The New York Times: Imagine a kindergarten classroom. Picture the vividly colored scalloped borders on the walls, the dancing letters, maybe some charming cartoon barnyard animals holding up “Welcome to School!” signs. That bright, cheery look has become a familiar sight in classrooms across the country, one that has only grown More
TIME: Dads who want their daughters to aim for prestigious professions should start by doing the dishes or loading the washing machine, a new study suggests. The study, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, found that fathers who perform household chores are more likely to bring up daughters who break More
The Boston Globe: TEACHERS, TAKE NOTE: Consider a more minimalist look for your classroom. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that when kindergarten students were taught in a classroom with decorations on the wall—posters, maps, artwork—typical of many classrooms, they were more distracted and, as a result, performed worse on subsequent More
Young children instinctively use a “language-like” structure to communicate through gestures, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research, led by the University of Warwick, shows that when young children are asked to use gestures to communicate, their gestures segment information and More
Fast Company: Few environments feature such a cacophony of decor as the elementary school classroom. Colorful bulletin boards, scientific posters, state maps, and student artwork tend to cover nearly every inch of wall space. Yet a new study on classroom design from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University suggests that all that educational More
The New York Times: Does handwriting matter? Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard. But psychologists More
