Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) science is by definition transdisciplinary. However, the communication and collaboration between constituent disciplines needed for true transdisciplinarity remains relatively rare. Consequently, many of the potential benefits of MBE science remain unrealized for parties on all sides of the discipline. The present commentary first conducts an analysis of the current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of transdisciplinary partnerships in MBE. A new, free, and international web platform (“UNIFIED”) is then proposed to broker relationships between researchers and teachers within schools. This website would allow users to form collaborations based on a system of tags indexing their research interests as well as practicalities such as their location. Such a website appears well placed to realize many of the opportunities, and mitigate the threats and weaknesses, of transdisciplinary MBE research. The article concludes with an appeal to interested researchers and schools to contribute to the development of the project.
Institutions are moving towards on-screen delivery of tuition, with the implication that students have to read course material onscreen. This necessitates paying attention to the role of student reading skills and linked to this the similarities and differences between reading on paper and reading on-screen. The reasons for moving on-screen are discussed in the context of Open, Distance and e-Learning (ODeL)
theories and the role of metacognition in ODeL tuition. In order to contextualise the metacognition of reading attention is given to reading skills in South Africa, to the act of reading itself as it is represented in the brain and mind, as well as to the peculiarities of reading on paper and reading on-screen. An important implication of this overview is that it is not enough to merely present course content to students. The skills to master the content should be taught as well, with the teaching of reading being an integral part thereof. One thing is clear and that is all students and for that matterall readers -whether they read on paper or on-screen, need to be taught meta-cognitive reading strategies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.