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In recent weeks I have been revising and updating the IAE-pedia entry on Brain Science. This entry currently contains 29 sections, each dealing with a specific education topic in brain science. The brain science section on Attention is currently—and deservedly—receiving a lot of attention. This IAE Blog entry is based on the IAE-pedia Brain Science entry on Attention.
We all know what it means to “pay attention.” And those of us who know children certainly routinely see examples of children who are or are not paying attention to the needs/wants of their parents, childcare givers, teachers, and friends.
If teaching were the same as telling, we’d all be so smart we could hardly stand it. (Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Clemens; American author and humorist; 1835–1910.)
The 50-minute lecture is a traditional component of higher education. Students listen, take notes, perhaps ask a few questions—and sometimes don’t pay much attention. Spencer Kagan’s IAE Newsletter article, Tellin’ain’t teaching’: The need for frequent processing, discusses why lectures should be broken into relatively short segments interspersed with small group student interactions (September, 2012). His ideas are applicable at all levels of education. He explains why presentations should be broken into blocks no longer than 10 minutes in length, and suggests that these blocks should be interspersed with activities designed to give students time to process the information that they are receiving.
Note to readers added 5/18/2015. Recently I tried to access the free videos discussed in the IAE Blog entry given below. As far as I could determine, they are no longer free.
I am currently revising my IAE-pedia Brain Science page. See http://iae-pedia.org/Brain_Science. The site now contains a recent list of free education-related brain science videos. See http://iae-pedia.org/Brain_Science#A_Collection_of_Brain_Science_Videos.
Many years ago I became interested in math anxiety. It seemed to me that many of the preservice and inservice teachers I was teaching were suffering from math anxiety. I tried to overcome their anxiety and fears, but I don’t think I experienced a great deal of success.
My recent Google search of the term "math anxiety"produced more than two million hits. Quoting from the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_anxiety):
