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Bringing the Neuroscience of Learning to Online Teaching

An Educator’s Handbook

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa

Foreword by: Michael Fullan

Publication Date: May 14, 2021

Pages: 128

Available Formats
PAPERBACK
ISBN: 9780807765524
$34.95
HARDCOVER
ISBN: 9780807765531
$105.00
EBOOK
ISBN: 9780807779651
$34.95
Bringing the Neuroscience of Learning to Online Teaching 9780807765524
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  • Description
  • Author
  • Reviews
  • Contents
  • Appendix

Description+

This practical resource draws on the best of neuroscience to inform decisionmaking about digital learning. We live in unprecedented times that have pushed schools to make many decisions that have been postponed for years. For the first time since the inception of public education, teachers have been invited to redesign the learning landscape by integrating an intelligent selection of digital educational resources and changing pedagogical approaches based on information from the learning sciences. This handbook will help teachers make the most of this opportunity by showing them how to use digital tools to differentiate learning, employ alternative options to standardized testing, personalize learning, prioritize social-emotional skills, and inspire students to think more critically. The author identifies gems in quality teaching that coincide with how the brain learns best and are amplified in online contexts, including 40 evidenced-informed pedagogies. This book will help all educators move online teaching and learning to new levels of confidence and success.

Book Features:

  • Provides quick references to key planning tools like decision-trees, graphics, app recommendations, and step-by-step directions to help teachers create their own online learning courses.
  • Guides teachers through a 12-step model for instructional design that meets both national and international standards.
  • Shows educators how to use an all-new Digital Resource Taxonomy to select resources, and how to research and keep them up to date.
  • Explains why good instructional design and educational technology are complementary with best practices in learning sciences like Mind, Brain, and Education Science.
  • Shares ways teachers can leverage technology to create more time for the personalized aspects of learning.
  • Shows educators how to design online courses with tools that let all students begin at their own starting points and how to differentiate homework.
  • Offers evidence-informed pedagogies to make online intimate and authentic for students.

Author+

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa is an instructor at the Harvard University Extension School in a course called the “Neuroscience of Learning: An Introduction to Mind, Brain, Health and Education”, a 100% online, flipped course with a synchronous meeting time. She taught kindergarten–university and is the associate editor of Nature Partner Journal Science of Learning, and an author and international educational consultant. She is the author of the Teachers College Press classic The New Science of Teaching and Learning: Using the Best of Mind, Brain, and Education Science in the Classroom.

Reviews+

“Drawing from neuroscience, the handbook provides fresh conceptual anchors to the assertion that all educators (including management/business educators) are ‘learning scientists’ (p. xviii) who need to have extensive pedagogical content knowledge – which integrates an in-depth understanding of the mind and how the brain can effectively facilitate learning in the digital space.”

—Academy of Management Learning & Education

“This handbook starts and never stops pursuing the core of professional learning through combining the mind, the brain, and the teaching to design online learning experiences. The coverage is at once comprehensive, clear, compelling, and rare in combining depth and practicality. It is concise, enabling deep learning to come alive through the gateways to learning that Tokuhama-Espinosa so adeptly opens and guides the reader into, but ultimately and appropriately expects the reader to probe and extend. . . . Read this book, above all, use and develop the ideas, and you will find how quickly Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa jumped on and got ahead of the curve.”
—From the Foreword by Michael Fullan, professor emeritus, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

“A must-read handbook for K–20+ educators teaching online.”
—Kristen Betts, clinical professor, Drexel University

“There has never been a better time to be an educator. Here is a must-have handbook on how to be a better one, with 40 evidence-informed pedagogies from the learning sciences to help all teachers create successful learning experiences for their students.”
—Olivia Fleming, founder, OneHE

“The COVID-19 pandemic has done nothing but accelerate a process in which the education world increasingly asserts itself in digital and online learning technologies. Dr. Tokuhama-Espinosa is known for bringing the neuroscience of learning to the classroom. This book is an excellent and timely resource that provides teachers at any educational level with pedagogical tools based on learning and brain research to be used in online, face-to-face, or hybrid contexts.”
—Gilberto Pinzón, founder, Education First; chair of neuroeducation, University of Barcelona

“This is a practical guide for teachers, solidly grounded in the neuroscience of learning, and it delivers concepts in a way that empowers teachers to incorporate them into their teaching practice. Dr. Tokuhama-Espinosa has taken the opportunities thrust upon us by a global crisis, the pandemic, to pause and rethink how we can best educate learners using the knowledge amassed over the last several years in the field of neuroscience. We often hear of bridging the gap between neuroscience and education. Dr. Tokuhama-Espinosa has joined these fields, and the product is an enriched and enhanced learning experience. The way she constructs the teaching of the concepts mirrors what the teachers are guided to do for their students—a beautiful symmetry. The way she writes is very engaging and accessible with the concepts gradually emerging—I feel immersed in an adventure of learning and discovery. This book should be required reading for every teacher as part of their teacher training, as the principles are universal to all teaching practice. I love how Dr. Tokuhama-Espinosa is so respectful of everyone involved in this process of rethinking how we educate learners and brings us all onboard to engage in the process. I feel so optimistic and encouraged.”
—Barbara Arrowsmith-Young, author and lecturer

“Tracey’s book is just what teachers and school leaders need. It informs how educators will leverage the most promising neuroscience research to better design online teaching and learning experiences and integrate educational technologies that enhance the academic, social, and emotional development of all students.”
—Glenn Whitman, history teacher, dean of studies and director, Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning, St. Andrew’s Episcopal School

“This text is right on time for the dramatic global transition in education from in-class to blended online learning and teaching. Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa is a one-of-a-kind thinker and writer, offering us 40 discrete, dynamic, evidence-based teaching practices grounded securely in the sciences of mind, brain, and education research. Inspired and informed by her own experiences teaching online, Tracey's comprehensive work is engaging, inspiring, and challenging as she guides us through how the virtual learning environment opens up a new world for teachers and learners alike in this new age.”
—David Hyerle, director, Thinking Schools International

“In the last two decades, the enormous growth in our understanding of the brain through developments in neuroscience has been a driver of change in a new understanding of the biology of learning. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a paradigm shift in both teaching and learning. This timely and exciting book integrates concepts from neuroscience with tools in the online teaching environment to provide a new way of thinking in the delivery of education. This book is an essential resource in the design and implementation of educational programs.”
—Pankaj Sah, director, ARC Science of Learning Research Centre, University of Queensland

Contents+

Contents (Tentative)

Foreword 

Preface
Who Should Read This Book
How to Use This Book

Acknowledgments

Introduction
The Move
Never a Better Time to Be An Educator
Technology and Mind, Brain, and Education

1. Teaching Online Using Mind, Brain, and Education Science
The New First Steps in Teachers’ Professional Development
Online Design Using Mind, Brain, and Education Teaching
Conditions and Pedagogies for Great Learning

2. Connecting Online and Face-to-Face Learning Goals to Neuroscience
Mastery Learning
Deeper Learning
Metacognitive Awareness
Growth Mindsets
Dare To Err
Optimal Performance
Relevant Curriculum
Differentiation and Student Autonomy
Social Contagion
Strong Learning Community
Personalization
Communication

3. The Plan: Choices, the Brain, and Backwards Design
Worked Examples
Understanding By Design
Activities and Resources
An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Digital Technology: Choose Wisely

4. Time: Synchronous and Asynchronous Possibilities
Time for School: The Academic Calendar
Time for Learning: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Activities
Time for Asynchronous and Synchronous Learning
Time for Communication
Time for Evaluation

5. Instructional Design: Twelve Steps to a Great Online Course
Guidelines from State, National and International Standards
The 12-Step Process
Pros and Cons of this Instructional Design

6. The Celebration: Enjoy Our New Online Home
There’s Never Been a Better Time to Be An Educator

References

Index

About the Author

Appendix+

Download appendix in PDF format.

$34.95

Professors: Request an Exam Copy

Print copies available for US orders only. For orders outside the US, see our international distributors.

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