Maths anxiety is the feeling of tension and fear that many people experience when called on to work out a sum. For children, it can lead to behavioural problems in class, as well as physical symptoms such as butterflies in the stomach and a racing heart. Students with high maths anxiety perform worse in standardised maths tests and school […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
What a fear of maths does to children – new research
How “cradle-to-career” schools provide all-round support and tackle inequality
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, stories have been shared of schools delivering food parcels, phoning struggling families and providing on-site care for the children of key workers. We have seen many schools go much further than their statutory role of educating and safeguarding their pupils, sometimes acting as the most important support institution for whole neighbourhoods. This broader school […] … learn more→
Teaching anti-terrorism: how France and England use schools to counter radicalisation
The murder of the schoolteacher Samuel Paty, beheaded by 18-year-old Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov in October 2020 after Paty had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a civic education lesson, has understandably caused shock and fear among teachers in France. Many teachers were already struggling to manage classroom discussions on sensitive topics such as the […] … learn more→
Does the ‘Celaá law’ advance towards an inclusive model for special education students?
One of the controversies that the new draft Education Law ( LOMLOE ) has raised derives from its fourth additional provision regarding the evolution of the schooling of students with special educational needs . In the 2018-2019 academic year, there were 37,136 students enrolled in special education centers in Spain , 0.45% of the school population –8.17 million students–, 59.6% in 191 public schools and the […] … learn more→
UK government’s foreign aid cuts put girls’ education at risk
The UK government’s 2020 spending review includes a cut in international aid, from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%. My research shows that this will have severe effects on the lives of girls worldwide. Earlier this year, my colleagues and I at the University of Cambridge published a report highlighting the urgent need for political leadership […] … learn more→
Kids as young as 3 years old think YouTube is better for learning than other types of video
Young kids believe that YouTube videos are better for learning than TV shows or videos created on a researcher’s smartphone. They also view people in YouTube videos to be more real than those on TV but less real than those featured in a researcher-created smartphone video. These are the major findings from a pre-COVID-19 study conducted in […] … learn more→
Saying more with less: 4 ways grammatical metaphor improves academic writing
Young children often write as they speak. But the way we speak and the way we write isn’t quite the same. When we speak, we often use many clauses (which include groups of words) in a sentence. But when we write – particularly in academic settings — we should use fewer clauses and make the […] … learn more→
Opportunities to practice real-life philanthropy bring academic benefits
A crisis shelter for battered women. A nonprofit that provides wigs and makeup for breast cancer patients. An organization that helps parents of children addicted to heroin. All three of these groups have benefited from US$2,000 grants made by college students who participate in an unusual hands-on philanthropy program. The program – which embeds aspects […] … learn more→
What if painting helped students overcome the fear of making mistakes?
One might expect that French middle and high school students, who have far more hours in French than in visual arts or art history, will be less comfortable with painting than ‘with literature, very studied from the sixth grade (and already in primary school). In particular, we could expect that, for some of them, they […] … learn more→
To do or not to do: the importance of ethics in teaching
“To be or not to be” is a key question in philosophy. But no less relevant is the question of “to do or not to do”, another of the central topics of philosophy: it refers to the ability of the human being to act in different ways and, therefore, to take responsibility or take charge of […] … learn more→