A perennial challenge for teachers has been weaving multiple subjects into a coherent whole for students. ELA is ELA, Math is Math, and Science is Science. Right? The standards have been defined explicitly to demarcate expectations and mastery within independent domains. But those demarcations, as most teachers readily recognize, are arbitrary.
Author: Roger Stark
Leveraging the Power of Cognitive Ability
Neuroscience shows us how to impact the efficiency and effectiveness of the learning process by improving each individual’s underlying mental processing – that is, by changing the experience of learning from the inside out.
Students are Education’s Most Under-Utilized Asset
Students possess a wealth of untapped potential that has been, for the most part, overlooked and underutilized.
Cognitive Skills and Math (Dis)Ability: Identifying the Links
Math disabilities, however, are as common as reading disabilities at 5 to 8 percent of the population. Like reading disabilities, math disabilities may have multiple causes and dimensions. Article published on the Learning Counsel.
Grading Your School? How Do It Rate in the Science of Learning?
If the question is whether the A-F system of rating schools were helpful and easy for parents to understand, then you’d have to ask why there are millions of students still attending schools with D and F grades.
Science of Learning: The Cognitive Principles
There is often confusion about the difference between cognitive training and brain games. The world is full of games, puzzles, software and other activities that involve mental processes. But most are intended for entertainment rather than meaningful impact on learning capacity. For a cognitive training program to have significant impact, it needs to be designed according to specific neuroscience principles.
Learning to Be Smart
Based on what we have been hearing in the last few days from therapists working with individuals in their teens and 20s, there is plenty of plasticity to take advantage of. What they’ve shared with us underscore how pioneering this field is and the amazing plasticity of intelligence.
Building “Muscle Memory” for Learning
There are a lot of things our brains do non-consciously including the mental processes called cognitive skills. Cognitive skills are how we take in, understand, organize, store, retrieve and apply information – in other words, how we learn.
Remediation of Cognitive Processes in Special Education Students
Multiple decades of research and practice have resulted in significant shifts in the way students with learning disabilities are supported in schools in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Can Brain Fitness Be Education’s Moon Shot?
Experts agree that focusing on early childhood development through neuro-supportive, school-based intervention models would maximize an investment in national brain health and fitness.
The Cognitive Age: Building Brains that Learn Better
if we don’t know what the jobs of the future will be, the role of education has to change from preparing students for a knowable future to preparing them for an unknowable future in which they will have to continually learn and adapt.
Addressing the Learning Crisis Connected to the Current Mental Health Crisis
When students are depressed, every assignment they’re asked to do can seem overwhelming and with reduced mental cognition, it is even worse.
Building Intelligence: Find Your Growth Mindset and Start Building
People with a growth mindset who have teachers or trainers who provide explicit opportunities for them to develop their intelligence and their abilities will become even more effective learners.
A New Spin on Education: Cognitive Capacity for an Uncertain Future
In an article published on Getting Smart, we explain why the goal is cognitive literacy, that is, learning how to learn.
Cognitive Skills Training: What’s That About?
Cognitive training, like physical training, involves “reps” of varied activities, often on a computer in a video-game format. This kind of brain training can benefit just about everyone, and may be particularly helpful for gifted children and children with learning differences such as ADHD.
Building Brains that Learn Better
“If we don’t know what the jobs of the future will be, the role of education has to change from preparing students for a knowable future to preparing them for an unknowable future in which they will have to continually learn and adapt,” according to an article by Betsy Hill and Roger Stark published on GettingSmart.com.
Learners: Happier, Healthier, Here’s How
One often under-appreciated aspect of health outcomes in general and mental health in particular, is the role of cognitive skills.
Letter to the Editor – What Kids Need to Know about Their Working Memory
A Letter to the Editor we wrote has been published by IntrepidEd News. It starts this way: The article What Kids Need to Know About Their Working Memory | Deborah Farmer Kris gives readers some really important information about how working memory functions. However, it misses one key point. As the article points out, working memory is… Continue reading Letter to the Editor – What Kids Need to Know about Their Working Memory
Cognitive Approach to Addressing the Impact of Covid-19 on Students
Schools are using cognitive assessment and cognitive training to address the impact Covid-19 continues to have on students.
Academic Achievement Can Open So Many Doors
In a new article, Roger Stark and Betsy Hill write, “When comprehensive integrated cognitive training is allowed to open up these lines of success, both students and their families tend to experience a much higher degree of emotional wellbeing which is proven to have a long-lasting effect for meaningful social justice.”
The New 70/30 Rule: 70% Will Get Us $72 Trillion
The vaue of getting more students to the 70th percentile and learning what they need to without adjustments to the curriculum and instruction: $72 Trillion.
Solving the Teacher Shortage Can’t (by Itself) Solve the Learning Shortage
Until each teacher understands how each of their students learns and can facilitate learning experiences designed to optimize learning, and until students get the appropriate comprehensive integrated cognitive training to build their learning capacity, learning outcomes are unlikely to improve in any meaningful way.
What Teachers and Students Need to Know about Learner Variability
These days, it may seem as if there is more variability in classrooms than ever when it comes to what students know and can do. However, it is also important to remember that intra-learner variability can be just as great and just as perplexing as inter-learner variability, especially for the learners involved.
Cognitive Skills Account for More than 50% of Math Performance in New Study
In a study conducted by Mindprint Learning and CAST, Inc., cognitive skills accounted for over 50% of math achievement outcomes for the middle school students who were part of the research.
The 30/70 Rule or the 70/30 Rule
About 30 percent of students perform at grade level, the same percentage as perform at the 70th percentile plus on cognitive tests.
EdCircuit: Are We Workforce Ready?
In the second of a two-part article published on EdCircuit, Betsy Hill and Roger Stark discuss the evidence that those entering the workforce lack many of the skills they will need to succeed in today’s workplace. We then turn to the role of cognitive skills training in helping develop workplace-ready workers.
What You Should Know about Executive Functions
Executive Functions are how our brains organize the interplay of all myriad mental processes toward goal-directed, purposeful behavior. This article published by the Learning Counsel was written by Betsy Hill and Roger Stark.
The Role of Cognitive Skills in Academic Performance
The negative impact of COVID-19-related disruptions on student learning has fallen disproportionately on students living in economically disadvantaged communities, students with learning disabilities and students who are English Language Learners. In this fifth article in our series on neuroscience and education equity, we explain why it’s time to help all students develop the cognitive skills that will foster greater equity in learning and true social justice.
Peter Kline, Mr. Inspiration
Peter Kline was a man who lived what he believed. He was true to his spirit, true to his soul, true to his intellect, and true to his presence. Roger Stark remembers his friend and mentor.
Equity, Neuroscience and Cognitive Capacity
Most educators do not, according to multiple research studies and our own experience, have a solid understanding of the organ that actually learns – the brain.
Comprehensive Integrated Cognitive Training: Sculpting Cognitive Processes
In the third article in this series on Education Equity, published on the Learning Counsel, we examine the role of cognitive training.
Achieving Equity: Understanding Each Child’s Cognitive Strengths and Weaknesses
The second article in the series on Achieving Equity discusses the importance of and how we can understand each student’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses.
The Power of Neuroplasticity
While there has been strong scientific consensus for some time about neuroplasticity, the extent to which our brains can change, at any stage of life, is only starting to become clear.
Achieving Equity: Knowing the Right Questions to Ask
Just how much students regressed due to COVID remains a matter of some debate. But perhaps that isn’t the right question. Instead of asking, “How far have we fallen,” we should be asking, “Where were we before the fall?”
What Do You Mean by “Cognitive Capacity?”
We started to make the distinction between “cognitive ability” and “cognitive capacity” a few years ago. The distinction is important. Every individual is born with the ability to develop their cognitive skills. Cognitive capacity is different; it refers to how well those cognitive skills have actually been developed.
What Great Teachers and Great Salespeople Have in Common
For some, this comparison will seem obvious. For some, it will seem curious, at first blush. For some, it will seem preposterous, or even insulting. I hope that, like most good analogies, the aptness of the comparison ultimately enlightens.
A True Growth Mindset Requires a One-Two Punch
People who have a growth mindset believe they can develop their intelligence and their abilities and that’s what enables them to become much more effective learners, according to the groundbreaking work of Dr. Carol Dweck. That’s the first punch. What’s the second punch?
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