Zone of proximal development. In the middle circle, representing the zone of proximal development, students cannot complete tasks unaided, but can complete them with guidance. The zone of proximal development, often abbreviated as ZPD, is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help.[1] It is a concept introduced, yet not fully developed, by Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) during the last ten years of his life.[2] Vygotsky stated that a child follows an adult's example and gradually develops the ability to do certain tasks without help.[3] Vygotsky and some educators believe that education's role is to give children experiences that are within their zones of proximal development, thereby encouraging and advancing their individual learning.[4] Origins[edit] The concept of the zone of proximal development was originally developed by Vygotsky to argue against the use of academic, knowledge-based tests as a means to gauge students' intelligence.
Definition[edit] What Do Emotions Have to Do with Learning? Teaching Strategies Thinkstock When parents and teachers consider how children learn, it’s usually the intellectual aspects of the activity they have in mind. Sidney D’Mello would like to change that. The University of Notre Dame psychologist has been studying the role of feelings in learning for close to a decade, and he has concluded that complex learning is almost inevitably “an emotionally charged experience,” as he wrote in a paper published in the journal Learning and Instruction earlier this year.
During the learning experiments described in his paper, he notes, the participating students reported being in a neutral state only about a quarter of the time. The rest of the time, they were were experiencing lots of feelings: surprise, delight, engagement, confusion, boredom, frustration. Another counter-intuitive contention made by D’Mello is that even negative emotions can play a productive role in learning.
Animated agents discussing scientific case studies. Related. At the Blue School, Kindergarten Curriculum Includes Neurology. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times MORNING MEETING School is in. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times REFLECTION David Kelly, director of curriculum at the Blue School, meets weekly with the kindergarten teachers. Grappling so directly with thoughts and emotions may seem odd for such young brains, but it is part of the DNA of the Blue School, a downtown Manhattan private school that began six years ago as a play group.
From the beginning, the founders wanted to incorporate scientific research about childhood development into the classroom. “Schools were not applying this new neurological science out there to how we teach children,” said Lindsey Russo, whose unusual title, director of curriculum documentation and research, hints at how seriously the Blue School takes this mission. So young children at the Blue School learn about what has been called “the amygdala hijack” — what happens to their brains when they flip out. That language is then filtered through a 6-year-old’s brain. Bril tegen dyslexie. Does Self-Awareness Require a Complex Brain? | Brainwaves. (Image by David R. Ingham, via Wikimedia Commons) The computer, smartphone or other electronic device on which you are reading this article has a rudimentary brain—kind of.* It has highly organized electrical circuits that store information and behave in specific, predictable ways, just like the interconnected cells in your brain.
On the most fundamental level, electrical circuits and neurons are made of the same stuff—atoms and their constituent elementary particles—but whereas the human brain is conscious, manmade gadgets do not know they exist. Consciousness, most scientists argue, is not a universal property of all matter in the universe. Rather, consciousness is restricted to a subset of animals with relatively complex brains. Humans are more than just conscious—they are also self-aware. The structure of the human brain (Image courtesy of the National Institute for Aging, via Wikimedia Commons) *If you printed out this article, kudos and thanks for reading! References. Reframing Dyslexia | Live to Flourish. Renée van der Vloodt argues that ‘dyslexia’ expresses a talent, not just a disability. Hilary Farmer shows how working with that talent can eliminate the associated learning difficulty.
THERE is a striking similarity between a nine-year-old ‘dyslexic’ child and a 40-year-old business executive on stress leave for burnout. Both may suffer from poor short-term memory, inability to spell, anxiety, lack of concentration and difficulty in taking in what is said – in short, high levels of confusion. This is not a coincidence. We would like to suggest that, if ‘dyslexia’ and other related learning difficulties appear to be on the increase, it is because they are symptomatic of the distress caused by an inadequate educational system, which, in turn, echoes a society that is failing to meet the diverse needs of individual people. Any attempt to find out what ‘dyslexia’ is quickly reveals a great disparity of views. A bigger picture Visual–spatial learners Inconsistent performance Meaningful learning.
AD(H)D or Creative Chaos? | Live to Flourish. It is important to educate ourselves about the talents and charisma that come with ‘AD(H)D’ and to see that with the chaos comes a much needed ability to think outside of the box. Much of my work and life has been spent with people showing symptoms of AD(H)D. There is plenty of debate around the subject. At one end of the argument there is doubt about whether it exists at all. At the other end there is an increasing tendency to over-diagnose and with it has come a huge increase in prescribed medication, even for very young children suffering from AD(H)D. My interest is to put aside the name for a moment and take a broader view. So, I’d like to advocate taking a broader perspective. Like this: Like Loading... How the Brain Works - Ben Goertzel (H+ Magazine) In this article, originally published in H+ Magazine, Ben Goertzel offers a Neuroscience 101 paper spiced up with his synthesis of other information that fleshes out one particular model of brain science - his.
It's a geeky but interesting piece, certainly worth a few minutes to read it. Other popular models involve duct tape and hamsters in wheels . . . and bacon. Ben Goertzel The human brain is a big, complicated system, with different parts doing different things. No one fully understands how it works, yet. And columns tend to be divided into substructures that are often called “mini-columns”, or sometimes just “modules.” Read the whole essay. Unveiling the misery of 'hidden disability' | Money. Undiagnosed dyslexia could be one of the causes behind rocketing absenteeism in the public sector.
Gordon Brown's initiative to crack down on days lost from sickness seems to be failing, with civil servants taking an average of two weeks off sick per year, at a cost to taxpayers of £386m. One of the most shocking statistics is that social workers at Rochdale council are taking an average of five weeks off sick a year. The main cause of long periods of absence was said to be stress and depression. This now accounts for one in 20 of all absences. A rise in sickness rates has also been reported in the NHS and teaching, where stress and depression are also noted as one of the main causes. Susan Tresman, boss of the British Dyslexia Association, says employers need to be more aware that dyslexia can be at the root of the problem manifest itself in so many different ways.
"The physical and mental affect on people is very real — it shouldn't be passed over by bosses. Want to know more? Kara Tointon: nice girl goes bad | Stage | The Observer. Kara Tointon says most actors want people to like them. Sometimes, with this in mind, they talk themselves into believing that the unpleasant roles in which they have been cast are sympathetic. But Alan Ayckbourn's Evelyn, in his 1974 tragicomedy Absent Friends (about to be revived by Jeremy Herrin in the West End), is an irredeemably vile young woman. Her speciality is the lethal one-liner. "It is the timing and pitch that are the challenge," Tointon says.
"This is the hardest part I have ever done. " And what makes the casting intriguing is that "nasty" is not ordinarily in her repertoire – she is sweetness itself. She is an Essex girl – born in Basildon, raised in Southend. But dyslexia is, she says, often the first thing she is asked about. Tointon has the dainty looks of a ballet dancer.
Her dream role is Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. Absent Friends is at the Harold Pinter theatre until 14 April. Keira Knightley: Sense and Sensibility screenplay helped me overcome dyslexia. Nicky Cox MBE: Every Child Can Learn Instead of Going to Prison. Half of the juveniles arrested during last year's summer riots in Britain were educational failures who had not mastered the basics by the age of 11, said the Government. An official report shows that 48% of young people arrested by police were unable to read or write properly by the time they left primary school. Around the same amount couldn't do simple sums either. Many of the young rioters had special needs and came from poorer backgrounds in a further sign of how their lives had been blighted before they'd hardly even started them. "Send these thugs to borstal," came the cry from Boris Johnson and other commentators.
In the week of Charles Dickens' 200th birthday, could it be that we haven't really moved on? There is evidence, too, that, in America, kids are being damned as society's failures at an even younger age. The shocking truth is that the prison stats back up this planning method. Henry Winkler, who tours schools with First News and me every year as part of our My Way! Dyslexia: A Hidden Disability.
The Upside of Dyslexia. The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction. Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life. Researchers have long known that the “classical” language regions, like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are involved in how the brain interprets written words. What scientists have come to realize in the last few years is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains as well, suggesting why the experience of reading can feel so alive.
Words like “lavender,” “cinnamon” and “soap,” for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells. Researchers have discovered that words describing motion also stimulate regions of the brain distinct from language-processing areas. Fiction, Dr.
Differences in brain function for children with math anxiety. Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown for the first time how brain function differs in people who have math anxiety from those who don't. A series of scans conducted while second- and third-grade students did addition and subtraction revealed that those who feel panicky about doing math had increased activity in brain regions associated with fear, which caused decreased activity in parts of the brain involved in problem-solving. "The same part of the brain that responds to fearful situations, such as seeing a spider or snake, also shows a heightened response in children with high math anxiety," said Vinod Menon, PhD, the Stanford professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences who led the research.
Menon's lab is now looking for children ages 7 to 12 in the San Francisco Bay Area for several brain studies, including studies of math anxiety, math cognition and memory formation. Studies involve cognitive assessments and MRI scans. Dyslexia Begins With Visual Spatial Problems, Not Poor Verbal Skills. By Traci Pedersen Associate News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on April 9, 2012 Problems with visual attention before a child is able to read may lead to a later diagnosis of dyslexia, according to a new study published in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. “Visual attention deficits are surprisingly way more predictive of future reading disorders than are language abilities at the pre-reading stage,” said Andrea Facoetti of the University of Padua in Italy.
The researchers believe that the findings not only end a long-term debate on the causes of dyslexia but also pioneer a new approach for early identification and intervention for the 10 percent of children who will struggle with extreme reading difficulties. For a period of three years, the researchers studied Italian-speaking children, from the time they were pre-reading kindergartners until they entered second grade. “This is a radical change to the theoretical framework explaining dyslexia,” Facoetti said. Five Misconceptions About Learning Disabilities. Getty illustration by Zigy Kaluzny In the classroom, it starts simply — sometimes with a struggle to sound out simple words; sometimes with trouble telling time, memorizing the times tables or learning left from right.
It often ends simply, too: with a troubling statistic. One in five of the American students identified as having a learning disability will walk away from their education. That’s compared to a dropout rate of 8 percent in the general population. Just as startling: Close to half of the secondary students currently identified as learning disabled are more than three grade levels behind in essential academic skills. And it’s widespread. Roughly 2.4 million students — that’s more than the entire population of Houston, Texas — are known to struggle with it. “Race, culture economic status — LD doesn’t discriminate. But first, a 101. Misconception 1: The Term ‘learning disabilities’ is interchangeable with other disorders.
Misconception 2: Learning disabilities are easily diagnosed. The Dyslexia Quandary – Continued » Dyslexia the Gift Blog. Model by David Hirst, Dyslexia Correction Specialties About two weeks ago, I wrote about a proposed revision to the DSM-V that retreats from an earlier draft proposal by eliminating use of the word dyslexia. I expressed concerns about the difficulties faced by dyslexic students and parents of dyslexic children in getting a formal diagnosis, generally required as a first step toward receiving special services or accommodations. Today I would like to look at this question from a different angle: if dyslexia is a gift, perhaps it does not belong in a manual for diagnosing psychiatric disorders at all. The full title of the DSM is Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Over-inclusive language and labeling in the DSM has been criticized by many as contributing to over-medication — and over medicalization - of conditions that may be part of the normal ups and downs of life.
Perhaps the time has come to recognize that “dyslexia” is a characteristic, not a disease. More reading: The Dyslexia Quandary » Dyslexia the Gift Blog. Breaking a myth: Dyslexics can become readers! » Dyslexia the Gift Blog. Learning to pay attention early leads to long-term academic success » Dyslexia the Gift Blog.