Amy Ramponi (@AmyRamponi on Twitter) is an AP Psychology teacher who is very passionate about teaching her students optimal learning strategies, teaching students how to study, and best practices in "making things stick." ...
Be Your Own Teacher: How to Study a Textbook
Textbooks can be scary. By the time you have finished a chapter, much of the content you have read is blended into a broad, murky mess in your mind. This can be problematic when trying to study, or when trying to recall information while taking a test. One way ...
Is Intuition the Enemy of Instruction? (Part 2)
The other day, we discussed how our intuitions aren’t always accurate when it comes to our learning, or the learning of our students. The second big problem arising from reliance on intuition, which we’ll discuss today, is confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is ...
Is Intuition the Enemy of Instruction? (Part 1)
The idea of relying on personal intuition versus expertise has long been debated in medicine. Thankfully, for the most part, expertise is winning the battle against myths such as the link between vaccines and autism: 91.9% of children 19-35 months old are up to date ...
Learning to Learn: One Student's Personal Journey
Before taking cognitive psychology with Dr. Miko Wilford, I was unaware of the research on studying and how different types of studying led to learning. I believed that the effectiveness of studying was based primarily on the individual's interest and engagement ...
Communication breakdown between science and practice in education
The goal of cognitive psychologists who are applying their work to the educational domain is to encourage “practitioners” (in this case, teachers) to do what has been scientifically demonstrated as effective. The model that we, as cognitive psychologists, ...