Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a Neurologist and Classroom Teacher

Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning is the first book for educators written by an author who is both a neurologist and a classroom teacher. Dr. Willis used her neurology expertise to examine the past two decades of learning-centered brain research. Using her background and experience as a clinical neurologist and neuroscience researcher, she sifted through the abundance of neuroimaging and brain mapping information. She assessed what information was both valid and relevant to education. She then employed her training and experience as a classroom teacher to provide strategies for implementing the best of this research in the classroom. She brings this knowledge to life in a comprehensive and accessible style.

Teachers will be introduced to strategies that will work in their own classrooms. These strategies will help teachers improve student memory, learning, and test-taking success. Teachers will also learn how to captivate and hold students’ attention.

Dr. Willis takes a reader-friendly approach to neuroscience, describing instructional strategies that are adaptable for grades K through 12. Through statistical data, individual student stories, and her own experiences using these strategies with elementary and middle school students, Dr. Willis provides teachers with a wealth of information they will want to start using in their classrooms before finishing the book.

The book includes learning strategies that have come from research about how stress and emotion affect learning. Willis describes assessment techniques that not only assess authentically and with diversity, but also teach while assessing. This book will become one that teachers will return to again and again to pick up new strategies to make their own.