People are willing to work harder to learn the content and skills they are emotional about, and they are emotionally interested when the content and skills they are learning seem useful and connected to their motivations and future goals.

Quite literally, it is neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about or remember information about which one has had no emotion because the healthy brain does not waste energy processing information that does not matter to the individual (Immordino-Yang, 2015).

extensive research now makes clear that the brain networks supporting emotion, learning, and memory are intricately and fundamentally intertwined (Panksepp and Biven, 2012), even for experts in technical do-mains such as mathematics (Zeki et al., 2014).

Brain development and functioning, like the learning it supports, is socially contextualized. It happens in the context of experiences, social relationships, and cognitive opportunities as subjectively perceived and emotionally expe-rienced by the learner. Cultural norms and goals shape how and what people think. This is true even when a person is working alone or independently.

the proposition that all learning is a social process shaped by and infused with a system of cultural meaning (Nasir and Hand, 2006; National Research Council, 2009; Tomasello, 2016). This work bridges the worlds of home and school. It examines how culturally defined expectations and the ways caregivers in a community engage with their children interact with school learning: the context and the content of what one learns in the structured setting of a school.

Segall and colleagues (1966). This work challenged the assumption that people everywhere, regardless of their backgrounds, see the world in the same way because they share the same perceptual system. It showed that people living in urban, industrialized environments are more susceptible to the Muller-Lyer illusion (the perception that a set of lines of the same length, but flanked by angles pointing inward (<) or outward (>) are actually different lengths) than people who live in physical environments in which straight lines and right angles are not often seen.

The social practices of school, such as coordinated activities and routines, reflect the culture of that school and the goals and values of the larger society in which the school is embedded. Individuals learn to navigate that culture and may do so in different ways that reflect their own unique experiences within their homes and communities.

While humans share basic brain structures and processes, as well as fundamental experiences such as relationships with family, developmental stages, and much more, each of these phenomena is shaped by the individual’s precise experiences. Learning does not happen in the same way for all people because cultural influences pervade development from the beginning of life

Research-ers have also pointed out that the research design and methodology used in laboratory-based cognitive psychology and neuroscience research often cannot be practically applied to classroom settings (Oliver and Conole, 2003; Smeyers and Depaepe, 2013). In other words, one of the major ongoing challenges for educational research is that findings from the studies examining fundamental learning processes require substantial translation and interpretation in order to be applicable to practice

As documented by Henrich and colleagues and by others (Henrich et al., 2010a; Nielsen et al., 2017), the social and behavioral sciences have relied very heavily on study subjects from cultures that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic, or “WEIRD” (thus, this issue of potential sample bias is known as the WEIRD problem). These researchers also noted that a substantial proportion of research subjects are college students and thus are also disproportionately younger as a group than adults in general. This issue is a particular challenge with laboratory-based research. Field research in real-world settings can much more readily include diverse populations. Findings based only on research with WEIRD subjects cannot be assumed to characterize human beings in general because this population is not repre-sentative of the entire human population

“Learn” is an active verb; it is something people do, not something that happens to them. People are not passive recipients of learning, even if they are not always aware that the learning process is happening

learning involves myriad processes that interact over time to influence the way people make sense of the world.

Specifically, it is now possible to move beyond the idea of an “average” learner to embrace and explain variation among individuals.

learning that occurs outside of compulsory educational environments is a function of the learner’s motivation, interests, and oppor-tunities.

People continue to learn and grow through-out the life span, and their choices, motivation, and capacity for self-regulation, as well as their circumstances, influence how much and how well they learn and transfer their learn-ing to new situations

Purposefully teaching the language and practices specific to particular disciplines, such as science, his-tory, and mathematics, is critical to helping students develop deep understanding in these subjects.

A disparate body of research points to the importance of engaging the learner in directing his own learn-ing by, for example, providing targeted feedback and support in developing metacognitive skills, challenges that are well matched to the learner’s current capacities, and support in setting and pursuing meaningful goals

helping them to set desired learning goals and appropri-ately challenging goals for performance; • creating learning experiences that they value; • supporting their sense of control and autonomy; • developing their sense of competency by helping them to recognize, monitor, and strategize about their learning progress; and • creating an emotionally supportive and nonthreaten-ing learning environment where learners feel safe and valued.

Motivation to learn is fostered for learners of all ages when they perceive the school or learning environment is a place where they “belong” and when the environment promotes their sense of agency and purpose.

The effectiveness of learning strategies is influenced by such contextual factors as the learner’s existing skills and prior knowledge, the nature of the material, and the goals for learning. Applying these approaches effectively therefore requires careful thought about how their specific mechanisms could be beneficial for particular learners, set-tings, and learning objectives.

The learning strategies for which there is evidence of effectiveness include ways to help students retrieve information and encourage them to summarize and explain material they are learning, as well as ways to space and struc-ture the presentation of material. Effective strategies to create organized and distinctive knowledge structures encourage learners to go beyond the explicit material by elaborating and to enrich their mental representation of information by calling up and applying it in various contexts

Learners routinely generate their own novel understanding of the information they are accumulating and productively extend their knowledge by making logical connections between pieces of information.

and it can facilitate new learning. However, prior knowledge can also lead to bias by causing people to not attend to new information and to rely on existing schema to solve new problems. These biases can be overcome but only through conscious effort

Prior knowledge can reduce the attentional demands associated with engaging in well-learned activities

The cues available in a learner’s environment are criti-cal for what she will be able to recall; they also play a role in the way the learner begins to integrate new information as knowledge

In order to coordinate these processes, an individual needs to be able to monitor and regulate his own learning. The ability to monitor and regulate learning changes over the life span and can be improved through interventions.

Research and theory from diverse fields have contributed to an evolving understanding that all learners grow and learn in culturally defined ways in culturally defined contexts. While humans share basic brain structures and processes, as well as fundamental experiences such as relationships with family, age-related stages, and many more, each of these phenomena are shaped by an individual’s precise experiences. Learning does not happen in the same way for all people because cultural influences are influential from the beginning of life

Sometimes administrations use the excuse of financial exigency to try toremove poorly performing faculty or whole departments. Since the processis long and elaborate, administrations usually must be very certain of theirpositions, or faculty members may seek through legal means to retain theirpositions.

In1915, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) wasformed to help protect academic freedom by securing the employment ofU.S. college faculty. A set of policy statements was prepared (now publishedannually—see AAUP,2005) that outlined the conditions under which fac-ulty members could be fired from their positions.

In the latter instance, satisfactory teaching—thatis, neither extraordinarily good nor bad—may be sufficient in the promotiondecision, since research and publication are often deemed more important.In institutions where teaching is more important, a poor research publicationrecord may be ignored, while a moderate or good publication record mayoffset some deficiencies in teaching ability.

Candidates for tenure and promotion must collect evidence of their suc-cess in teaching. At most colleges and universities, at the end of each semesterin every course, evaluation data are collected from students.

The higher education institutions also suffer. Part-time faculty typicallyhave no voting rights in the organizational decision-making structure. Theymay seldom attend faculty meetings and participate infrequently in decisionsabout important faculty or institutional matters. Partly as a result, they maynot be fully committed to promoting the interests of the institution. Theirinvolvement in the life of the institution—for example, advising students orparticipating in institutional events and ceremonies—is limited.

For those who plan ca-reers in institutions of higher education, the perception is that significantprofessional satisfaction is more likely to be forthcoming from noteworthyresearch productivity. Good teachers, in contrast, rarely become ‘‘famous,’’certainly not outside of their own institutions, while good researchers do.

We should also note that faculty participation in governance is especiallycomplex on unionized campuses, due to collective bargaining agreementsand formal grievance procedures

The extent of faculty involvement in institutional decision making tendsto vary among institutional types

a faculty council or senate (variously named at differentcolleges and universities) is the representative body for the discussion of mat-ters of cross-departmental or cross-school concern to faculty in the institu-tion.

faculty engage in decision making about mattersof direct concern to their primary common activities—curriculum andteaching

Hence, thereare often faculty in the different schools who teach similar courses and belongto the same discipline but seldom interact due to the highly differentiatedstructure of the typical academic organization.

Statewide governing boards seek to ensure responsible use of public re-sources.

Public higher education, for example,did not become prominent in the United States until the1950s, and thesesomewhat newer institutions are much more subject to standardization andbureaucratization than are the older private universities and colleges

Increasingly of late, many in-stitutions are offering long-term, renewable contracts instead of tenure, andare relying more extensively on adjunct faculty appointments. In fact, morethan half of all new faculty members are hired into positions that are noteligible for tenure (Schuster,2003).

Public institu-tions receive some proportion of their funding directly from the state gov-ernment, and are obligated to comply with state statutes on issuesranging from setting tuition levels to demonstrating accountability on per-formance benchmarks

prevailing disci-plinary paradigms often reflect and beget delimited questions, measures, epistemes, and frameworks; research teams often lack disciplinary and/or cultural diversity; publishing in one’s own disciplinary journal is often most highly rewarded; and funders often have nar-row priorities.

To date, such knowledge has existed largely in separate fields of research, and has not been integrated such that its profound relevance to developmental processes becomes both visible and directly applicable to the set-tings in which children grow and learn. As a result, important knowledge remains underutilized, contributing to persistent disparities, challenges, and inadequacies in our education systems

Although our soci-ety and our schools often compartmentalize thesedevelopmental processes and treat them as distinctfrom one another—and treat the child as distinct fromthe many contexts she experiences—the sciences oflearning and development demonstate how tightlyinterrelated they are and how they jointly produce theoutcomes for which educators are responsible.

For example,in my role as a peer reviewer for a number of higher education journals, Ifind that more and more I am asked to review papers that often have barely899NEWDIRECTIONS FORTEACHING ANDLEARNING, no. 107, Fall 2006 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) • DOI: 10.1002/tl.247

n further amplification of this proposal, it is suggested that each of the eight stages of psychodynamic psychotherapy has a core psychological process that relates to a specific kind of existential search or quest for “something missing.”

In essence, “the knowledgeproduction itself may become the form of mobilization” that induces indi-viduals to make the cognitive shift (Gaventa and Cornwall, 2001, p. 76) thatleads to change from within the self outward to the institution