Translating Embodied Cognition for Embodied Learning in the Classroom

In this perspective piece, we briefly review embodied cognition and embodied learning. We then present a translational research model based on this research to inform teachers, educational psychologists, and practitioners on the benefits of embodied cognition and embodied learning for classroom applications. While many teachers already employ the body in teaching, especially in early schooling, many teachers’ understandings of the science and benefits of sensorimotor engagement or embodied cognition across grades levels and the content areas is little understood. Here, we outline seven goals in our model and four major “action” steps. To address steps 1 and 2, we recap previously published reviews of the experimental evidence of embodied cognition (and embodied learning) research across multiple learning fields, with a focus on how both simple embodied learning activities—as well as those based on more sophisticated technologies of AR, VR, and mixed reality—are being vetted in the classroom. Step 3 of our model outlines how researchers, teachers, policy makers, and designers can work together to help translate this knowledge in support of these goals. In the final step (step 4), we extract generalized, practical embodied learning principles, which can be easily adopted by teachers in the classroom without extensive training. We end with a call for educators and policy makers to use these principles to identify learning objectives and outcomes, as well as track outcomes to assess whether program objectives and competency requirements are met.

Race-Discordant School Attendance and Cognitive Function in Later Life

Early schooling plays an important role in shaping cognitive development, both due to the level of academic rigor and the social environment of primary and secondary schools. This is reflected in current racial disparities in cognitive function in later life. Older minorities who attended predominantly White schools with more resources experienced significant cognitive benefits. This study explores whether there are benefits to cognitive functioning in later life from having attended socially diverse schools in early life. We examine the effects of having attended schools composed primarily of different race peers—race discordant schools (RDS)—among Black, Hispanic, and White older adults. Using retrospective and prospective data from the Health and Retirement Study, we examine the association between RDS exposure and four measures of cognitive function (working memory, episodic memory, mental status, overall cognitive function). We assess function at age 55 and 70, and examine change in functioning between age 55 and 70. We find that RDS exposed Blacks and Hispanics experience significant benefits in cognitive function at age 55, but only Blacks experience benefits at age 70. RDS exposed Whites reported higher overall working memory at age 70 relative to Whites in non-RDS schools, suggesting a cognitive benefit from diversity. Results suggest that exposure to more racially diverse school environments have potentially beneficial effects on cognitive function over the life course. Our findings suggest that the cultivation of diversity in schools could be an important long-term public health investment.

The Development of Thinking Skills for the Future of Hospitality Industry in India

Thinking skill in the hospitality industry in the modern day is the focal point which is missed in many students. The students are been taught in India from early schooling to memorization which has little time for the development of thinking skills, which fails to address the deeper understanding and overall learning experience. Learning to raise a suitable question to the problem and presume information in order to construct a better association with the information is also crucial. This research paper highlights on exploring the possibility of guiding student’s thinking skill abilities in hospitality school to include the opportunity for progressive learning. The prospective students of hospitality should be encouraged to combine an ethical and monetary element in their later business practices. The intention of this research is to recognize the bridge in understanding, enumerate their capability to compose their knowledge of the material, and for the hospitality students to realize the material sufficient to create a perceptive question showcasing their understanding of the material. A secondary aspect of this research thinking skill ability will give better opportunity to the students to prosper in the hospitality industry.

Gender Subjectification and Schooling

Formal education supports various goals related to the transmission of a society’s values, from teaching basic literacy to instilling moral virtues. Although schools serve as places of assimilation and socialization into dominant norms, schools are also spaces where young people experiment with their own ideals and self-expressions. Researchers interested in how young people learn to inhabit gendered roles or “positions” highlight the significant role that schooling plays in gender subjectification. Put simply, gender subjectification is the process by which one becomes recognizable to oneself (and to others) as a gendered subject. Schools are key institutions where individuals learn to negotiate their places in society and to consider possible futures. Through interacting with one another and with the overt and hidden curricula in school, as well as with various social structures outside school, individuals are shaped by various discourses that involve desires, beliefs, rituals, policies, and practices. Education research focusing on gender subjectification has explored the mechanisms by which schools shape and reproduce, for example, the gendered knowledge that young people come to internalize and take up as “normal” or acceptable for themselves and for others, as well as what they resist or reject. As with all social institutions, a school is subject to and influenced by various communications that circulate and intersect inside and outside the school walls. These discourses include but are not limited to “official” communications such as laws, policies, and state- or district-sanctioned curriculum materials, various conversations circulating among media and fora, and conversations from peer groups, the home, and community groups. From these diverse and often contradictory sets of discourses, schools privilege and disseminate their own “discursive selections” concerning gender. These selections work on and through students to shape possibilities as well as place constraints on not only how students understand themselves as gendered subjects but also how they come to those understandings. Studies investigating education and gender suggest that inequities and inequalities often begin in early schooling and have long-lasting implications both inside and outside schools. School and classroom discourses tend to privilege hegemonic (meaning dominant and normative) notions of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality while silencing, punishing, and, in some cases, even criminalizing differences. Research concerned with gender subjectification and school has addressed numerous significant questions such as: What are the gendered landscapes of schooling, and how do individuals experience those landscapes? What are the everyday discourses and practices of schooling (both formal and informal) that work on how gender gets “done,” and how do these aspects interact and function? How does school impose constraints on, as well as offer possibilities for, gender subjectivity, when institutional contexts that shape subjectivities are also in motion? Ultimately, these questions concern the role that schooling has in shaping how individuals think about and “do” selfhood. In general, critical studies of gender and subjectification gesture toward hope and possibilities for more equality, more consensuality, and more inclusivity of individual differences.

Differences in Gross Motor Development among Early School Children: Comparison on Team and Individual Sports

This study aimed to determine the level of gross motor development of children aged eight to ten years involved in individual (I) and team (T) sports by using the Tests of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2) method. This study is an ex-post factor involving 360 children in their early schooling stages (M = 180, F = 180). The study involved 2 types of sports: individually (Athletics = 60, Badminton = 60, Taekwondo = 60) and team (Handball = 60, Hockey = 60, Basketball = 60). Descriptive analysis has shown the level of performance for individual sports AEL (M = 8.24, SD = 1.02, DR = Average), AEM (M = 7.16, SD = 0.92, DR = Below Average) and GMDQ (M = 87.87, SD = 5.4, DR = Below Average). For team sports, the age equivalence levels of AEL (M = 8.05, SD = 1.23, DR = Average), AEM (M = 7.84, SD = 1.07, DR = Below Average) and GMDQ (M = 90.02, SD = 6.57, DR = Below Average). There was a significant difference for individual and team sports on the AEL score t (358) = 1.64, p = 0.00. While there was no significant difference for individual and team sports on the AEM score t (358) =-6.45, p = 0.27 and GMDQ t (358) =-3.39, p = 0.06. MANOVA analysis showed that there were significant differences for AEL, AEM and GMDQ scores for athletics, badminton, taekwondo, handball, hockey, and basketball with [F (15,972.12) = 11.82, p <0.001, eta squared = 0.14]. Individual sport types had an AEL age delay of -1.27 years and an AEM of -2.15 years in contrast to team sports with an AEL age delay of -1.25 years and an AEM of only -1.37 years. ANCOVA analysis showed that gender and age could influence the level of gross motor development of individual and team sports. Implementing the gross motor development test provides knowledge and information to teachers and coaches to know athletes’ gross motor acquisition. Teachers and coaches could also design a training program to help athletes strengthen their gross motor development and improve their athletic performance.

Playing with genetic and epigenetic concepts at the school: an Epigenetic Orchestra project

A sound biological education at early schooling stages is highly desirable for individual understanding of the nature of science and comprehension of evolutionary theory. Making accessible the concepts to young minds is notwithstanding key and playful learning linked to artistic projects can be useful to reach this goal. Here, we propose a set of activities structured into three units that can be developed at school. They use music as a playful learning tool to support students’ motivation to discover the building blocks of genetic code, genetic variation and epigenetic regulation. Familiarity with these core molecular concepts will smooth their future understanding of the evolutionary process. A final activity programmed for a general audience can also contribute to better value scientific knowledge among the local population. And, it will potentially inspire some young girls and boys in orienting their future career development towards science.

1842‒1852

Three of Arthur Sullivan’s grandparents were Irish and probably Roman Catholic. This chapter explores his ancestry and the Irish and Roman Catholic influences on his character, his faith, and his music. It considers and dismisses the suggestions made during his lifetime that he had Jewish and negroid antecedents. It covers his childhood in Sandhurst, where his father was military bandmaster, the influence of the parish church there, his early schooling, and his entrance into the Chapel Royal as a chorister.

Collegiality vs. Competition

Learning to work with others is a trait taught from the time children are in their early schooling. However, the concept of competition begins to form at the same time. This idea of competition continues to be a fire that burns brightly in some students, and the flames are often fanned by external forces: teachers, parents, students, counselors, college admissions programs, etc. Moving from public education to the collegiate classroom has not diminished the air of competition that is often present. Working within the academy has many of these same concepts embedded into its structure. New faculty members are expected to be prepared to be academics on day one. This includes in their teaching, scholarship, and service. This demand of constant production in all three areas can cause feelings of competition among faculty members. Within this chapter are demonstrated ways of applying the 5 Cs of collegiality to the university workplace as well as to doctoral induction programs, giving faculty the opportunity to assist them in the development of a mindset of collaboration over competition.

STRATEGIES OF PATTERN GENERALIZATION FOR ENHANCING STUDENTS’ ALGEBRAIC THINKING

Mathematics is seen as a science of pattern. Identifying and using patterns is the essence of mathematical thinking for children to improve algebraic thinking from their early schooling. The pattern is an arrangement of objects that have regularities or properties that can be generalized. Therefore, it is essential to know the strategies used by students in generalizing patterns and how students think in these processes. This study is descriptive research with a mixed quantitative-qualitative approach that aimed to investigate student’s algebraic thinking using various strategies to generalize the visual pattern. An instrument about the linear geometric growing pattern was administrated to 75 upper primary school students (grades 5-6) and 81 lower secondary students (grades 7-8) in two private schools in Semarang, Indonesia. The results showed that students used different pattern generalization strategies. The student generally preferred recursive, chunking, and functional approaches in each generalization task, whereas few used counting from drawing strategies to generalize patterns. The use of the recursive strategy decreased, whereas the chunking strategy and the functional strategy increased across grades 5-8 for the problems. The results also showed the student who used the recursive and chunking strategy preferred to change visual patterns into rows of numbers. Hence, they adopt a numeric approach by finding the common difference of visible pattern in each step.

Intra- and Inter-Group Differences in the Cognitive Skills of Toddler Twins with Birth Weight Discordance: The Need to Enhance Their Future from Early Education

Strengthening of early schooling enhances Equal and Inclusive Education (Sustainable Development Goal 4). Early education protects infant development and learning, especially for children suffering from pathologies and risk factors, such as twin birth weight discordance (BWD). These children—particularly the lighter twin—frequently show disadvantages in their cognitive skills. However, research about this issue is particularly scarce. The aims of this study were to (1) analyze the development of cognitive skills in each type of birth weight discordant twins (heavier and lighter ones) at 18, 21, and 24 months; and (2) discover whether there were differences between the two groups of twins in their cognitive skills. A nomothetic, follow-up, and multidimensional observational design was used. The cognitive skills of 32 birth weight discordant twins were observed while they played at 18, 21, and 24 months. The T-pattern analysis was performed using Thème software (Reykjavík, Iceland) to detect the sequential and temporal structure of infant behavior; indicative of cognitive skills. Results showed: (1) longitudinal intra-group differences in both groups of twins; and (2) some inter-group differences, mainly favoring the heavier twins. These results must be considered for designing early educational practices that allow all twins to be prepared for successful future learning.