Initium Cognitive Science And Research Informed Primary Practice

The beginnings of all things are small, but the possibilities for our primary pupils are infinite. Many books explore the wonders of science and education research but few are rooted in the reality of the primary classroom, what it is really like to run a primary classroom, and to spend each day in the fascinating company of our youngest learners. Initium looks with care and specific attention at the needs of our youngest learners, the development of age and stage appropriate practice and pedagogy, alongside the joys and realities of working within the primary phase. Primary is a unique stage of a child's development and requires a specific and distinctive approach to how we structure teaching and learning. What works at age 16 or 14 won't necessarily work with a classroom of 6-year-olds. Informed by science and rooted in over 25 years of primary expertise, Initium is research-informed practice for the primary specialist.

The beginnings of all things are small, but the possibilities for our primary pupils are infinite. Many books explore the wonders of science and education research but few are rooted in the reality of the primary classroom, what it is really like to run a primary classroom, and to spend each day in the fascinating company of our youngest learners. Initium looks with care and specific attention at the needs of our youngest learners, the developmen.

researchED is an educator-led organisation with the goal of bridging the gap between research and practice. This accessible and punchy series, overseen by founder Tom Bennett, tackles the most important topics in education, with a range of experienced contributors exploring the latest evidence and research and how it can apply in a variety of classroom settings. In this edition, Kate Jones considers various principles from cognitive science that can be used to enhance teaching and learning, including cognitive load theory, dual coding theory, interleaving, retrieval practice and spaced practice. Kate has sourced contributions from teachers and researchers including Jade Pearce, Sarah Cottingham, Adam Boxer, Jonathan Firth, Paul A. Kirschner, Pedro De Bruyckere and Lekha Sharma. Kate Jones is a teacher and an experienced leader. She is the author of seven books and is senior associate for teaching and learning at Evidence Based Education.

This book, first published in 2007, is an international overview of the state of our knowledge in sociocultural psychology - as a discipline located at the crossroads between the natural and social sciences and the humanities. Since the 1980s, the field of psychology has encountered the growth of a new discipline - cultural psychology - that has built new connections between psychology, sociology, anthropology, history and semiotics. The handbook integrates contributions of sociocultural specialists from fifteen countries, all tied together by the unifying focus on the role of sign systems in human relations with the environment. It emphasizes theoretical and methodological discussions on the cultural nature of human psychological phenomena, moving on to show how meaning is a natural feature of action and how it eventually produces conventional symbols for communication. Such symbols shape individual experiences and create the conditions for consciousness and the self to emerge; turn social norms into ethics; and set history into motion.

The narrative around flexible working needs flipping. After being able to work flexibly for 14 of her 23 years in education across teaching, school leadership and MAT leadership roles, Emma Turner realised that sadly, she's actually in the minority and has just been kinda lucky. Across the education system, although there is a recent groundswell of support for developing more life friendly, innovative and flexi ways of working, there are still a great deal of misconceptions, biases and prejudices about flexible working and flexible workers. Through her 'playlist' of educational floor fillers, Emma explores some of the successful ways in which flexible working can be viewed by both employers and employees for staff at all levels, including senior and school leadership. Designed to open up the flexible working conversation, this book outlines what can work, what has worked and what could work. This new way of viewing the flexi narrative from an experienced flex-pert encourages all to revisit our views on flexible working.

The narrative around leadership needs to change. After reading scores of leadership books in an attempt to find a voice which resonated, Emma Turner (a primary teacher of 22 years with over a decade of school leadership experience including being part of one of the first all female Co-Headships from 2009, and mum of three small children) realised that the bulk of leadership advice out there did not take into account trying to balance parenting three children as well as working in a leadership post. This book takes a practical, humorous and unique perspective on the leadership narrative by looking at leadership through the eyes of what we notice about toddlers. Packed with real examples of what works as well as reassurance that leadership is extremely do-able for many of us, this book aims to demystify some of the leadership behaviours; encourage us all to believe we can be leaders; and to, 'Be More Toddler'.

English is the language of science today. No matter which languages you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to publish in English. But that hasn’t always been the case. Though there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned over time—until the rise of English in the twentieth century. So how did we get from there to here? How did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to English? And what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing science in the polyglot past? With Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin resurrects that lost world, in part through an ingenious mechanism: the pages of his highly readable narrative account teem with footnotes—not offering background information, but presenting quoted material in its original language. The result is stunning: as we read about the rise and fall of languages, driven by politics, war, economics, and institutions, we actually see it happen in the ever-changing web of multilingual examples. The history of science, and of English as its dominant language, comes to life, and brings with it a new understanding not only of the frictions generated by a scientific community that spoke in many often mutually unintelligible voices, but also of the possibilities of the polyglot, and the losses that the dominance of English entails. Few historians of science write as well as Gordin, and Scientific Babel reveals his incredible command of the literature, language, and intellectual essence of science past and present. No reader who takes this linguistic journey with him will be disappointed.

Primary curriculum design has been in sharp focus in recent years. After leading on curriculum design and effective subject leadership for 24 years across multiple schools, Emma has written the handbook for both the complex thinking which underpins primary curriculum design and provided the practical models to make it work. There is much advice out there for primary schools but much is often dominated by voices not trained or experienced in primary practice. Emma outlines the unique considerations needed for designing and implementing a rich, high-quality curriculum which serves our youngest learners – a blend of academic thinking, educational research, the wisdom of decades of primary experience and a true love of the unique nature of primary. Primary curriculum design is a unique knowledge domain of its own and Emma explains and explores how this knowledge and the thinking around it needs to be championed and implemented through both academic and child development lenses. Rooted in experience, underpinned by successful approaches implemented in hundreds of schools – curriculum design in primary is complex and nuanced but it can also be 'Simplicitus'.