Success is no accident: To reach your goal you need perseverance. But where does the motivation come from? Scientists have now identified the neural circuit in the brain of fruit flies which makes them perform at their best when searching for food. The odor of vinegar or fruit lets fruit flies walk faster. To reach…

Want to ensure your child hits their expected developmental milestones? New research suggests living in areas with high exposure to green-space can help set them up for success. For the study, researchers at the UBC faculty of forestry and faculty of medicine analyzed the developmental scores of 27,372 children in Metro Vancouver who attended kindergarten…

What are the fundamental skills that young children need to develop at the start of school for future academic success? Researchers examined the links between emotion knowledge, cooperation, locomotor activity and numerical skills in 706 pupils aged 3 to 6. The results show that emotion knowledge, cooperative social behavior and locomotor activity are interrelated and…

Research suggests that observing others’ decision-making can teach people to make better decisions themselves. The research tested the effectiveness of a new debiasing training strategy and reports first evidence that watching others make decisions can improve our own decision making. The research, co-authored by Professor Irene Scopelliti, Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science, tested the…

The topic of electricity often poses difficulties for many secondary school students in physics lessons. Researchers have now developed and empirically evaluated a new, intuitive curriculum as part of a major comparative study. The result: not only do secondary school students gain a better conceptual understanding of electric circuits, but teachers also perceive the curriculum…

Academic breaks after high school — even those lasting just a few months — can cause some students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to forgo enrolling in college altogether, according to new research. In the paper, «Disrupted academic careers: The returns to time off after high school,» Evan Riehl, assistant professor in the ILR School,…

A Danish university lecturer experiments with banning screens in discussion lessons. A new study looks at the results, which include greater student presence, improved engagement and deeper learning. At a time when much of instruction is performed digitally and university lecture halls are often illuminated by a sea of laptops, it can be difficult to…

A new study explores the science-backed core pillars of learning and examples of play spaces that incorporate them, and the researchers give tips for parents to use them at home. A new paper led by Penn State graduate Brenna Hassinger-Das, now an assistant professor of psychology at Pace University-NYC, and Jennifer Zosh, professor of human…

Researchers have developed unique, interactive, 3D narrated diagrams to help students learn about the structure and function of perceptual systems in the human brain. A new study exploring how students responded to these lessons on desktop PCs and in virtual reality (VR) offers new insights into the benefits of VR as an educational tool. Led…

The perception that boys are more interested than girls in computer science and engineering starts as young as age six, according to a new study. That may be one reason why girls and women are underrepresented in these STEM career fields. «Gender-interest stereotypes that say ‘STEM is for boys’ begin in grade school, and by…