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1635 Educators providing Psychology courses

Athena Studies

athena studies

London

Our tutors are ambitious, social and enthusiastic top tier students who excel in their field of study and have an affinity with teaching. This is what we seek in a tutor in order to provide the best lessons for the student. Only with an 8 or higher and a genuine interest in the relevant subject will such a top tier student be selected. After an initial interview, it is up to the selected candidate to show us how he or she teaches. If that is sufficient, the teacher who has been hired will enter the training process, consisting of one or more trial lessons in which an actual lesson is simulated. During the entire period up to the first lesson and after that, the (prospective) teacher is extensively supervised by a quality manager who has several years of teaching experience and has shown superior results. Only tutors who are evaluated by students with an 8.0 average or higher for multiple actual lessons are given a permanent place in our team of tutors. All permanent lecturers take part in an advanced training programme, which focuses on improving teaching fundamentals, such as didactics, pedagogy, interpersonal communication and presentation skills. View our tutor vacancy if you want to be a part of this. Our method At the heart of every course, active learning is the basis. Students are often tempted to (only) make summaries and re-read or highlight textbooks, with the misleading idea that this improves their study results. Based on the available evidence, these study techniques are rated as being low utility learning (Dulonsky et al. 2013). At AthenaStudies, we are constantly analysing the most recent studies and assess student needs in order to find the most effective study methods to ensure the highest grades. It is proven that the most effective study method is retrieving the information out of the brain, instead of putting information into the brain. Spitzer et al. (1939) found that students who did one extra practice test scored about 10-15% better on their exam that students who did not. A more recent study from Butler et al. (2010) suggest an even bigger difference, with an estimated 30%. Hence, practice is key. Karpicke & Blunt (2011) takes this idea one step further and found that a group of students who read a topic four times scored less than students who practiced with the topic only once. Our tech team has created an ideal online environment where our teaching methods can flourish. Every course given by AthenaStudies is interactive and includes a lot of exam level practice material. It gives the students the opportunity to practice during the course and think for themselves. With every course, a summary of the full exam curriculum is provided and sent to the home address of the students. References: Butler, A. C. (2010). Repeated testing produces superior transfer of learning relative to repeated studying. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(5), 1118. Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58. Karpicke, J. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772-775. Spitzer, H. F. (1939). Studies in retention. Journal of Educational Psychology, 30(9), 641.

Toe By Toe

toe by toe

4.9(14)

Shipley

Keda spent almost all of her teaching career at one school - Sandal Road Primary School in Baildon, UK. She also almost exclusively taught just one age group, 6-7 year-olds; the age that most children pick up their reading skills. This was to become Keda’s great passion - the teaching of reading. Initially, she was baffled as to why a significant proportion of the children in her classes struggled to pick up basic reading skills. To Keda, they were just as bright as the other children but - for them - reading remained a mysteriously difficult skill. Keda always had a keen and inquisitive mind and this question of why some children had difficulties in learning to read nagged at her. She thought that she had somehow failed these students, so she made an offer to their parents. She asked their permission to teach their children at her home - without charge - at the end of the school day. As a result of this offer, Keda’s house was soon overflowing with struggling readers. Keda even designed an extension to her house to include a custom-built classroom and persuaded her doting husband Albert to build it. For the next 30 years, Keda’s house - literally, just a stone’s throw away from the school where she worked - was full of children. Between 4-5pm every school day she looked for ways to improve their reading skills. Keda's All-Consuming Passion At the time Keda began her research into children’s reading problems, few people had even heard of the term ‘dyslexia’. Keda became fascinated by the condition and her private research soon became an all-consuming obsession. She divided the children into two groups. A control group where conventional methods were used, and her ‘guinea pigs’, where Keda tried anything and everything to see what would work. This painstaking process of trial and error became the genesis of what later came to be known as Toe By Toe. Keda had no idea what was happening in the psychology departments of universities. She simply looked at the reading process and pared it down to the bare essentials necessary to crack the code of this ‘reading thing’. This is also why Toe By Toe is so refreshingly free of jargon and psychological gobbledygook. It certainly wasn’t a ‘quick fix’ process. Only after decades of this meticulous approach did Toe By Toe eventually become the fully functioning system we have now. Keda named the system ‘Toe By Toe’ after a grateful parent commented that she could see how it worked: “Progress by tiny steps – almost one toe at a time…”