Articles

Originally posted in our September 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. What causes our minds to wander? Is it helping us or hurting us? Researchers have found that the answer is more complicated than you might think. But, as the fields of psychology develop and shift, so too does neuroscience. We can now better than ever understand what parts of the brain are doing while we perform tasks or when we are prompted to think about specific…

Originally posted in our August 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. Thinking about the tumultuous changes to education, one might naturally consider how this impacts the job market. As has been reported for several years, jobs increasingly care about skills, mindsets, and experience over holding a particular degree. In this recent article from the Washington Post, we see an examination of the recent trend of ditching the degree requirement in a variety of fields, namely IT.  What’s…

Originally posted in our August 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. In Virginia, Ohio, and across the country, schools are experiencing massive disruptions. While regionally, there are differences, many of the causes are similar: continuing COVID-19 complications, lack of funding, teacher burnout, and in some states, a massive teacher shortage. This shortage isn’t because there aren’t enough trained teachers, but instead from qualified teachers who have had enough.  In this article from Virginia Mercury, we see a…

Originally posted in our July 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. How can we influence ourselves and others to overcome the most basic human barrier; fear? Fear is indeed the biggest barrier to innovation, with good reason. Innovation is by definition associated with ambiguity; even with a well-defined goal, innovators simply cannot know all outcomes of their efforts. So, as we close this month’s Top of Mind, let us reflect on how we are preparing our society…

Originally posted in our July 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. In research conducted around the ideas of good teaching, we learn that developing some skills can come at the cost of student engagement. For example, in this piece from the Hechinger Report, researchers found that those teachers who better prepare their students for tests often fall short when it comes to creating an engaging classroom. Interestingly, among the teachers who engage their students and improve outcomes,…