Education and Learning

Jane Mellanby is Emeritus Fellow in Experimental Psychology at St Hilda's College, University of Oxford. She is the creator of VESPARCH, a verbal and spatial reasoning test designed to identify children who are under-achieving relative to their potential.Katy Theobald is a public service delivery consultant. She has experience teaching mathematics in both the UK and India, and her research includes exploration of the impact of careers guidance on secondary school students' educational progression.

• Acknowledgements ixPreface xi1 Introduction: What Can We Learn from the History of Education? 12 Memory: How Do We Remember What We Learn? 183 Language: What Determines Our Acquisition of First and Second Languages? 504 Reading: How Do We Learn to Read and Why Is It Sometimes so Difficult? 815 Intelligence and Ability: How Does Our Understanding of These Affect How We Teach? 1096 Sex Differences: Do They Matter in Education? 1427 Metacognition: Can We Teach People How to Learn? 1738 Academic Selection: Do We Need to Do It and Can We Make It Fair? 2079 Creativity: What Is It, and How and Why Should We Nurture It? 23910 Education Policy: How Evidence Based Is It? 27611 Comparative Education: What Lessons Can We Learn from Other Countries? 30912 Life-long Learning: How Can We Teach Old Dogs New Tricks? 34813 Technology: How Is It Shaping a Modern Education and Is It Also Shaping Young Minds? 37414 Conclusions: What Does the Future Hold for Education? 403Index 406

“Overall, I share the authors’ underlying belief that psychology has something useful to contribute to improving education, and I applaud their efforts to demonstrate how to take an evidence-based approach to practical issues in education.”  (PsycCRITIQUES, 17 November 2014)