Social Cognition and Executive Functions As Key Factors for Effective Pedagogy in Higher Education

Social Cognition and Executive Functions As Key Factors for Effective Pedagogy in Higher Education

Higher education (HE) faces the challenge of responding to an increasing diversity. In this context, more attention is being paid to teachers and teaching skills positively related to students learning. Beyond the knowledges identified as key components of an effective teacher, teachers also need to be capable of unraveling what their students think and believe, and how they accommodate the new...

Special Issue—Pedagogy for Education for Sustainability in Higher Education

Social learning and social cognition: The case for pedagogy

We propose that humans are adapted to transfer knowledge to, and receive knowledge from, conspecifics by teaching. This adaptation, which we call 'pedagogy', involves the emergence of a special communication system that does not presuppose either language or high-level theory of mind, but could itself provide a basis facilitating the development of these human-specific abilities both in phyloge...

Effective teaching methods in higher education: requirements and barriers

Introduction: Teaching is one of the main components in educationalplanning which is a key factor in conducting educational plans. Despitethe importance of good teaching, the outcomes are far from ideal. Thepresent qualitative study aimed to investigate effective teaching in highereducation in Iran based on the experiences of best professors in thecountry and the best local professors of Isfaha...

Executive Function and Higher-Order Cognition: Neuroimaging

The terms executive function and cognitive controlrefer to cognitive processes associated with the control of thought and action. Putative control functions include the ability to (1) selectively attend to relevant information while filtering out distracting information (selective attention and interference suppression), (2) work with information that is currently being held in working memory (...