Emotions in Learning and Make it Stick!

Well, the holidays are almost over and the busy classrooms will soon get most of our attention (and time). It would become more challenging to browse the increasing flow of information regarding the latest developments of pedagogical theory. I wanted to share a couple of links and resources that came to me through the blog of Annie Murphy Paul and especially a post regarding “The Feeling of Learning”.

In it the author points that “In educational settings, it’s the “academic emotions” that occur most frequently: curiosity, delight, flow, engagement, confusion, frustration and boredom.” It is curious that not always the “negative” emotions are bad for learning. For example in another article she points to research that some confusion in proper context leads to more productive learning process.

This seems another illustration of the main message of a very important book (you may have already discovered it but let me mention it anyway 🙂 )

 This important message is that “The most effective learning strategies are not necessarily intuitive”. In case you do not have the time to read the whole book (especially after school starts) you and your students might want to see some of the many summaries or list of tips taken from the book. One of the surprising results of research is connected with the importance of tests and active retrieval of learned material.

This might explain also the recent increasing popularity and success of apps for self testing like Memrise and Quzlet. It would be interesting to hear from colleagues of examples of their use in IB Mathematics, both sites do have already study sets related to Mathematics.