Rebecca Merkley

🔥"Those who believe school can be reinvented seem to have a very limited understanding of school and even less consideration of students. Inevitably, they view learning as a problem of content delivery, failing to understand that learning is a social process, happening among and inside of people."

This is why in higher education you should not let your curriculum be driven by 'demand.' You need give students the precious opportunity to discover the things they don't already know they will be excited about.

Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted to answer 275 emails per day and argue with administrators. That’s why I chose a career in academia.

Infant brain categorizes common objects by two months of age Brain activity patterns in the ventral visual cortex appear to distinguish images across 12 categories, including birds and trees, fMRI scans suggest.

The Transmitter writes about @clionaod.bsky.social's work with
@ainedineen.bsky.social, @annatruzzi.bsky.social, Graham King, @lorinanaci.bsky.social, Keelin Harrison, Enna-Louise D'Arcy, Jessica White, @chiarac.bsky.social, Tamrin Holloway, Anna Kravchenko, @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social!

I understand why chatbot cheating happens but every time I read about it I want to gently remind everyone that the point of schoolwork is not for the submission to exist. Teachers are not just greedy for more essays or solved equations. The point is to do the work WITH YOUR OWN BRAIN, FOR LEARNING.

Wondering if all this scrambling & time pressure to secure CERC & CI+RC candidates is going to bite Canadian Institutions in the butt…

Though I am 💯 for attracting international talent & growing R&I in Canada, this whole approach & process has been problematic in so many ways: .. 1/

AI is the new academic wife.

To: Jeffrey epstein[jeevacation©gmail.com] From: roger schank Sent: Mon 1/4/2010 12:15:13 PM Subject: there is a simpler explanation about women and intelligence intelligence comes about in part from real focus (goal-directed (this is why you have the absent minded professor caricature) it is a rare woman who is not first and foremost focussed on what thinking and feeling about her hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why hates you or why you dont own a kelly bag roger schank http://www.rogerschank.com/

Relevant to today's conversation about AI's inherent sexism, here's an email from cognitive psychologist and early AI theorist Roger Schank, arguing to Epstein that women can't be truly intelligent, because they care too much about what other people think.

Text against a blue and orange background: Accepting Board nominations - Nominate by February 28

Nominate yourself or a peer for the ICIS board elections and be a catalyst for progress in our field. Together, let's build a future that inspires and empowers. Nominations and self nominations are accepted until February 28, 2026. #Infantstudies

infantstudies.org/icis-electio...

The Next Innovation in Higher Education: Vibe-Teaching™ As the associate vice provost for the Office of Asynchronous Online Courses for Student-Centered High-Impact Learning (OAOCSCHIL, an office we crea...

"There is, of course, some risk of corroding the very foundations of our university’s mission. But institutional survival requires adaptation. Our graduates must become 'AI-resilient and future-ready members of the workforce'… whatever that means."
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...

#priorities

In other news, the Carney government’s travel advisory to the United States remains unchanged: “Take normal security precautions.”
Appeasement by any other name, and an abdication of the government’s basic responsibilities to Canadians.

starting March 1, 2026, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are prohibited from using central government funds to pay Article Processing Charges for high-priced OA journals, specifically Nature Communications and Science Advances.

I don’t know who needs to hear Jesse Jackson leading the kids on Sesame Street in this beautiful call-and-response reminding them that every child is somebody, but here it is

Girls don’t want flowers for Valentine’s Day.

They want you to book them a shark research experience that raises money for science outreach!

I can help. Let’s chat.

Wow AI is so amazing we should use it for all our scientific diagrams

This is a great point about causality. The full thread and paper is worth the time to read. I posted this week about exactly the same issue. The discomfort of having null results is skewing the scientific literature and makes it hard to know where we need to focus our attention and research.

[extremely Metric voice]
and all we get is
fish disco
fish funk
fish rock and roll

New: "Effect of Artificial Intelligence on Learning: A Meta-Meta-Analysis" by Wagenmakers and colleagues revealing evidence for "severe publication bias and extreme between-study heterogeneity" in existing meta-analyses of the effects of AI on learning: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Post a banger that's not in English.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y99U...

“I Felt Like I Completely Belonged in That Class”: Gender and the Development of Sense of Belonging in K-12 STEM Education - Educational Psychology Review Educational Psychology Review - Sense of belonging is an important motivational belief that represents individuals’ sense of fit within an environment. However, many women report feeling a...

🚨New paper alert!🚨 Super proud of the work that went into this one, which includes a systematic review and MEGA-ANALYSIS of the development of sense of belonging in STEM education across Grades K-12, with special attention to gender differences. (1/N)
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Counting without end: A cross-linguistic exploration of infinity beliefs in English and Hindi learners Recent studies (Cheung et al., 2017; Chu et al., 2020; Sullivan et al., 2023) argue that children may infer the existence of infinite magnitudes throu…

By age 6, many children in the US believe that numbers are infinite, despite initially representing counting as a meaningless & finite chain of words. In a new paper w/ Jess Sullivan & @drbarner.bsky.social, we explored the basis for this conceptual change. 1/n
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Pop star Bad Bunny needed a Puerto Rican history scholar. UW–Madison had just the one. Bad Bunny collaborated with UW–Madison history professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo on Puerto Rican narratives that accompany the new album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.”

Not at all surprised to learn that Bad Bunny has a historical adviser. His halftime show was a reminder that our history and culture are deeply intertwined with the rest of the western hemisphere. We should think of his performance as part of #America250. #SuperBowl
news.wisc.edu/pop-star-bad...

Scientists discover brain network that may cause Parkinson’s disease An “extraordinary” brain network discovery shows that Parkinson’s disease may not be a movement disorder after all

Exciting new work published in Nature shows hyperconnectivity in a brain region called the somato-cognitive action network is "central to Parkinson's pathophysiology". This finding could massively improve Parkinson's treatments!

www.scientificamerican.com/article/extr...

💥New paper alert! Dyadic Decisions About Effort: How Caregivers Shape Young Children’s Persistence (with @reutshachnai.bsky.social)

One of my favorites! If you’re curious about what we’ve been up to in @leonardlearnlab.bsky.social, take a look!
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Increasing math scores: Why Ontario needs early numeracy screening Educators in a research partnership have found that early math screening is a helpful teaching tool that helps educators target instruction to support children’s math learning.

Increasing math scores: Why Ontario needs early numeracy screening

The thing that a lot of these guys have in common is that for them science is about personal brand-building and advancement of the self. Their norms serve their status competition, not a greater good.

I dearly wish that, in the dark small hours of the night, my mind would not be filled with the songs from KPop Demon Hunters.

"Teaching with AI is not without value; it is a case study in how even well-meaning educators operating in good faith can become inadvertent agents of a pedagogical de-skilling and institutional dehumanization."

This scathing book review really is worth reading.