Though we generally believe that teachers teach and students learn, the two fundamental processes that constitute education — teaching and learning — are actually deeply interwoven. The best teachers are those who keep learning and stretching themselves by engaging and…
Does it make sense to ask students questions about a concept they haven’t yet been introduced to? Does it matter if questions are posed at the beginning, middle or end of a unit? In his book, Small Teaching, English professor…
One of the more robust findings of psychology, to have withstood the tests of time, is the theory of infant attachment, first put forth by psychologist, John Bowlby and subsequently furthered by Mary Ainsworth. According to this theory, infants primarily exhibit three…
When students read a piece of text, silently, on their own, teachers hope that their pupils understand the content. To assess their comprehension, teachers usually ask students to answer a variety of questions, which include multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks, short and…
Your professor makes a snide remark that you are always late in submitting your assignments. You bristle, as this is only the second time you have missed a deadline, and reply with a snarky, “But professors are also late in…
Even as the pandemic becomes endemic, remote or hybrid work will persist as both employers and employees stand to gain.
While disrupting and upending lives across the planet, the pandemic revealed our almost pan-human tendency to want to exercise control over our daily lives. The sudden lockdowns sabotaged our plans, both significant and small. Whether it was going to the…
Even as children trudge back to school, work from home continues to thrive. As many articles have reported, one of the biggest drawbacks of remote work is the blurring of professional and personal boundaries, with work eating into people’s downtime….
Teachers exhort students to read for pleasure as reading can transport people across space and time, and can transform and enrich their lives. While they appreciate the invaluable benefits of reading, unfortunately, teachers don’t necessarily have the luxury of time…
“A picture is worth a thousand words.” “Seeing is believing.” “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.” Though cliched, these statements do convey some hard truths about our visual faculty. However, as most of us take the act of…
Aruna Sankaranarayanan is the author of Zero Limits: Things Every 20 Something Should Know. She was the Founder & Director of PRAYATNA, a centre for children with learning difficulties in Bengaluru & Chennai for 22 years.