Chapter 2: Teaching Human Development Using Human Development: The Science of Learning as a Guide for Future Educators

Imagine you are a Kindergarten teacher giving your students a vocabulary test. Each student is presented with an image of a lion and expected to identify it by filling in a label underneath the picture. When one student hands in her test, you see that she wrote “cat,” instead. You mark an “X” on the student’s paper.

Now you are in a third grade math class in an underserved urban elementary school. Your students frequently face opportunity gaps and struggle to master fundamental math content. Each week, you administer a timed multiplication quiz. Today’s covers the seven times tables. A student hands in their quiz with just two questions answered, even though they accurately and effortlessly stated all their times tables from 0 to 12 when you began yesterday’s class with an activity that required the students to practice their times tables with each other in small groups.