Education is based on a simple idea: We want to make people smart. “Smart” is the general term that we use to describe an individual who has greater than usual cognitive skill and knowledge; public education is intended to ensure a minimal level of “smart” for each individual in our society. As we understand it, Read More
Category: Learning
Why Testing is Meaningless in Schools
It is widely known inside education (but much less so outside of education), that we really don’t know what to teach or how to measure learning. Educational researchers will dispute this, as they spend their entire careers defining learning and measuring it. In science that is allowed, and we accept the conclusions of studies, but Read More
Thinking About ChatGPT
If the news about ChatGPT had broken at anytime other than less than a month before the end of the fall academic term, the handwringing about it would have been more obvious. There have been a few articles and blog posts describing how this will upend everything and make education and certain jobs obsolete. My Read More
Whose Perspectives Affect School Decision?
It has been observed by many that school decisions tend to be made by those who were successful in school. A positive feed-forward loop has resulted. Individuals who were successful in school become educators and create schools like those they experienced. Another group involved with school decision-making are those who were not successful in school, Read More
What it Means to Learn
Since I was a teenager, I’ve been interested in teaching and learning. My adult life has been spent as an educator in many roles and in several types of institutions. I’ve taught, led, researched, read and studied, written… and learned. One unquestionable conclusion about learning (in my opinion) is that we use one single term Read More
What We Mean by “They Learned It”
In addition to having strong foundational knowledge (what we traditionally understand learning to be), we want those who have “learned it” to be able to use it critically; they should be able to judge the quality of their knowledge and the degree to which it will suffice in the current situation. We want those who Read More
Variation–It Belongs in Schools
The last generation of educators have been focused on standards. We fuss and fret over what it is students are supposed to know and we obsess over the dubious data we are given to indicate the degree to which students are or are not learning it. Standards were originally proposed as a strategy for ensuring Read More
Project-Based Learning
For many faculty (and students) anything that is not a test or a worksheet that is homework. As digital technologies have become more widely available, projects have included presentations and similar work. In the education literature, however, project-based learning has a very specific meaning. Project-based learning typically begins with a question that is defined by Read More
On Problem-Based Learning
Most scholars and practitioners trace the origins of problem-based learning to changes in medical school teaching in the 1960’s. At the time, traditional lecture was deemed insufficient to prepare physicians for the field which was characterized by rapidly expanding field of knowledge and the emergence of new medical technologies. It was reasoned physicians’ capacity to Read More
On Instructional Planning
All teachers plan. Those who are following the Standard Model of Education are likely to focus on content when they plan; they want to be sure they tell students everything they must tell them to cover all of the topics in the curriculum. They will also plan for how to best tell students what they Read More