approach – Rebel Teacher Network

Is Critical Thinking Domain Specific?

There is an increasing and welcome push for teaching Critical Thinking in schools, but there is also a staunch resistance. The opposition is built, as far as I have observed, on two main pillars: There’s already enough on teachers’ plates without adding one more thing; Critical Thinking relies on domain specific knowledge. I’ll address bothContinue reading “Is Critical Thinking Domain Specific?”

The Layered Trouble with Learning Styles

I’ve written many times about the problem of learning styles, but today I want to examine a new wrinkle in the old problem. 1. Learning Styles as an approach to teaching has been thoroughly disproven and debunked. Yet still somewhere between 50 and 80% of teachers believe that it is real and should form theContinue reading “The Layered Trouble with Learning Styles”

What are Schema, and why do they need to be Activated?

Having heavily interconnected schema is a very powerful way of both remembering new things and applying knowledge in novel ways. In this post, I’ll explain both of these points in more detail.