Every week, HEADlines brings you the latest news, stories and commentaries in education and healthcare. This week, get insights on the latest developments in education. image Incentivising teaching and supporting learning While governments and institutions have been willing to splurge on technology for the classroom, they often neglect training teachers in how to use them. Global studies have found that, while vital for true results, teacher training is often neglected due to the cost and time commitment required, at the expense of having these technologies underutilised or unused. In the United States, a shortage of teachers has led to schools having numerous under-qualified science teachers without a science background. While this is partly due to the diverse range of pre-service teaching programmes and requirements across the country, the lack of qualified teaching applicants can be attributed to the relatively lower pay many STEM graduates receive if they choose teaching over other STEM fields. Much more can be done to invest in robust teacher training programmes so that teachers feel prepared to take on new technological and curriculum adjustments on the job, while incentivising those with qualifications to choose teaching as a financially competitive profession. For ideas on how to keep up with the latest classroom innovations and pandemic challenges, here are The HEAD Foundation’s free resources for teaching and learning in the remote classroom! Education in the Spotlight: The Hechinger Report | Momentum builds behind a way to lower the cost of college: A degree in three years Skepticism about the cost and duration of a higher education drives a need for speed. EdSurge | The pandemic is changing how colleges offer tutoring. Will students use it? Tutoring centres aren’t just changing tactics. In some cases, they’re rethinking what they do. The Straits Times | Special education teaching to get boost from $7.5 million gift by Lien Foundation Special needs students and their teachers are poised to benefit from a raft of initiatives aimed at beefing up resources, training and partnerships in the special education sector in Singapore. Faculty Focus | The emotional variable in student learning “All learning has an emotional base,” wrote Plato over two-thousand years ago. An English teacher shares her findings that a subtle but crucial first step in the journey of improvement is tweaking students’ self-perceptions. TeachThought | It’s not about the thinking Instead of “Is this a good idea?”, we might ask other questions: What is ‘it’? What are its parts? What does it look like whole? What’s it doing? How is it working? The Guardian | New natural history GCSE to focus on protecting the planet The Department for Education said the qualification would allow pupils to learn about organisms and their environments, as well as environmental and sustainability issues, “to gain a deeper knowledge of the natural world around them”.