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Jessica Martin and Scott Gaier

Blog

Engaging the Heart to Improve Learning: The Neuroscience of Positive Emotion (Part 2)

This is Part 2 of a three-part blog. Part 1 explores the Hebraic understanding of the heart to reclaim a vision for the transformational and life-giving education that occurs when educators acknowledge students’ whole selves—intellect and emotions included. Part 2 uses neuroscience to further explore the nature and role of emotions in learning, and Part…
Jessica Martin and Scott Gaier
December 12, 2023
Blog

Engaging the Heart to Improve Learning: Rediscovering the Inseparable Force Between Intellect and Emotion (Part 1)

Within the last two to three decades, formal education has significantly increased its emphasis on making learning engaging—albeit as a way to either improve the lecture or move the classroom experience beyond just lecturing. This change in emphasis is evidenced in such approaches as student-centered learning, active learning, and so forth.
Jessica Martin and Scott Gaier
December 11, 2023
Blog

Is There Hope in Science?

I had my first MRI ever just a few months after my 24th birthday. Two days later, I’d undergo an emergency craniotomy to remove as much as possible of a baseball-sized tumor that had, unbeknownst to me, been slowly invading my otherwise healthy brain. I soon received my diagnosis: brain cancer, the slow growing sort…at…
Jessica Martin
February 17, 2023
Reviews

Religion: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters

In Religion: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters, Christian Smith proposes an insightful theory of religion, differentiating between the nature of religion itself and the various effects of religion. Seeking such differentiation, the complex and overlapping relationship between an ontological understanding of religion and religion’s practical effects and impacts in and…
Jessica Martin
January 15, 2019