Category: learning
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The Checklist Advantage
To ensure that extremely complex tasks–tasks too complex even for “super-specialists”–are performed effectively, accurately and with minimal mistakes, checklists are an invaluable tool, suggested Atul Gawande in a 2007 article in The New Yorker (and everywhere else since, it seems). Gawande illustrates (in an inordinate amount of detail) how seemingly unnecessary checklists can make huge…
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Improving Intelligence by Knowing About Intelligence
Lecturing students on the fact that general intelligence can be improved and that certain races and genders are not naturally more intelligent than others (in-line with current research) can improve test scores–especially for members of the groups typically thought of as having limited intelligence. It’s not just theoretical: the findings were applied successfully to schools…
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Fertility, Maternal Age and Child Development
In suggesting alternatives to the status quo of high-status women delaying childbirth further and further, Robin Hanson notes that, unlike advanced paternal age, advanced maternal age does not correlate with poor learning and social outcomes in children (in fact, older mothers had children who scored higher). In all cases, we find evidence that children of…
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For Continuous Learning and Generalisation
Stating that our “reality is out of date” and coining the term “mesofacts” for those pieces of knowledge that pass us by unawares, Samuel Arbesman shows why continuous learning and generalisation are advantageous behaviours–or at least that specialisation to the degree that it is currently encouraged is outdated. Slow-changing facts are what I term “mesofacts.” Mesofacts…
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The New Nature-Nurture Argument
As it stands, the nature-nurture debate is wrong, proposes David Shenk in his book on the subject, The Genius in All of Us. Shenk submits the idea that we overestimate the effect genes have on many heritable traits, especially intelligence (or that ever-elusive ‘genius’). According to Shenk, and he is persuasive, none of this stuff…
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Accents and Second Language Comprehension
When teaching a second language, it may be better to speak in the accent of the student’s first language rather than attempting to imitate the accent of the target language, suggests research looking at how accents may hinder or expedite language learning and comprehension. The study that discovered this looked at how much aural information speakers of…
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Nature Improves Attention
When studying complex tasks, taking a moment away from the problem is a proven way to refocus one’s thoughts. How different surroundings affect this “attention restoration” has now been studied and it has been discovered that the more complex a problem, the more a natural (non-urban) scene benefits our focus and study–whether this natural scene…
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Mistakes on Tests Crucial to Learning
Thanks to our illusory superiority we consistently overestimate our performance on tests, and, without quality feedback, rapidly become oblivious to the gaps in our knowledge. Furthermore, many consider testing to be an ineffectual tool for assessing performance and errors to be counterproductive to learning. Challenging this preconception is research suggesting that making mistakes on tests–and being…
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Being a Successful Teacher
The non-profit organisation Teach For America has, for two decades, been tracking huge amounts of data on its thousands of teachers and the results they get from their students. By mining the data, testing hypotheses and refining hiring and training practises constantly, the organisation says it is now starting to create a reliable profile of…
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Entrepreneurial Success Not Correlated to University Prestige
An analysis of the educational backgrounds of tech company founders has shown that an elite education does not provide as much of an advantage as many expect. In fact the results seem to show that where one studies has no correlation to entrepreneurial success, as long as one actually does study. The 628 U.S.-born tech…