Learning Books - Page 2

Learning and Behavior

James E. Mazur

List Price: $51.21 By: Prentice Hall College Div Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $0.95

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This contemporary survey of the field of learning offers comprehensive coverage of both classic studies and the most recent developments and trends—with an emphasis on the importance of learning principles in everyday life. Many real-world examples and analogies make the often abstract concepts and theories of the field more concrete and relevant, and most chapters include sections that describe how the theories and principles have been used in the applied field of behavior modification. Simple Ideas, Simple Associations, and Simple Cells. Innate Behavior Patterns and Habituation. Basic Principles of Classical Conditioning. Theories and Research on Classical Conditioning. Basic Principles of Operant Conditioning. Reinforcement Schedules: Experimental Analyses and Applications. Avoidance and Punishment. Theories and Research on Operant Conditioning. Stimulus Control and Concept Formation. Comparative Cognition. Learning by Observation. Learning Motor Skills. Choice. For educators, social workers, and anyone interested in human learning behavior.

The Way They Learn

Cynthia Tobias

List Price: $14.99 By: Focus on the Family Pub Amazon Marketplace: 111 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

I'm sharing it 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is so easy to read and wonderfully helpful. I found myself laughing at myself and my husband. I loved it so much I'm ordering a copy for my friend. I'd recommend it for all parents homeschooling (such as myself) or not (such as my friend).

A life saver! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

My daughter has been struggling with reading and I found this book by accident. I could not put it down and read it in two days. It has already helped us so much! As I read about various qualities of auditory and kinesthetic learners, I would think 'that's her exactly!' This book offered some hands-on practical tools. For example, now we do hand motions when we are practicing a new word. She gets it immediately (the spelling) and retains it!

The book also gave me a good starting point to do additional research on learning styles, and I found several helpful websites and articles on the topic. I think now of all the times we told my daughter to sit still while practicing reading, and now I get that she actually needs some movement, however small, for her brain to learn in the best way for her. Thisd is a great resource!

Christine Mitchell, author and illustrator of:
Welcome Home, Forever Child: A Celebration of Children Adopted as Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Beyond

Editorial Review:

In this enlightening resource, Cynthia Ulrich Tobias introduces the variety of learning styles that shape the way students interpret their world. Once these approaches are understood, parents and teachers can become far more effective in helping children grasp confusing concepts, stay interested in lessons, and utilize their strengths. By recognizing children's learning preferences, you can reach them more efficiently and effectively! These concepts are powerful tools for drawing out the best in a child. Give your youngster the best chance for success by coming to understand The Way They Learn.

The Book of Learning and Forgetting

Frank Smith

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 6 to 10 days By: Teachers College Press Amazon Marketplace: 18 new & used starting at $13.27

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Educational Utopia 3 out of 5 stars.
10 of 14 people found this review helpful.

As a high school teacher for 15 years and now an educational consultant, I came to Dr. Smith's book with a lot of interest. There can be little doubt that there are some powerful ideas here. His belief that we only learn by joining "clubs" (e.g. the spoken-language club, the literacy club, etc.) is a great metaphor for the apprentice/journeyman/master mode of learner that has deep roots in our society. One can even argue, as Dr. Smith does, that this is the best way to learn things so we never forget. (In fact, Dr. Smith believes this is really the only way to learn things.) And yet, in many ways his ideas are utopian, despite the fact that he claims not to believe in "ideal schools."

Admittedly, I am always suspicious of authors in the field of education who spell out big ideas that seem simple and obvious and yet provide no concrete examples of how these ideas can be implemented in our schools. In my experience, it leads to two things: repetition and unwarranted criticism. Both of these are obvious features of this book. He harps on his one point over and over without expanding or detailing its implications and devotes chapter after chapter to how things went wrong and are wrong in our educational system.

I also find his criticisms of our educational system to be disingenuous. I agree that our current educational system has it roots in the military-industrial complex and that this has affected everything from the bell system to its vocabulary; however, I disagree that this was necessarily a wrong approach. The one room schoolhouse served the needs of a nation that was 90% agricultural, the bulk whose students needed only the rudiments of math & literacy. The transition to a military-industrial school system was necessitated by the Industrial Revolution and world wars. The fact is, the educational system that Dr. Smith so criticizes did exactly what it was designed to do and made the United States the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth and the sometimes ridiculous "scientific" educational research that produced it led to some powerful advances in our understanding of people and how they learn. The people who made it work should be thanked even if they are now behind the times.

The key thing to understand is not Dr. Smith's bluster about the fact that our current educational structure is somehow inherently wrong or bad. Yes, it has its weakness which deserve to be pointed out but, more importantly, we need to understand that over the past twenty years or so our society has undergone another seismic shift away from an industrial base to a service/information base. The problem is that our educational system has yet to catch up with this. It may be that there is some value in looking back to the "classic view of learning" for inspiration to help us through the paradigm shift currently underway in education but it will take real innovation, not abstract criticism, to make a difference. The shift is already underway and, though our school system is still riddled with holdouts from a previous era, eventually our school system will look entirely new. Otherwise, Dr. Smith is right and our educational system will collapse. But I don't think so.

Editorial Review:

In this thought-provoking book, Frank Smith explains how schools and educational authorities systematically obstruct the powerful inherent learning abilities of children, creating handicaps that often persist through life. The author eloquently contrasts a false and fabricated "official theory" that learning is work (used to justify the external control of teachers and students through excessive regulation and massive testing) with a correct but officially suppressed "classic view" that learning is a social process that can occur naturally and continually through collaborative activities. This book will be crucial reading in a time when national authorities continue to blame teachers and students for alleged failures in education. It will help educators and parents to combat sterile attitudes toward teaching and learning and prevent current practices from doing further harm.

Brain-Based Learning: The New Paradigm of Teaching

Eric P. Jensen

Amazon Price: $61.56 List Price: $76.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Corwin Press Amazon Marketplace: 24 new & used starting at $57.56

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"This book is filled with classroom implications and instructional suggestions based on research. Classroom teachers, school administrators, professional development trainers, college/university faculty, and parents would all benefit from this information."
-Andrea Rosenblatt, Associate Professor
Barry University

"I have used the information from this book in many of my trainings. The 'What This Means to You' sections translate technical information into everyday language for the reader. This is truly a book that makes, has made, and will continue to make a contribution to the field."
-Steve Hutton, Area Coordinator
Kentucky Center for Instructional Discipline

Adopt a teaching approach aligned with the brain's natural way of learning!

Borrowing research from the disciplines of neuroscience, biology, and psychology, brain expert Eric Jensen offers an easy-to-understand explanation of the relationship between learning and the brain, helping educators increase student motivation and achievement. The author shares empirical data and provides in-depth information about the impact of physiological effects, sensory stimuli, and emotions on learning. Updated and streamlined, this second edition offers:

• A set of brain-based principles for informed decision making
• Low-cost teaching strategies that teachers can implement immediately
• Reader-friendly language accessible for both novice and veteran educators
• Easy-to-follow chapter outlines and helpful text boxes to emphasize key points

Written for teachers, teacher leaders, and administrators, this comprehensive text demonstrates how brain-compatible learning environments can work to optimize learning in the classroom, reduce discipline problems, overcome learning difficulties, and increase graduation rates.

(20071213)

Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives)

Etienne Wenger

List Price: $65.00 By: Cambridge University Press Amazon Marketplace: 7 new & used starting at $78.88

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

excellent conceptual thinking 5 out of 5 stars.
22 of 23 people found this review helpful.

For those grappling with the need to understand and talk about how people come together and interact beyond the org. chart, this book has a lot to offer. Theoretically-based, it focuses on a social theory of learning that is broad enough to cover a wide range of human activities, well beyond what we would normally consider to be 'learning'. 'Communities of practice' offers a comprehensive framework for understanding and analysing what people do in the context of their social milieu. The author includes many examples and uses a work-place vignette to illustrate the relevance and power of his ideas. If you are not afraid of theory and abstraction and are open to new concepts, this book may indeed be revolutionary.

Editorial Review:

Learning is becoming an urgent topic. Nations worry about the learning of their citizens, companies about the learning of their workers, schools about the learning of their students. But it is not always easy to think about how to foster learning in innovative ways. This book presents a framework for doing that, with a social theory of learning that is ground-breaking yet accessible, with profound implications not only for research, but also for all those who have to foster learning as part of their responsibilites at work, at home, at school.

How the Brain Learns Mathematics

David A. Sousa

Amazon Price: $35.05 List Price: $38.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Corwin Press Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $24.00

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"I am so impressed with this book that I believe it should be required reading for all teachers who teach math at any level."
-Mary Thoreen, Mathematics Teacher
Wilson Middle School, Tampa, FL

"An excellent, well-organized, well-written book-practical advice grounded in solid research and presented in compelling language."
-Robert Sylwester, Emeritus Professor of Education
University of Oregon

Learn how the brain processes mathematical concepts and why some students develop math anxiety!

Highly respected author and researcher David A. Sousa explains the latest neuroscientific findings in practical, understandable terms and discusses the impact this information has for teaching mathematics at all grade levels. How the Brain Learns Mathematics covers the cognitive mechanisms for learning mathematics, the environmental and developmental factors that contribute to mathematics difficulties, and ways to differentiate mathematics instruction.

The text offers a unique and simplified four-step model for teaching mathematics to PreK–12 students that helps teachers consistently relate what learners experience in the classroom to concrete, real-world applications. Based on primary research, this award-winning text also examines:

• Children’s innate number sense and how the brain develops an understanding of number relationships
• Rationales for modifying lessons to meet the developmental learning stages of young children, preadolescents, and adolescents
• How to plan lessons in PreK–12 mathematics
• Implications of current research for planning mathematics lessons, including discoveries about memory systems and lesson timing
• Methods to help elementary and secondary school teachers detect mathematics difficulties
• Clear connections to the NCTM standards and curriculum focal points

Teachers of mathematics at all levels will find this book invaluable for making informed decisions about which instructional strategies and activities to use in creating a mathematics-friendly classroom.

(20070508)

Learning and Memory: Basic Principles, Processes, and Procedures

W. Scott Terry

List Price: $80.00 By: Allyn & Bacon Amazon Marketplace: 11 new & used starting at $16.96

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Editorial Review:

This comprehensive book covers the core principles of learning and memory in a clear, reader-friendly style, covering animal learning and human memory in a balanced fashion. The relationship between the field of neuropsychology and learning and memory has been stressed throughout the book, with special attention given to brain imaging research. The coverage of memory problems has been expanded to include sections addressing imagination inflation and recovered memory. Additional discussion of spatial memory in Chapter 11 features a discussion of the computer-based virtual mazes that are used for testing human spatial learning. Chapter 12, "Psychopathology and Memory," now includes a piece on post-traumatic stress disorder and related effects on memory. Designed for those interested in the combination of learning with memory and the psychology of learning.

Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives)

Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger

Amazon Price: $44.95 List Price: $44.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Cambridge University Press Amazon Marketplace: 20 new & used starting at $23.97

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

You'll need a light-heart to bear the blacksmith's anvil. 5 out of 5 stars.
38 of 46 people found this review helpful.

I wonder if two people have ever had so much fun writing a book together as Jean Lave and Etiene Wenger. Lave's choice of a cover illustration supports my point: she found the artwork at a beer-fest while visiting friends and studying in Europe. Lave and Wenger are world reknowned scholars who would rather spend the afternoon in a butcher's kitchen than hobb-knobbing at the faculty lounge. With "Situated Learning," the reader is invited to follow Lave and Wenger as they ponder the consequences of doors, tables, timeclocks, work schedules, and union contracts on human development and potential.
After reading "Situated Learning," it is difficult to imagine the constellation of concepts that make up our modern thinking of what learning is without Lave and Wenger's contributions. Like the artwork on the book's cover, and the story of its origins, Lave and Wenger's analysis restoke the fires fueling the learning sciences. It is not an overstatement to say that this short, sometimes difficult to follow book, is responsible for a whole new generation of thinking and research on learning and its sociocultural consequences.
Their analytical objective was simple: dethrone the dominant conceptions of learning in the social sciences and everyday life. In their place, Lave and Wenger offer and illustrate a handful of concepts that students of learning across the social and applied sciences are now usings to inspire new insights on the origins of social ascension and strife.
I recommend that the reader, too, pick up this book with the intent of having some fun: let your inhibitions, and intellectual reservations, down for a couple of hours and enjoy the show as Lave and Wenger take off the Emporer's (modern psychology's, that is) clothes. Readers need to approach this book with a light-heart, as its simplicity and substance leave one feeling as if the dominant, 20th century schools of thought on learning have placed a blacksmith's anvil on the center of one's chest. Thank goodness Lave and Wenger have brought our attention to this matter.
Needless to say, I highly recommend the book.

Editorial Review:

In this important theoretical treatise, Jean Lave, anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, computer scientist, push forward the notion of situated learning--that learning is fundamentally a social process and not solely in the learner's head. The authors maintain that learning viewed as situated activity has as its central defining characteristic a process they call legitimate peripheral participation. Learners participate in communities of practitioners, moving toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community. Legitimate peripheral participation provides a way to speak about crucial relations between newcomers and oldtimers and about their activities, identities, artifacts, knowledge and practice. The communities discussed in the book are midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, and recovering alcoholics, however, the process by which participants in those communities learn can be generalized to other social groups.

Enriching the Brain: How to Maximize Every Learner's Potential

Eric Jensen

Amazon Price: $12.89 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Jossey-Bass Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $10.45

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Eric Jensen—a leading expert in the translation of brain research into education, argues in Enriching the Brain that we greatly underestimate students’ achievement capacity. Drawing from a wide range of neuroscience research as well as related studies, Jensen reveals that the human brain is far more dynamic and malleable than we earlier believed. He offers us a powerful new understanding of how the brain can be “enriched,” across the board to maximize learning, memory, behavior and overall function. The bottom line is we have far more to do with how our children’s brains turn out than we previously thought. Enriching the Brain shows that lasting brain enrichment doesn’t occur randomly through routine or ordinary learning. It requires a specific, and persistent experiences that amount to a “formula” for maximizing brain potential. Parents, teachers and policy-makers would do well to memorize this formula. In fact, the lifelong potential of all school age kids depends on whether or not we use it. Offering an inspiring and innovative set of practices for promoting enrichment in the home, the school, and the classroom, this book is a clarion call. All of us, from teachers to parents to policymakers must take their role as ‘brain shapers’ much more seriously and this book gives the tools with which to do it.

Behavior Analysis and Learning

W. David Pierce, W. Frank Epling

List Price: $64.85 By: Prentice Hall College Div Amazon Marketplace: 8 new & used starting at $21.97

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Behavior Analysis and Learning is an essential textbook covering the basic principles in the field of behavior analysis and learned behaviors. Both active researchers, the authors are disciples of a coherent theory--experimental analysis of behavior--pioneered by B.F. Skinner. Using this theory as a base to explain human behavior, researchers must understand the interactions between an individual and his or her environment.

Expanding on concepts of the past editions, this book:
*is an advanced introductory text on operant conditioning from a very consistent Skinnerian perspective;
*covers a range of principles from basic respondent conditioning through applied behavior analysis into cultural design;
*treats the topic from a consistent world view of selectionism;
*elaborates on Darwinian components and biological connections with behavior; and
*expands most chapters with revised references and additional citations.

The material presented inthis book provides the reader with the best available foundation in behavior science. The discovery of functional relations between the organism and the environment constitute the objective foundation for this book. These functional relationships are described, and their application in accounting for old behavior and generating new behavior is illustrated. As such, this book is a valuable resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in psychology or other behavior-based disciplines.