Between 2008 and 2011, I wrote several brief reviews of books which appeared on the Education Review web site. Since then, the editors ceased publication of that type of review and removed the previously published brief reviews from the site. I am making the original drafts of my reviews available here. Brief Review of Carr, Read More
Category: Learning
Review of Wisdom
Between 2008 and 2011, I wrote several brief reviews of books which appeared on the Education Review web site. Since then, the editors ceased publication of that type of review and removed the previously published brief reviews from the site. I am making the original drafts of my reviews available here. This appeared in January 2011. Hall, Read More
On Creativity
I am rereading much of my library to make decisions about which books to keep and which need to find another home before I move again. Several titles on my shelves focus on creativity. This refers, of course, to that aspect of human cognition that allows new ideas to be created. In Nancy Anreasen’s 2005 Read More
Brain Plasticity & Learning to Walk
Until recently, it was assumed that once a brain was mature (at the end of adolescence) it was an unchanging organ. Cognitive scientists have found that the human brain is actually quite plastic—cognitive functions that were assigned to one neural pathway can be reassigned to a different neural pathway. Early in life (through early adolescence) Read More
Review of Rewired
Between 2008 and 2011, I wrote several brief reviews of books which appeared on the Education Review web site. Since then, the editors ceased publication of that type of review and removed the previously published brief reviews from the site. I am making the original drafts of my reviews available here. Rosen, Larry. (2010). Rewired: Understanding the Read More
Towards a More Sophisticated Model of Learners
My recent reading has taken me into the social nature of learning and the role of culture in human learning. In many ways, what I read challenges the assumption that is deeply embedded in educational practice that knowledge is an individual phenomenon and that it is created with the brain of individual humans. Clearly, there Read More
Cooperation vs. Collaboration
I recently objected to a colleague who was using “cooperate” and “collaborate” as synonyms. As I read the best thinkers about teaching and learning, I find the difference described in their writing about the differences makes sense and helps to to clarify my own thinking about what happens in classrooms (both mine and my colleagues’). Read More
Own Your Learning
A few months ago, I had the chance to arrange for a young artist to perform for a group of high school students. At the time, the student was a junior in a Massachusetts high school that is organized around internships and other alternative curricula. The school is an amazing place and it is filled Read More
Wisdom
In his 2010 book Wisdom, Stephen Hall who is an award-winning writer about science and society, posed the question, “How do we make complex, complicated decisions and life choices, and what makes some of these choices so clearly wise that we all intuitively recognize them as a moment, however brief, of human wisdom?” (p. 6). Read More
Understanding Stress
Stress has been a topic in the school leadership literature (at least the popular literature) as we begin to confront the increasing levels of stress in youngsters’ lives. I have encountered it in the conversation around “trauma-informed schools,” and in my professional reading of iGen and The Self-Driven Child. It is well the topic is Read More