Gordon Eldridge: Lessons In Learning

What Are the Elements of an Effective Global Citizenship Curriculum?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
03-Mar-21

When it comes to structuring curriculum for global citizenship, designing instruction and experiences around justice-oriented citizenship is what we should be striving for. So what might the elements of such a curriculum be? ..more

Designing Curriculum for Global Citizenship

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
08-Dec-20

In his continuing exploration of the thinking and practice behind global citizenship initiatives, Gordon Eldridge considers a study that examined the impact on students of a particular global citizenship curriculum in a private girls’ school in the United States. ..more

What Beliefs Underpin Different Conceptions of Global Citizenship Education?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
11-Nov-20

As we make decisions about the kind of global citizens we hope our schools will produce, it is important to examine some of the beliefs and assumptions which underpin differing conceptions of what it means to be a global citizen. ..more

What Kind of Global Citizens Do We Want Emerging From our International Schools?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
14-Oct-20

Most of our schools include some conception of global citizenship in our guiding statements, perhaps a good umbrella for organizing a systematic approach to anti-racism and social justice. But what does research tell us about developing effective programs for global citizenship? ..more

When Students Actually Build on One Another’s Ideas

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
15-Jul-20

We all recognize the most common pattern of student talk: “listening to speak," or mentally preparing what they want to say rather than truly listening to understand. This kind of talk does not build shared understanding. So how can we get students to move beyond this? ..more

What Do We Know About Self-Assessment?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
26-Mar-20

Heidi Andrade’s research review of 76 recent empirical studies summarizes what we currently know and what we still need to learn about student self-assessment. Which activities are most beneficial to learning? And how can we maximize their benefits? ..more

Can We Overcome “My Side Bias” in the Classroom?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
19-Dec-19

Human beings have a natural tendency to overlook evidence that conflicts with their current understanding--this is often referred to as “my side bias.” Could varying the instructional framing of an activity encourage students to actively consider information that conflicts with their own positions? ..more

Should Group Work Precede or Follow Individual Work?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
24-Apr-19

Collaborative group work has been shown to improve both learning and motivational outcomes. Deciding when to use collaborative learning structures is not always easy, however. A study conducted at the J.W. Goethe University of Frankfurt/Main may give some guidance. ..more

How Can I Best Plan My Professional Development?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
18-Jan-19

Professional development programs that are focused on embedded practice, are of longer duration, build explicit skill sets, and are based on active learning may be more effective than those that don’t, but how often do we systematically apply these criteria when organizing or selecting PD opportunities? ..more

Psychology’s Top 20 Principles for Enhancing Teaching and Learning

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
28-Nov-18

A coalition of psychologists known as the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education sought to identify the top 20 principles that can be gleaned from the current behavioral research base. The journal Mind, Brain and Education reported these, along with some of the research foundations that support them and possible implications for the classroom. ..more

What Works in Scaffolding Student Inquiry? Lessons From the Visual Arts

By Gordon Eldridge
19-Oct-18

One of the key themes I have returned to a number of times over the years in this column is the difficulty of deciding how much and what kind of guidance to provide students in order to optimize learning. It is quite possibly the quintessential question in education. ..more

Motivation: What Can Physical Education Teach Us?

By Gordon Eldridge
23-May-18

Some PE teachers I have spoken with advocate making the grade for PE largely about participation. That way students who do not yet have the skill set to get high grades in PE won’t get discouraged, or so the thinking goes. But will that really make a difference? ..more

Vocabulary Learning for Older Students

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
04-Apr-18

Knowledge of vocabulary is highly correlated with academic success. Students with larger vocabularies demonstrate higher levels of reading comprehension and perform better on many of the kinds of achievement valued in schools. But vocab instruction often stops in late elementary school. ..more

How Do Kids Think About Effort and Ability?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
22-Feb-18

Katherine Muenks of Indiana University and David Miele of Boston College have published a research synthesis examining what we currently know about the ways in which students connect notions of effort and ability. ..more

Are One-to-One Laptop Programs Worth It?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
03-Jan-18

It seems a no-brainer that we should be using more technology in the classroom in our technological age. Moreover, it seems logical that in a one-to-one environment, students will have more opportunity to further their technology skills. But what impact do these programs have on learning, beyond increasing these specific technology skills? ..more

The Benefits of Practice Testing

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
17-Nov-17

I have heard people say in recent years that there is no longer a need to retain facts, since they can be so easily and quickly looked up on the internet. While this may be true for superficial pieces of information, the retention of a well-selected fact base can still play a hugely important role in learning. ..more

Social-Emotional Learning in Kindergarten

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
19-Oct-17

In one study, where more than 3,300 teachers were surveyed, researchers found that 46 percent of teachers reported that more than half of students entering kindergarten did not have the social and emotional skills deemed necessary for success in school. Researchers investigated class-wide interventions to support students in developing necessary social skills. ..more

Inventing a Solution vs. Studying a Worked Solution: Which Better Prepares Students for Learning?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
24-May-17

A previous article I reviewed here suggested that inventing a solution prepares students well for subsequent direct instruction. But was the positive learning effect due to the process of inventing the solution? Or was it simply that inventing the solution caused students to compare the cases more thoroughly and thus enabled them to notice the deeper structure of the concept? ..more

Can Decorative Graphics Improve Learning from Text?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
12-Apr-17

Numerous studies across multiple domains have shown that the addition of graphics to a text can significantly improve comprehension and retention of information. One theory behind this improvement in learning is known as the Multimedia Principle. ..more

Preparing Students to Argue Effectively

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
20-Jan-17

There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the process of argumentation can lead to deeper understanding. It is not necessarily the case, however, that all students are ready to engage in this kind of argumentation. ..more

What Counts as Evidence?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
13-Oct-16

Researchers such as Wiley and Voss have found that having students write arguments can be a very effective learning strategy. Sampson and Clark, however, found that over and above the benefits accruing to students who write arguments, students who also engage in collaborative argumentation display further learning benefits. ..more

Can Concept Mapping Raise Achievement?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
01-Jun-16

There is a large body of research indicating that if we can help our students achieve such connected understanding, they are both more likely to retain information and more likely to be able to transfer their understanding to new contexts. Concept mapping can help. ..more

Does Assessment for Learning Support Student Self-regulation?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
24-May-16

There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about Assessment for Learning (AfL) and how it differs from Assessment of Learning (AoL), but what do we mean by learning, and what do we mean by the assessment that is likely to support that definition of learning? ..more

Is the Traditional “Scientific Method” the Best Way to Learn Science?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
23-Mar-16

A recent study by a team of researchers in the United States points to the potential usefulness of having multiple models between which we continually move back and forth, engaging with the genuine complexity of the learning process so that we can apply the best model to a particular context. ..more

The Right Goals, at the Right Time

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
20-Jan-16

While it may seem obvious that if we want a student to achieve a particular learning outcome, setting that outcome as a goal would logically support them in achieving it. Yet research into the acquisition of writing revision skills suggests that the situation is not so straightforward. ..more

You Get What You Teach For

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
10-Dec-15

If a school is not clear on what it wants from the education it offers students, then not only will there be a lack of consistency across classrooms, but students will get a mixed message as to what is valued. ..more

The Best Strategies for Teaching Critical Thinking

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
29-Oct-15

A 1997 study of college faculty in California found that 89 percent of instructors felt that teaching critical thinking was important, but only 9 percent of them felt they were actually teaching the skills on a regular basis ..more

How Do Grades Impact Intrinsic Motivation?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
08-Oct-15

We would probably all acknowledge that consistently receiving low grades could lower intrinsic motivation to continue persevering with similar tasks, but do high grades increase motivation? Gordon Eldridge considers the research. ..more

Teaching the Skills of Scientific Observation

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
10-Sep-15

Children are natural observers, but everyday observation is significantly different from the kind of observation skills necessary for success in science. What does it mean to observe within a disciplinary context? ..more

How Can We Support More Independent Inquiry?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
07-Jul-15

In order to become successful inquirers, students need to be able to set a broad goal for the inquiry, select and sequence the sub-goals that will lead to that goal, and then map the strategies they will use during the inquiry onto the sub-goals. ..more

Should Feedback Include Improvement Strategies?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
17-Jun-15

Supporting students in closing the gap between current performance and a goal state is at the heart of formative assessment. While the teacher’s role in this process might include suggesting strategies students can use to close that gap, research shows that this is not always effective. ..more

Is Blended Learning More Effective?

By Gordon Eldridge
03-Jun-15

The use of the internet as a learning tool has grown exponentially over the past decade or so, but the research on the benefits of internet use shows mixed results. ..more

Getting Students to Notice What Matters

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
29-Apr-15

"Expert knowledge is organized around important concepts." This is one of the differences between how experts and novices perform tasks within a given field. Understanding these differences can help us more effectively guide novices towards expertise. ..more

Maintaining Gains from Reading Interventions

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
16-Apr-15

Research suggests that young learners who are struggling with reading can make significant gains with interventions such as Reading Recovery. The evidence as to whether these gains are sustained over time, however, is more equivocal. ..more

How Should We Group Students for Collaborative Work?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
26-Mar-15

Collaborative work has become a routine feature of classrooms and while there is evidence that the talk encouraged by collaboration can further the learning of all involved, setting up a group task in a way that fosters successful collaboration is far from easy. One important consideration is how to group the students. ..more

The Importance of Challenging Content

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
12-Mar-15

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that challenge is an important component of motivation. It is quite possible that the higher level of challenge contributes to higher motivation and therefore greater learning. Some of the basic skills are actually better learned when they are applied in conjunction with more advanced content in more complex contexts. ..more

Supporting Learners as Problem-Solvers

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
18-Feb-15

Theories abound about how human memory functions, but sometimes the theories are too abstract for us to be able to see their relevance in the day-to-day world of the classroom. Our knowledge in this area is growing rapidly however, and some recent contributions from researchers at Miami University and the University of Texas at Arlington have some obvious implications for learning and teaching. ..more

Vocabulary Learning on the Internet

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
05-Feb-15

The Internet has become an invaluable source of information for learners and teachers, and some of the features that make it such a useful source of information can also serve to support the learning of vocabulary. However, it is also a place where learners can become easily distracted and lose sight of the goal they are working towards. ..more

Using Rhythm Can Help Struggling Readers

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
21-Jan-15

Somewhere between five and 17 percent of children do not become fluent readers. Researchers at the University of Cambridge believe it may be possible to improve reading performance by teaching students to better perceive rhythm. ..more

Gestures and Language Learning

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
06-Jan-15

Gordon Eldridge discusses the Total Physical Response approach to language teaching--strengthened by an increasing body of research evidence--according to which enacting language physically can improve memory and aid recall. ..more

Learning from Internet Sources

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
03-Dec-14

To make the best use of the information they find on the Internet, students need to develop skills related to evaluating and synthesizing information across multiple sources. But what exactly do these skills look like in the context of Internet research? ..more

Can Classroom Culture Breed Success?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
18-Nov-14

Gordon Eldridge considers the importance of classroom culture discusses a study conducted by Rebecca Givens Rolland of Harvard University investigating certain aspects of classroom culture and their impact on student achievement. ..more

How Playful Should an Early Childhood Classroom Be?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
03-Nov-14

How much “direction” to give students is one of the quintessential questions of our profession. A clear learning purpose is an important foundation for effective learning. But what does this mean in the context of early childhood classrooms, where many feel play is one of the cornerstone pedagogies supporting learning? ..more

Less Teaching, More Learning

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
22-Oct-14

The amount of potentially important content is increasing exponentially in every subject area. While “coverage” does not equate with learning, many feel the need to “touch on” everything they consider to be important. A 10-year study tracking significant curriculum change at Michigan State strongly suggests that this is counterproductive. ..more

The Block Play Factor

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
24-Sep-14

A known driver of later mathematics and science learning, block play may also underpin spatial language and concepts, according to the National Research Council’s 2006 report. ..more

For English Language Learners, is Good Instruction Always Good?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
24-Sep-14

Researchers studying a balanced literacy approach sought to test an assumption: that English Language Learners (ELLs) would also benefit from strategies that are effective in helping native speakers with reading comprehension. The results were hardly straightforward. ..more

Beginner ELLs: What Is the Right Balance?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
10-Sep-14

Most programs for English Language Learners (ELLs) recommend daily oral language instruction, at least until students have reached a threshold level of proficiency in English. What structures best support us in providing this? ..more

What Is It about Inquiry?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
26-Aug-14

A group of researchers from the University of Colorado argue that inquiry-based learning and direct instruction do not form a dichotomy. We should be considering a continuum, which varies across a number of different dimensions. ..more

Neuroscience and Student Motivation

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
13-Aug-14

Columnist Gordon Eldridge presents a new but growing field of research in “neuroeducation,” bridging the gap between the results of neuroscientific research in the laboratory and its potential application in the classroom. ..more

On Second Language Acquisition

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
31-Jul-14

At what age is it best to introduce a second language? What kinds of pedagogy best support language learning? What kind of teachers should we be hiring to teach language? TIE columnist Gordon Eldridge examines the research. ..more

Neuromyths

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
15-Jul-14

We have learned a tremendous amount about the human brain and how it functions over the past couple of decades. Ready-to-use classroom applications of neuroscience remain limited, however. ..more

How Do We Get Students to Focus on the Right Stuff?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
08-Jul-14

Students are expected to answer questions about "big ideas" in our classrooms; new research identifies techniques that will help them select relevant information and effectively organize it, prompting deeper understanding. ..more

Tell First, or Tell Later?

by Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
17-Jun-14

A common misconception about inquiry is that it never involves explicit teaching. Truly purposeful inquiry is far more complex than this. ..more

For Understanding, Some Writing Tasks Are Better than Others

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
03-Jun-14

Tasks requiring a student to construct a mental model of a situation are more likely to promote deeper understanding than tasks that can be performed with a more superficial representation of the information. ..more

What Is Inquiry, Anyway?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
20-May-14

Do you need some clarity here? Fear not, there is indeed some research into what constitutes effective inquiry, and how and when its methods can be productively employed. ..more

In Mathematics, Maximize Learning for All Students

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
06-May-14

Do you believe all children can learn to think independently? Do you want a viable alternative to traditional, didactic mathematics? If yes, here are some additions to the mathematics teacher’s toolkit. ..more

Learning How to Learn: Do our Assessment Practices Help?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
22-Apr-14

Assessment can be a powerful tool to encourage and support students; it can also have a decidedly detrimental effect. What are some of the factors that determine whether our assessment practices will be a help or a hindrance? ..more

Teaching for Understanding: How Can We Best Deal with Student Misconceptions?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
08-Apr-14

In wrestling with the problem of student misconceptions in the classroom, it is essential that we intentionally activate student prior understanding about a concept in some way, prior to the introduction of complex, new ideas. ..more

Student Misconceptions: Where Do they Come from?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
25-Mar-14

If a procession of Harvard graduates cannot explain earth's seasons, is there hope for your youngsters? Yes, but you'll need to test their "knowledge framework" first. ..more

Accommodations for English Language Learners: Just How Effective Are They?

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
25-Feb-14

We sometimes attempt to minimize the role of language in assessments by making accommodations for ELL students. But do they really work? And are they valid? ..more

Improving Student Skills and Results in Algebra

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
11-Feb-14

Algebra is often an area where many of our students do not succeed to the degree that we might hope. Focusing strategies on developing conceptual understanding, rather than just procedural mastery, is critical to student success. ..more

Thinking Beyond Deficit: The Benefits of Bilingualism

By Gordon Eldridge, TIE Columnist
22-Jan-14

Second language learners in our classrooms can often present us with challenges. Yet these challenges can sometimes blind us to the potential advantages that bilingual learners bring with them. ..more