The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) phenomenon has happened very quickly and is also a shift in discourse. This article aims to slow things down and go through the last year or so with a bit more care than we're usually able to do in order to do a "close reading" of the year of the MOOC. Author Aaron Brady ventures an opinion to say…

This author argues that college and university education in North America is in trouble. Education surpasses health, war, and the economy as the most important issue for the future. It does not get the attention it deserves because its effects are long term and people have short attention spans. In this article, the author explains why so many…

Dr. Goldstein continues the laudable practice of reprinting articles of historical significance in the history of ADHD with this selective reprinting of material from the original article by Maurice Laufer, Eric Denhoff, and Gerald Solomons on hyperkinetic impulsive disorder (HID) in children. This article on HID is among the first articles to…

Stimulant drugs (methylphenidate and amphetamine) have been used successfully for decades to improve the behavioral impairments of hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention in children diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A voluminous literature supports the benefits of stimulants for improving classroom manageability…

Many middle school students claim that their voices are ignored in the classroom, where the attitude is too often that the teacher holds the one right answer. Instead of this approach, teachers may wish to use the Socratic Seminar, which prompts students to examine issues and ideas through dialogue and actively involves and motivates them, giving…

Often times, teachers and prospective teachers repeat the "common knowledge" that young children have short attention spans. How often this becomes another self-fulfilling prophecy as teachers switch frequently from one activity to another, before student attention can wander, in an imitation of the Sesame Street model of teaching as…

In his lectures published in 1902, George Still described 43 children in his clinical practice who had serious problems with sustained attention and self-regulation. George Still certainly did not use the current terminology for this disorder, but many historians of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have inferred that the children he…

Extremely high failure rates in primary education, negative international comparisons, and extremely limited access to computers are some of the factors that suggest serious problems in Latin American education. There is no evidence that a suitable model is being used to reflect on the quality of education in these countries. Many isolated actions…

A study of 27 promising programs reveals 8 common reasons that educational innovations fail, including disenchanted practitioners; departure of innovation supporters; lack of personnel training; disappearing funding; inadequate supervision; and lack of accountability, administrative support, and termination consequences. Innovations succeed by…

Interviews with five neuroscientists--Martin Diamond, Pat Wolfe, Robert Sylwester, Geoffrey Caine, and Eric Jensen--disclose brain-research findings of practical interest to educators. Topics include brain physiology, environmental enrichment, memorization, windows of learning opportunity, brain learning capacity, attention span, student interest,…

Presents a proposed unifying relationship between instructional methods and cognitive operations, and argues that it is the location of the processing of the learning task that defines the function, type, and extent of the instructional method required. More than 50 references are listed. (MER)

The effect of television on children is in part a reflection of the effect of current schooling practices, so that the simplicity of television is a reflection of the discontinuity and incoherence of modern schooling practices. This state of affairs in schooling is due to several factors: (1) efforts to make schooling less stuffy and mechanical…

This report summarizes the research results and provides a reference. The basic question addressed was, "Is performance on multi-component tasks predicted by performance on the individual components performed separately?" In the first series of experiments, a dual task involving memory and verbal processing components to predict a…

Research findings concerning attention, automation, and movement are reviewed. Research in the future should be concerned with the relationship between environmental context and action. (CJ)

Presents an interview with pediatrician and adult and child psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Greenberg, researcher, clinician, and expert on attention deficit, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and related concerns. Discusses the TOVA (Test of Variables of Attention), a continuous performance test for clinical use developed by Dr. Greenberg; diagnostic…