The School of Mind & Society · the social sciences
Education & Pedagogy
What good teaching does to a mind, and how schools manage — or fail — to do it at scale.
Memory, practice, and transfer — the findings every teacher should get to lean on.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~26 hours
Unit I — Learning as Change in Memory
Working-memory limits and instruction · Retrieval practice and spacing · Why re-reading feels better than it works
Unit II — Understanding
Prior knowledge and misconceptions · Examples, analogies, and transfer · Cognitive load in lesson design
Unit III — Motivation & the Student
Beliefs about ability · Feedback that helps · Self-regulation
Building lessons that teach what they claim to teach, and prove it.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~28 hours
Unit I — Backward Design
Objectives worth writing · Evidence of understanding · Aligning goals, tasks, and assessment
Unit II — Designing the Instruction
Sequencing: concept before procedure · Worked examples and fading · Practice schedules
Unit III — Materials & Media
Multimedia principles · Accessibility from the start · Piloting and revision
Routines, questioning, and feedback: the visible craft of running a room where minds work.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — The Managed Room
Routines and expectations · Attention and transitions · Responding to disruption without drama
Unit II — Questioning & Discussion
Wait time · Cold calling, done fairly · Leading discussion without dominating it
Unit III — Feedback & Assessment
Formative checks in the flow of teaching · Written feedback that gets read · Grading and its side effects
What a test score means: reliability, validity, and the honest limits of measurement.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~26 hours
Unit I — Foundations of Measurement
Reliability · Validity as an argument · Norm- and criterion-referencing
Unit II — Building Assessments
Writing items that measure thinking · Rubrics and rater agreement · Standard setting
Unit III — Scores in the World
The standardized-testing debates · Bias and fairness analyses · Using results without abusing them
From Plato's academy to the common school: what education has been for, era by era.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~22 hours
Unit I — Ancient & Medieval Schooling
Greek paideia · Monastic and cathedral schools · The first universities
Unit II — The Modern School
Printing, literacy, and reform · Mass schooling and the state · Dewey and progressive education
Unit III — Living Questions
What schools are for: competing answers · Equity and access · Deschooling and its critics