There is an increasing emphasis on evidence-based education, and the sciences of learning are progressing rapidly. But are reports, guidelines, and outreach enough to disseminate this knowledge and affect educational practice? In fact, policy makers and the public often resist evidence-based recommendations about education. This article suggests…

While carefully plotted lesson plans are invaluable in a classroom, tuning into the flow of the moment is just as essential. My experience has shown me that the most effective teaching happens when everyone in the room is in synch with one another. Teaching requires intuiting what each student is experiencing individually and adjusting in order to…

In the field of medicine, research and practice are joined in teaching hospitals. In these institutions, researchers work alongside doctors to incorporate recent advances in medical research into practice and track results. There is a growing movement in the field of education to create analogous institutions in education called research schools.…

In this study we examined high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV, a parasympathetic index) both at rest and during challenge, to assess if variations in cardiovascular activity measured during a Stroop task could be used to predict reading achievement in typically developing children. Reading achievement was examined using the Peabody…

The Studio Thinking Framework (STF) focuses on habits of mind taught through studio arts rather than disciplinary content or media-specific techniques. It is well suited to integrate studies of arts learning and teaching in a range of contexts, and it provides a framework for understanding how visual arts participation is dramatically changing…

Many education systems have a tendency to be limiting and rigid. These systems teach children to value facts over knowledge and routine and repetition over playfulness and curiosity to seek knowledge. How can we unleash our children's imagination and permit them to use play and other creative tools as a means of learning? This article proposes new…

Family engagement, in many forms, has been shown to be an essential component to successful learning for children. A child's first exposure to the arts is often through family rituals and traditions. New research suggests these activities can form the basis for personal exploration and skill development and reinforce in-school learning. Because…

In this article we argue that when university researchers engage in democratic participatory action research with schools the process requires a special type of attention to the ethical difficulties which can arise. We note how current professional standards of ethics are inadequate to fully address many of the dilemmas faced in collaborative…

Advocates of the arts agree that the K-12 curriculum should include dedicated time for arts instruction. Some have argued further that knowledge and skills acquired through the arts transfer to nonarts domains. Others claim that evidence of this kind of transfer is limited and instead argue that the arts cultivate valuable dispositions that help…

Building on J. Dewey's (1907) original work with the laboratory school, the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Texas-Arlington is expanding the original concept to include partners throughout a school system and the community in order to support and advance learning in multiple learning environments. The goal is to…

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Center for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) carried out the "Learning Sciences and Brain Research" project (1999-2007) to investigate how neuroscience research can inform education policy and practice. This transdisciplinary project brought many challenges. Within the…

This article describes the efforts of a small group of educators and researchers to build a model for making connections across mind, brain, and education. With a common goal of sharing, strengthening, and building useable knowledge about child and adolescent learning and development, we focused on questions of mutual interest to educators and…

In a previous issue of "Mind, Brain, and Education," Hinton and Fischer (2008) argue that educational research needs to be grounded in the lived realities of school life. They advocate for research schools as a venue for accomplishing this. The Center for the Study of Boys' and Girls' Lives represents an alternative model--a research collaborative…

Previous research suggests that academic motivation orientation relates to students' causal interpretations about academic outcomes and their emotional reactions to those outcomes. The current study examines how student motivation may relate to certain neurophysiological systems that are thought to underlie the processing of successes and…

Genetics contributes importantly to learning abilities and disabilities--not just to reading, the target of most genetic research, but also to mathematics and other academic areas as well. One of the most important recent findings from quantitative genetic research such as twin studies is that the same set of genes is largely responsible for…