Personal Growth — February 24, 2011

Teachers Should Get Tattoos

Tattooed teachers make students more motivated and more creative, not to mention stand a better chance of getting a positive recommendation from her pupils.

bigthinkeditor

The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Here’s a deeply strange 2010 study in which college undergrads were asked to imagine a female instructor with various tattoos: “128 undergraduates’ perceptions of tattoos on a model described as a college instructor were assessed. They viewed one of four photographs of a tattooed or nontattooed female model. Students rated her on nine teaching-related characteristics. Analyses indicated that the presence of tattoos was associated with some positive changes in ratings: students’ motivation, being imaginative about assignments, and how likely students were to recommend her as an instructor.”

The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Career Development

The Best of the Best: Big Think+ in 2020

For many, 2020 will not be remembered as a “best of” much. We don’t need to repeat the reasons here; it’s sufficient to point out that a 100-year pandemic was […]

The Present

Teachers show biases against overweight kids, including giving them lower grades

Research found that overweight children were just as smart but not as successful.

Technology & Innovation

What a Liberal Arts College Might Look Like in the 22nd Century

With our increasingly global 21st century making the traditional college quadrangle look a little parochial, the Minerva vision is an intriguing development.

Guest Thinkers

The War on Teachers?

School reform efforts across the country hang on the notion of annual teacher evaluations based heavily on student test scores. But if this process isn’t consistently accurate, it will get the wrong teachers fired and discourage talented people from entering the profession.

Guest Thinkers

Creativity, evolution of mind and the “vertigo of freedom”

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN JASON SILVA AND TECHNO-ECOLOGIC SCHOLAR RICHARD DOYLE Richard Doyle also goes by mobius, an indicator of just how important interconnections are to him – and how transformative, […]

Up Next

Guest Thinkers

What Is a Tree Worth?

Trees brighten city streets and delight nature-starved urbanites. Now scientists are learning that they also play a crucial role in the green infrastructure of America’s cities.