Education is traditionally thought to be comprised of the three Rs – reading, writing, and arithmetic. But research has revealed that students can become better if they are able to see problems and questions in a particular social context. This is known as relevance. On this week’s show, we’re going to explore how relevance can be used to keep students creative and positive.   

Our first guest is Heidi Bertels at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. She has explored how to develop relevant responses using a technique known as framing in which context is put into the problem. She explains how framing can be used in the classroom to entice creativity and takes us through one of her studies to provide an example of how this can be done using either opportunity or prosocial approaches.

When we hear about the results, we realize the importance of framing to come up with relevant answers. We also learn that framing can lead to a trade off such that the answers will have a different effect on the situation, the environment, and in this case, the community.

In our SASS Class, we change the focus of relevance from the subject matter to the student. We talk with Michael Rousell, an associate professor of education at Southern Oregon University. He has developed a way to improve the perception of a student’s own relevance to the classroom and the world through the use of surprise. We explore the neuroscience of this emotion and how it can lead to better self-esteem and ultimately, better grades.  

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Twitter: @JATetro
Email: [email protected]

Guests:

Heidi Bertels
Web: https://www.csi.cuny.edu/campus-directory/heidi-bertels
Twitter: @heidibertels

Michael Rousell
Web: http://michaelrousell.com/about
Twitter: @rousellm

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