A pastel art rendering of many aquarium visitors marveling at sharks in an enormous tank.

No, it’s not a typo for effective. Affective means something like able to affect, or touch, the soul. Some use it as a synonym for emotional or attitudinal. An affective experience can change your mood or make you have a deep feeling about a topic. Here’s what research shows us: Learners engage with topics in (at...

Remember this meme?

Pretty easy one this week – inclusion! Inclusion means making sure all learners are able to access learning equitably. Enough Said? Well, of course not. First off, what does equitably mean? Equity? Interaction Institute for Social Change, Artist: Angus Maguire. CC-BY 4.0 Most of us are familiar with the meme showing...

A child climbing a tree

In our conversation this week, Eileen Garcia-Sanchez told me about how they embrace the philosophy of risky play at the San Antonio Zoo preschool. She describes an old storm-beaten tree trunk on their campus, and what she does when a child gets to the top and wants to be lifted down: I’m not going to walk up to the...

Freeman Tilden wearing a hat

In our first podcast, educator Kady Yeomans described her work leading groups of kids on the floor of a large science museum. And the main sense I got from Kady was that she is always thinking about her audience – there are facts to deliver, sure, but there’s no lecture. Here’s how she put it, speaking from her...