Homework hasn’t changed much in the past few decades. Most children are still sent home with about an hour’s worth of homework each day, mostly practising what they were taught in class. If we look internationally, homework is assigned in every country that participated in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2012. Across the […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
What’s the point of homework?
Lessons about 9/11 often provoke harassment of Muslim students
Near the start of each school year, many U.S. schools wrestle with how to teach about 9/11 – the deadliest foreign attack ever on American soil. In interviews I conducted recently in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area – one of three places where hijacked planes crashed on Sept. 11, 2001 – I found that Muslim students are often subjected to ridicule and […] … learn more→
A teacher retirement wave is about to hit South Africa: what it means for class size
Teacher supply and demand is a complex matter. The ultimate aim is to have a teacher in front of every class, now and for the foreseeable future. This also implies an ideal class size. The quality of teachers is obviously important too – and a topic for another occasion. In South Africa, the ideal class size is […] … learn more→
Education is modernizing so slowly that it will never be out of date
It is almost universally accepted that innovations or simple changes in education are, perhaps, excessively costly, judging by how little teaching practices move in the classroom. In short, due to the slowness of the processes of assimilation of new didactic options – generically speaking – by teachers, to update their interventions and bring them up to date with […] … learn more→
Personal injury law and schools – What you need to know
Personal injury law gets very complicated very quickly. In general, the liability of companies and public institutions varies wildly from state to state. When it comes to schools both public and private, this variance becomes even more pronounced, with various jurisdictions and school systems having completely different rules and amounts of liability. If you have […] … learn more→
Black parents say their children are being suspended for petty reasons that force them to take off from work and sometimes lose their jobs
When “Mike,” the father of a ninth grade student, got a call from his daughter’s school, the first thing he asked was: “How important is this?” “They said, ‘Well, it’s important,’” Mike told me during an interview for my research. When Mike went to his daughter’s school to see what was the problem, school officials […] … learn more→
Students are returning to school with anxiety, grief and gaps in social skills – will there be enough school mental health resources?
Even before COVID-19, as many as 1 in 6 young children had a diagnosed mental, behavioral or developmental disorder. New findings suggest a doubling of rates of disorders such as anxiety and depression among children and adolescents during the pandemic. One reason is that children’s well-being is tightly connected to family and community conditions such as stress and financial worries. Particularly […] … learn more→
School students who had COVID-19 report stigma and bullying. How can we stop it?
Queensland school students have reportedly been bullied after being diagnosed with COVID-19 and have struggled to return to school as a result. The Queensland Department of Education stated it hasn’t heard of any bullying related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Given the nature of bullying, this isn’t necessarily surprising. Stigma related to being diagnosed with COVID-19 has the […] … learn more→
How to get your CPR Certification
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) often comes in handy when you’re least expecting it. 88% of cardiac arrests occur at home, work, or other public locations, but only a third of the people who suffer cardiac arrest outside of the hospital receive CPR from a bystander. And according to the American Heart Association, 70% of Americans wouldn’t […] … learn more→
Why is the voice of literary women and journalists so scarce in the classroom?
A few weeks ago, in a talk in the framework of the Castilla y León International Literature Festival ( FILE ) on the important role that women had in the press since the mid-19th century, attention was drawn to the need to include these names in textbook indexes alongside those of their contemporaries. Research interest in the […] … learn more→