-
Embattled Childhood: The Real ‘T’ in ‘PTSD’
The Huffington Post: In 2009 a regiment of Danish soldiers, the Guard Hussars, was deployed for a six-month tour in Afghanistan's arid Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold. They were stationed along with British soldiers -- 270 in all -- at a forward operating base called Armadillo. Although none of the Guard Hussars was killed during the tour of duty, they nevertheless experienced many horrors of battle. A commander was seriously injured by a roadside bomb, and a night patrol ended in a firefight that killed and dismembered several Taliban combatants.
-
Wide-Faced Men: Good Guys or Bad?
TIME: Think of the stereotypical tough guy: broad-faced, square-jawed, uber-macho. Research even bears out this convention, linking wider, more masculine faces with characteristics like dishonesty, lack of cooperation and perceived lack of warmth. But a new study challenges the notion that wide-faced men are always the bad guys, finding that in certain situations, they’re actually the most self-sacrificing of the bunch. For the study, researchers from the Perception Lab at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland gave 54 male students money to play a game in groups.
-
Knowledge of Fractions and Long Division Predicts Long-Term Math Success
From factory workers to Wall Street bankers, a reasonable proficiency in math is a crucial requirement for most well-paying jobs in a modern economy. Yet, over the past 30 years, mathematics achievement of U.S. high school students has remained stagnant — and significantly behind many other countries, including China, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands and Canada. A research team led by Carnegie Mellon University’s Robert Siegler has identified a major source of the gap — U. S. students’ inadequate knowledge of fractions and division. Although fractions and division are taught in elementary school, even many college students have poor knowledge of them.
-
NITOP January 2013: There Is Still Time to Register!
Registration is still open as of December 5, 2012, for the 35th Annual National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, January 3–6, 2013, at the TradeWinds Island Grand Resort in St. Pete Beach, Florida. For the full program, other details about the conference, and to register online, visit www.nitop.org.
-
New Opportunities Using Social Media in Teaching and Research
The goal of our poster was to encourage instructors to venture into the world of social media in both their teaching and research activities. Mentioning the use of social media in the classroom raises the specter of “friending” students, and we want to make sure that instructors know about the many other (more appropriate) opportunities. Why should we do this at all? Using social media provides the advantages of meeting students on familiar ground (not stuffy, artificial e-class discussion boards), preparing them for the workplace (most jobs and job searches now involve social media), and allowing us to model good reputation management skills, information competency, and critical thinking.
-
How Students and Teachers Relate
How a teacher relates to his or her students has tremendous influence on a student’s learning experience. So Matthew G. Mandelbaum of Fordham University and PsySoEd Dynamics, LLC asked childhood and early-childhood educators about the approaches they use in their classrooms to solve problems and maintain motivation. He asked whether they would develop a new curriculum in an adventurous or a structured style, if they typically seek to develop deep relationships with students (relational approach), and if they pursued professional development opportunities (mastery). In general, he found that teachers who were adventurous were also more relational.
