Early in the 1940’s, biology was a science being revolutionized by the discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). English biologist D’Arcy Thompson commented, “We have come to the edge of a world of which we have no experience, and where all of our preconceptions must be recast” (cited in Gould 1998, 404). In many ways, Thompson’s Read More
Month: September 2019
Future of Work
In the 1992 book The Work of Nations, Robert Reich suggested the basic work skills necessary for future workers would include: abstraction which includes the ability to make meaning of complicated and unfamiliar situations system thinking which includes the ability to deconstruct the abstractions, and make logical predicts and develop rational strategies experimentation which includes Read More
On Cooperation
In recent decades, there is rich evidence that cooperation rather than competition is a strategy associated with long-term survival of life. Lynn Marguilis and Dorian Sagan point to evidence that mitochondria and chloroplasts (organelles found in multicellular organisms such and plants and animals) were originally independent organisms that formed cooperative relationships with other organisms to Read More
I > C > A > P
Appropriate Proper Reasonable | RSS.com The title of this post appears to be a cryptic message, perhaps an arcane relationship from a long-forgotten physics textbook. In reality, it summarizes one of the most important ideas about learning to be articulated in the last 10 years or so. The relationship makes perfect sense to many teachers Read More
What Do We Know About Learning?
A colleague and I sat together to see if we could agree on a collection of statements about learning. This is what he and I beleive to be true about learning: Learning happens in the brains of individuals; Learning extends into the social and technological environments; Learning is a multi-dimensional process involving perception, recollection, analyzing, Read More
What We Know About Effective Teachers #2
Your professional experiences in the field will serve you well as you teach. Your examples and stories will help your students understand the context of the ideas they study, see connections, and they will make your class more engaging and effective. Your experiences will limit you, also. We all adapt to the culture in which Read More
What We Know About Effective Teachers #1
Your experience with teachers and learning has been unique to you. The strategies your teachers used and the approaches you brought to your learning worked for you; you would not be in the position of teachers otherwise. Do not be fooled into thinking your path to becoming educated is the path that will work for Read More
Acronym Labeled Practices
There is no lack of ideas about how to restructure and reorganize schools and classrooms. Educators are very familiar with the never-ending series of “buzz words” that emerge, capture the attention of leaders for a few years, then fade into disuse when the next term distracts leaders. In recent years, the derisive label “buzz word” Read More
Deeper Learning Defined
Just what are educators supposed to teach? Better yet, what are students supposed to learn? These are questions that educators must consider at a much deeper level than my teachers did when I was college student in the 1980’s, and even when I was a graduate student 10 then again 20 years later. For generations, Read More
Theory & Education
Theory, of course, permeates everything we do. -Stephen Jay Gould Many educators would disagree with Gould’s observation. For these teachers, “theory” is conflated with “silly ideas for which I have no time, I need to cover the material.” I understand this approach, much that we do in education can be done without directly indicating the Read More