguing video was a project of Dr. Michael Wesch and a working group at Kansas State University. It is a compelling message about the educational experiences of contemporary students.
From the website:
“… the basic idea is to …
The main purpose of Global Perspectives, an eighth grade class, is to search out and understand the vast multicultural differences and similarities, past, present, and inherent in the world today. Then the knowledge learned is disseminated in an art or …
Now that the hustle and bustle of the holidays is over let’s take a moment to really reflect on them. Here is a top ten list of what the holidays should really be about after all……
My children treat art museums like racetracks. Enjoying art for art’s sake comes to a screeching halt when in a panic, I suddenly realize that the kids have overtaken me and have disappeared into any one of the galleries ahead …
The thesis of this article takes inspiration from a recent editorial by Bruce Alberts in the journal Science.1 In that editorial Alberts talks about the importance of communicating the process of science to students, the general public, and …
Stanley Fish is adamant that a liberal arts curriculum should not—and anyway cannot—be justified as economically desirable or as a boon to society in some less quantifiable but otherwise more important way. On the first point I am convinced, though …
In reading a recent article in the New York Times I was once again unpleasantly reminded of the startling skepticism surrounding the phenomenon of Attention Deficit Disorder. In 2002 a prominent international group of scientists and specialists issued a consensus …
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