Struggling Learner Series

Learning, Anxiety and the Brain:  New Findings Shed Light on Dealing with Math & Performance Anxiety

Math has been identified as being increasingly important for academic and career success in today’s high tech world. Math anxiety has been shown to have serious and life-long consequences: lowering performance, reducing the likelihood of studying math in high school and college and avoiding careers that involve math. A number of recent studies have shed new light on where and how math anxiety forms in the brain and how it interferes with performance. (more…)

Remember: Learning and Memory are Largely Under Our Control

Here are 10 quick reminders about how memory works.  These characteristics about memory show how much of memory is in our control whether we are working to recall something ourselves, designing learning opportunities for students or helping students improve their own learning skills.   (more…)

“Remember being a teenager? Rocked internally with hormones, outwardly with social pressures, you sometimes wondered what was going on in your head. So does Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. And what she and others in her field are finding is: The adolescent brain really is different.” (more…)

Research on the brain and learning has shown that a change of activity can help the retention of new learning.

This effect was demonstrated again in a recent study from the University of Edinburgh.  Not only can this be used in formal learning settings but students, teachers and the rest of us can all utilize this effect to help us become better learners.

http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/08/memory-enhanced-by-a-simple-break-after-reading.php