Sixteen tables, two seats to a table, all in rows, face front 鈥渂ecause that’s where the instruction is coming from,鈥� he said.

About the only technology in the room: small handheld whiteboards, dry-erase pens and small stacks of index cards. The walls are almost entirely bare. And phones are out of the question, stowed in backpacks before class.

It鈥檚 intentional, said Harvard, who teaches Advanced Placement Psychology at James Clemens High School in Madison, Ala., a suburb of Huntsville.

Over the past decade, he has become something of an expert in focus, memory, forgetting and distraction.

Harvard has put these principles into his first book, published last week, titled, appropriately, . 

Harvard hopes the book will offer practical advice to teachers on how to use the principles of cognitive science to create better learning environments.

The time is right for a new book about attention, said , a professor of English at the City University of New York and founding director of CUNY鈥檚 Futures Initiative. She said she鈥檚 excited to see Harvard鈥檚 work.

Davidson noted several indicators of rising inattention, from falling reading scores to the growth of media misinformation and the higher prevalence of young people who say they鈥檙e with traditional education. 

鈥淚 think people are really seeing that what it means to pay attention is important,鈥� said Davidson, who wrote 2011鈥檚 . 

Harvard mostly focuses on more intentional teaching methods that reduce distractions and help students manage the vast amount of content they鈥檙e called upon to remember 鈥�  often called 鈥�.鈥�

These ideas are decidedly not on tap in most teacher preparation programs, said Harvard, who earned his master鈥檚 degree in education in 2006. His coursework contained 鈥渘othing on cognition 鈥� there was nothing on the brain, nothing on how we learn.鈥�

鈥榃hy don鈥檛 I already know about this?鈥�

It wasn鈥檛 until 2016, a decade after graduate school, that Harvard happened upon the now-defunct Twitter account 鈥淭he Learning Scientists.鈥� In plain language, educational psychologists from around the world laid out the basics of cognitive science for educators. 

Harvard was gobsmacked. Instead of just shooting in the dark, he finally saw research on the effectiveness of various learning strategies. 

He found himself instantly hooked and soon for the group. That led to his own website, which eventually became the popular blog .

Nearly a decade later, he鈥檚 traveling the world, speaking at conferences about strategies that affect students鈥� ability to channel ideas into long-term memory. He鈥檚 lost count of how many times he鈥檚 had to inform audiences that 鈥� humans can鈥檛 consciously focus on more than one thing at a time.

Harvard subscribes to something he calls the 鈥淪AR method,鈥� an accessible way for students and teachers to think about memory. When they鈥檙e about to start a lesson, he tells students that memory follows a three-step process: Sense, Attend and Rehearse. 

鈥淵ou can hear your teacher,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou can see your teacher. You can see the board. You can sense it. But are you attending to it? Are you paying attention to it, or are there things getting in your way? Are you trying to multitask? Is the person sitting next to you talking?鈥�

Once a student attends to the material, the rehearsal happens. That鈥檚 perhaps the most important and tricky part. In the book, he likens it to an athlete鈥檚 ability to learn a new routine. If he or she doesn鈥檛 rehearse before the big game, he writes, 鈥渢hat would not be a good recipe for success on the playing field.鈥�

Rehearsing in the classroom can take the form of a multiple-choice quiz, a discussion or a project. The key is to access the material from memory and use it appropriately.

Accordingly, he begins many classes by simply asking students to review what came the day, the week or even the month before. Retrieving those memories, he said, makes them more likely to be there the next time the brain goes looking for them.

Another principle he employs is 鈥渨ait time.鈥� When most teachers ask a question, they鈥檒l settle for the first student with her hand up. But Harvard adds a step, ordering students to retrieve their handheld whiteboard. Before anyone can answer out loud, everyone must attempt an answer in writing.

鈥淣ow they’re committed to thinking,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey’re committed to writing something down. It seems like such a simple thing, but when you make the students do that, you give them time to think.鈥�

As they鈥檙e studying, he鈥檒l often give students a kind of slow-motion, three-stage assessment he calls 鈥淏rain-Book-Buddy鈥� to offer a more honest take on what they actually know.

In the first assessment, they answer a series of questions from memory. Then they fill in the answers they couldn鈥檛 remember with the help of their notes. In the final test, they can talk to classmates.

鈥淭hey end up getting all the right answers, but they’re also acutely aware of what they actually knew, what they knew with their notebook, and what they had to ask their buddies, their peers, about,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t’s an ongoing conversation of them thinking about their thinking.鈥�

鈥楢ttention Contagion鈥�

Lately Harvard has been evangelizing most eagerly about an emerging topic in cognitive science known as 鈥�.鈥� Only a handful of small-scale studies exist on the topic, but Harvard says the evidence is compelling.

In the research, students pose as attentive or non-attentive classmates, and researchers judge how well actual subjects attend to lessons in their presence 鈥� how many notes they take and their performance on post-lesson quizzes. The results suggest that seatmates鈥� behaviors have a profound effect: When a student is surrounded by inattentive peers, the behaviors are contagious. It works the other way as well: If a student is surrounded by peers who are visibly paying attention, they鈥檙e more attentive. 

had undergraduates watch a video lecture with a 鈥渃lassmate鈥� posing as someone who either seemed attentive 鈥� leaning forward and taking notes 鈥� or slouched, shifting his gaze, glancing at the clock and taking infrequent notes. Researchers found that being seated behind these classmates had a profound effect: Subjects sitting near attentive students took significantly more notes and rated themselves as being on task. They also scored more than five points higher on a multiple-choice quiz.

Other studies have replayed the dynamic, with similar results. The findings even hold true for students observing one another in a Zoom-like virtual environment, where all that鈥檚 visible is a student鈥檚 face staring into a webcam.

In other words, Harvard notes, attention and inattention can actually pass through the Internet.

He considers the findings especially resonant because the 鈥渃ontagion鈥� doesn鈥檛 come from obviously bad behavior like yelling, interrupting a teacher or staring at a phone. It鈥檚 stuff that he and most other teachers would typically let slide.

鈥淭hey’re just slouching in their chair,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey’re just not taking notes. They’re gazing out the window.鈥�

What the studies show is that attention operates by a kind of quiet osmosis, in some cases literally felt but not seen.

, the researcher who has pioneered this work, emphasized the 鈥渘on-distracting鈥� nature of the inattentiveness in his studies, noting that it鈥檚 鈥渄riven by more than just peer distraction.鈥� Peers can detect these inattentiveness cues, he told 社区黑料, even via tiny changes in the case of the online environment, suggesting that students 鈥減ay attention to their peers on webcam 鈥� even when the video thumbnails are quite small.鈥�

More data needed

In an email, Forrin cautioned that attention contagion 鈥漢as not yet been studied in real classrooms,鈥� only in laboratory settings with video lecturers. But he said he鈥檚 confident that attention and inattention 鈥渃an spread between students during lectures,鈥� and that this spread affects learning. Students 鈥渁re attuned to their peers’ motivation to learn鈥� and pay more attention when they infer that others have strong learning goals. They pay less attention when they sense weak or no goals. 

He suggested that teachers do their best to cultivate these goals in their students. They should also let students choose their own seats so they鈥檙e not consistently sitting near inattentive peers.

But he said more data are needed to determine whether these phenomena occur in real classrooms, especially with live teachers and different levels of student motivation.

Davidson, the CUNY scholar, said research on topics similar to attention contagion go back all the way to , who at the turn of the 20th century was studying the social aspects of 鈥渧ivid鈥� thoughts, distraction and focus. More recently, she noted, the psychologist Danie Kahneman, who helped establish what has become behavioral economics, studied .

And of course TV producers who pioneered the 鈥渃anned laughter鈥� of laugh tracks on early TV knew that suggestions of an engaged audience make viewers respond in kind. 

But perhaps the greatest experts in attention contagion, Davidson said, are stand-up comedians 鈥� she interviewed several for her 2011 book, and they told her that visibly bored audience members are 鈥渢he kiss of death鈥� in live performance. 鈥淧eople fall asleep in the front row, and pretty soon they’re falling asleep in the whole theater,鈥� she said.

Harvard, for his part, is convinced that attention contagion in the classroom is real 鈥� and he tells students about the research.

鈥淚t鈥檚 powerful for students to hear that simply being inattentive can distract someone else from learning,鈥� he said.

More broadly, he said, cognitive psychology has simplified his approach to teaching, allowing him to focus on proven strategies that are neither traditional nor progressive. 

The most cynical person, he said, would probably say his classroom is 鈥渢oo traditional. But I’m not thinking, ‘Do I want a traditional or a progressive classroom?’ When I designed it, I’m thinking, ‘How can I put my students in the best situation where they can pay attention to what they need to pay attention [to] and be distracted the least?’ That’s everything that I’m thinking about, and nothing else.鈥�