Professional Development
Teachers often notice that some ideas stay with students long after a unit ends, while others fade quickly. This difference is not about how engaging a lesson felt in the moment. It is about relationship. Learning that lasts is learning students form a relationship with, intellectually and emotionally, as they work to explain the world.
Research on learning and development shows that understanding is not stored as isolated facts. It is built through networks of meaning that connect ideas, experiences, and identity over time (National Academies of Sciences, 2018). In KnowAtom classrooms, engagement is not treated as motivation or compliance. It grows out of students doing real sensemaking work where emotion, perspective, and explanation interact.
The brain learns through relationship and relevance
Neuroscience and cognitive science consistently show that emotion is not separate from reasoning. It plays a central role in how the brain decides what to attend to, organize, and remember. Immordino-Yang (2016) explains that emotions help learners assign value to ideas, shaping which concepts become part of long-term understanding rather than remaining surface-level information.
This does not mean learning should be emotionally charged or entertaining. It means learning must be meaningful. Relevance is not something teachers add at the beginning of a lesson. It develops as students work to explain phenomena they have already noticed.
KnowAtom’s phenomena-based structure supports this by allowing relevance to emerge through investigation.
- Kindergarten: In Weather in Our World, students explore how sunlight warms different surfaces. They touch, compare, and talk about what feels warmer or cooler. Engagement grows as students notice patterns for themselves and try to explain why those differences happen, instead of being told what matters ahead of time.
- Grades 1–2: In Changing Seasons, students look for patterns in daylight and temperature over time. When they connect these patterns to Earth’s tilt, they are not memorizing a cause. They are using it to make sense of changes they have already noticed, which gives the idea meaning and staying power.
- Grades 3–5: In Water on Earth, students study hurricanes by examining how wind, water, and heat interact. As they work to explain how these storms form, students revisit earlier ideas and adjust their thinking, staying engaged because their explanations are still in progress.
- Grades 6–8: In Forests or Changing Environments, students investigate how events like fires or human activity affect ecosystems. Engagement comes from trying to explain visible changes in plants and animals by tracing where energy and materials come from and where they go next.
This reflects findings summarized in How People Learn II, which emphasize that durable learning develops when new ideas are connected to explanatory frameworks rather than memorized as isolated facts (National Academies of Sciences, 2018).
Perspective-taking as a bridge to understanding phenomena
Perspective-taking is often framed as a social or emotional skill, but research in cognitive development shows it is also central to conceptual understanding. To explain a system, learners must coordinate relationships, variables, and causal mechanisms. This requires imagining how a system operates from the inside (Fischer & Bidell, 2006).
In the classroom, this means students think about what each part of a system is doing and ask questions such as, “What is happening here?” and “If this part changes, what happens next?” rather than simply describing what they observe.
Perspective-taking supports several critical aspects of scientific thinking.
- Causal reasoning: Students move beyond stating what happened to explaining why it happened. They reason about cause-and-effect relationships within a system and how one change leads to another.
- Model-based thinking: Students use models to test and revise ideas. By reasoning from the system’s perspective, models become tools for thinking, not just diagrams to label.
- Revising explanations: Students are more willing to update explanations when new evidence appears. Instead of defending an answer, they reconsider how the system works.
Ritchhart (2015) describes this as a hallmark of cultures of thinking, where students are expected to reason with ideas rather than repeat them.
Across KnowAtom grade bands, this shows up in developmentally appropriate ways.
- K–1: In Weather in Our World Students explore what sunlight does to water, soil, or shaded areas. As they compare results, they focus on what changed and why, building early habits of thinking from the point of view of the materials they are studying.
- Grades 2–3: In Living Things Change, students think about what an organism needs to survive. Instead of listing traits, they ask how a structure or behavior helps the organism, reasoning from its point of view.
- Grades 4–5: In Shaping Earth’s Surface, students investigate how moving water reshapes land over time. Because these changes happen gradually, students use models and evidence to imagine processes they cannot directly see.
- Grades 6–8: In Inheriting Traits, students explore how changes in DNA affect traits. As they connect evidence across models, students revise explanations and begin thinking in terms of interacting systems rather than single causes.
These moves align with research showing that understanding deepens when students reason within systems rather than about them (National Academies of Sciences, 2018).
Emotional connections that support sensemaking
Emotion supports learning most powerfully when it grows out of the work of figuring something out. Research shows that emotions strengthen learning when they are connected to thinking and problem-solving, not to grades, praise, or compliance. Immordino-Yang (2016) explains that productive emotions are those students experience while making sense of ideas.
In KnowAtom classrooms, emotion is not added to lessons. It develops naturally as students work to explain phenomena and test their thinking.
Several emotions consistently support sensemaking.
Curiosity and wonder
Curiosity shows up when students notice something that does not yet make sense. It drives them to ask questions, look for patterns, and stay with a problem longer. Research shows curiosity supports deeper learning when students are given time and tools to investigate their own questions rather than receive quick answers (National Academies of Sciences, 2018).
KnowAtom’s notice and wonder routines build on this by treating student questions as the starting point for learning. When students ask “Why is this happening?” or “What would happen if…?” they are already engaged in explanation.
Cognitive empathy
As students work to understand how a system functions, they begin to take the point of view of the idea itself. They ask what the system needs, how its parts interact, and what happens when conditions change. Ritchhart (2015) describes this as cognitive or intellectual empathy.
In classrooms, this shows up when students revise models, reconsider explanations, or respectfully disagree based on evidence. The focus shifts from defending answers to improving thinking.
Compassion and concern
In units involving ecosystems or human impacts, students often express concern. Research cautions that emotion becomes counterproductive when it replaces careful reasoning or pushes students toward predetermined conclusions.
In KnowAtom lessons, concern motivates closer investigation rather than moral persuasion. Students examine evidence, trace causes, and test explanations before drawing conclusions, keeping emotion connected to sensemaking (National Academies of Sciences, 2018).
Pride in understanding
Pride develops when students realize they can explain something they could not explain before. This pride comes from effort, evidence, and revision, not praise for correct answers. Research shows this supports students’ identities as capable thinkers and problem-solvers (Bransford et al., 2018). Over time, it strengthens agency as students begin to see themselves as personally able to figure things out.
Using empathy and identification responsibly in science learning
Experienced teachers know that emotion can sometimes pull learning off track. When students feel strongly but stop explaining, rigor can slip. Research supports this concern. Emotion weakens learning when it is used to persuade students what to think rather than support inquiry (Immordino-Yang, 2016).
KnowAtom’s curriculum design helps guard against this by:
- Expecting evidence for all claims
- Centering models, data, and observable patterns
- Structuring discussion around why ideas work, not whether students agree
Teachers support this balance in real time by helping students turn emotional reactions into questions. When a student expresses concern or surprise, teachers guide them back to evidence and causal reasoning. This aligns with research on productive classroom discourse where ideas improve through explanation rather than opinion (Ritchhart, 2015).
This is especially visible in Changing Environments (grades 6–8). Students often react strongly to invasive species, but concern becomes productive only when they trace how energy moves through food webs and explain how those changes affect populations over time.
When concepts become personally meaningful
Research on learning transfer shows that understanding lasts when students can use ideas flexibly in new situations, not just recall them during a unit (National Academies of Sciences, 2018). Teachers often notice this kind of learning when students:
- Refer back to earlier investigations without prompting
- Extend models or concept maps across units
- Apply familiar explanations to unfamiliar phenomena
These moments signal that students are no longer just completing lessons. They are working with ideas they recognize and trust. Over time, repeated cycles of investigation, discussion, and revision help students build a relationship with the concept itself, not just the activity.
What emotional connection and perspective-taking mean for classroom practice
Emotional connection and perspective-taking are not extras added onto KnowAtom lessons. They are already built into the instructional design. The teacher’s role is to protect and support that design during instruction.
In practice, this means:
- Anchoring lessons in phenomena rather than replacing investigation with stories or explanations
- Encouraging students to reason from the perspective of systems and processes
- Treating emotional responses as signals for deeper questioning
- Supporting student ownership of explanations throughout the lesson
When teachers hold these lines, engagement lasts beyond the lesson. Students begin to see themselves as capable of figuring things out and form lasting relationships with ideas that shape how they learn and think.
References
- Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2016). Emotions, Learning, and the Brain. W. W. Norton.
- Ritchhart, R. (2015). Creating Cultures of Thinking. Jossey-Bass.
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures. National Academies Press.
- Fischer, K. W., & Bidell, T. R. (2006). Dynamic Development of Action and Thought. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology.