By Allan Alach
I welcome suggested articles, so if you come
across a gem, email it to me at allanalach@inspire.net.nz
I know what I like
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| Self determined learners |
'We live in a rapidly changing world that requires people to have
the ability to adapt much more quickly than in previous times, where events
moved much more slowly. Education is not immune from these changes even though
it is an inherently conservative system. In the face of significant innovation
in educational practice and as espoused in self-determined learning (heutagogy)
and other perspectives, there are new skills to adopted by learners and
learning leaders alike.'
Learning spaces: The subconscious teacher
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| Space to explore |
“Sit
Still and Face Forward”: How the Myth of Teacher Control
Undermines Classroom Management
Good article on that essential teacher attribute
- helping children manage their behaviour.
“Because
teachers are responsible for the behavior in their classrooms, we fall into the
trap of believing that they (we) can control the behavior in their (our)
classrooms. The reality is that no human being can control the behavior of any
other human being. We can attempt to influence it, certainly. Offers of rewards
or threat of punishment might influence people’s choices, as do respect, trust, and good relationships. But even
young children are still able to make choices about their behavior.”
The Common Core Can't Speed Up Child Development
This article is about the USA; however it’s transferable to all countries using a
standards based education system.
“Educational
attainment is part of human development, and fundamentally this is
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| Common core doesn't suit all |
Once in school, for skills that require performing a physical task,
that are in what
Bloom's Taxonomy classifies as the "psychomotor domain,"
it is understood that
children will only learn when they are physically and
developmentally ready.”
The “Mindset” Mindset
This is a must read - Alfie Kohn’s observations on Carol Dweck’s ‘growth
mindset.”
“Even
when a growth mindset doesn’t make things worse,
it can help only so much if students have been led — by
things like grades, tests, and, worst of all, competition — to
become more focused on achievement than on the learning itself. Training them
to think about effort more than ability does nothing to address the fact,
confirmed by several educational psychologists, that too much emphasis on
performance undermines intellectual engagement. Just as with praise, betting
everything on a shift from ability to effort may miss what matters most.”
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| Carol Dweck |
Following on.
“So – is growth
mindset the one concept in psychology which throws up gigantic effect sizes and
always works? Or did Carol Dweck really, honest-to-goodness, make a pact with
the Devil in which she offered her eternal soul in exchange for spectacular
study results?
I don’t know. But here are a few things that predispose me towards the
latter explanation. A warning – I am way out of my league here and post
this only hoping it will spark further discussion.”
Affirmative Testing Blog: What Students Do With Feedback
On the other hand, here’s Annie Murphy Paul’s
observations on growth mindset.
“A
passing acquaintance with the notion of mindset—though an
excellent start—doesn’t fully convey the richness of Dweck’s idea, however. The influence of mindset shows up in students’ thinking and behavior in so many ways, one of which I want to focus
on today. That is the effect of mindset on how students handle feedback.”
Sugata Mitra and the Hole in the Research
Some weeks back Mitra published research which
showed that children, using the internet, could teach themselves at a level
several years above their ages.
Well, not quite …
“You’ll forgive me for not being particularly impressed by hand-picked
students taking part in a test where they’re made to feel special, given a thin slice of a syllabus to work
on, and then tested for that exact piece of syllabus…and
then scaling up that work into a magic GCSE grade. Give me a page of quantum
physics to memorise, then ask me about it. Can I have a PhD?”
This week’s contributions from Bruce Hammonds:
Start the School Year by
"Awakening Your Dreamers”
Something to start the year but good
for any time – awakening
student dreams
“When your students return to the
classroom this fall, how many will bring along the interests, talents, and
dreams that inspired or delighted them over the summer months? Will they see
any connection between school assignments and their own passions?”
Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement
‘A while back, I was asked,
"What engages students?" Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes
about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better
to lob that question to my own eighth graders. The responses I received from
all 220 of them seemed to fall under 10 categories, representing reoccurring
themes that appeared again and again. So, from the mouths of babes, here are my
students' answers to the question: "What engages students?”’
Growth Mindset: How to Normalize Mistake Making and Struggle in
Class
Is there anyone out there who hasn’t heard of Carol Dweck
and the idea of ‘mindsets’?
“Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset has become essential knowledge in
education circles. The Stanford psychologist found that children who understand
that their brains are malleable and can change when working through challenging
problems can do better in school.”
From Bruce’s ‘goldie
oldies’ file:
Developing
real literacy: Margaret Mahy
“Margaret
Mahy, one of New Zealand’s most
accomplished children’s writers says we are not changed by
experiences as common wisdom has it. What changes us are the stories we tell
about our experiences. ‘Unless we have formed our lives into story, structured it with words, we
can’t contemplate the meaning of our
lived experience’ This is done by turning the raw
material of our life into stories, and in the process, ‘it can be creatively transformed and
given meaning’.”
Developing
natural learners
Natural born
learners – before the
word the experience . Have we forgotten this in our schools?
“Literacy
is built out of, and from, the emotional or felt experiences children have as
they play and explore their environments – preferably in the company of others and, even
better, a perceptive adult.This understanding was the basis for the language
arts experience that was as once such a feature of New Zealand Primary schools.
The idea that early literacy should arise from children’s own thoughts from exploring their environment
(and their own personal life experiences) was developed early in New Zealand.”
Tomorrows
Schools had their day?
“Good
people poor system' it was said when the Labour Government introduced
'Tomorrows Schools' in the mid eighties. These changes were part of the transformation
of the New Zealand's
economy under an ideology that came to be known as 'Market
Forces'.School changes were 'sold' to the public as a means to develop greater
community democratic control and authority over schools. In reality there was
no real dissatisfaction or desire to change things at the time. It was later to
be seen as part of the above ideology; all about the advantages of efficiency
and competition.”
Don't
touch the bananas!!!!
The power of
culture – learning not
to touch the bananas!
“It is
always amazing to see how exposure to an environment, or culture, can change
how we think without us even knowing – I guess this is called conditioning. New ideas
always rely on those individuals who can see reality without the blinkers.”
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