Psychologist Pooja Agarwal, who has researched how various brain-based strategies to improve learning work in actual classrooms, describes the strong effects of "retrieval practice"--the practice of encouraging students to retrieve and "pull out" information they have learned from memory. Check out these powerful strategies.

Learning is about making connections between subjects, across disciplines, over time, and from individual to universal experience. Our school system is not geared toward connectivity. Knowledge is divided into discrete subjects, and the day into fixed periods. Six questions facilitate students' movement from experience to subjects. (MLH)

Neuropsychology professor Steven Petersen describes what scientists are finding out about brain development, synaptic growth and wiring, intentional and incidental learning, the role of emotion in learning, and declarative and implicit memory systems. Neuroscience has only the broadest outline of principles to offer today's educators. (MLH)

Dramatic developments in brain research and imaging technology are rapidly advancing our understanding of the human brain. The new biologically based brain theories suggest that "nature" dominates "nurture" and that many current beliefs about instruction, learning, and memory are wrong. This article explains neural Darwinism…

This critique of E.D. Hirsch's book, "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know," argues that because Hirsch confuses memorized facts with learned facts, he ignores the importance of constructing meaning and fails to realize that students will not remember what they do not understand. (TE)

This article is E.D. Hirsh's response to a foregoing critique of his book "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know." He argues that the distorted image depicted by Estes, Gutman, and Harrison obscures the promise of the cultural literacy initiative to improve learning in our schools. (TE)

Research identifies two interrelated memories--one that retains facts and symbols and one that retains motor and problem-solving skills. These and other findings challenge educators to determine what students should memorize, to help them move from random memorization to creating useful concepts, and to teach students to use memory in problem…

A group of concerned educators evaluates the well-publicized arguments for teaching students to be culturally literate. They argue that content and process instruction are inseparable and that teacher preparation and student assessment should both reflect a more thoughtful fusion of content and process. (TE)

Reports on a study of four Australian 11th-grade biology students that used stimulated recall to evaluate student thinking processes.The study confirmed the complexity of the teaching-learning process. (MD)