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
Category: Learning
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
Proficiency-Based Education
Teachers know “proficiencies” are coming to dominate as the buzzword that is attracting the attention of educational leaders and policy makers. (Some might characterize this as a distraction of attention from important issues and needs, but I will proceed without comment on that speculation.) One of the disputes I have with how this is being Read More
Types of Knowledge
I am in the middle of rereading Carl Bereiter’s 2002 book Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age. Among the intriguing ideas is the book is his confrontation of the “mind as a container” metaphor. Recent generations of educators have operated under the assumption that one’s brain is a container and that what we know Read More
Cognitive Load Theory
54: Cognitive Lod Theory This post complements this earlier one on The Lens of Cognitive Load Theory While technology acceptance is a theory that can explain and predict the decision to use a technology, cognitive load theory (Sweller, Ayres, & Kalyuga, 2011) (CLT) predicts and explains technology use once it has been adopted. CLT is Read More
The Self-Driven Child
In private conversations for several years, I have been promoting “Ackerman’s Theory of Control.” My informal theory can be summarized as “people (children included) need to control something in their lives… if they don’t feel in control, they will take control of something.” My theory emerged out of years of working with children, and finding Read More
Debunking Learning Styles
There has always been something suspicious to me about “learning styles.” As teachers, we are supposed vary our delivery, so that each student can learn through the style that works best for the individual. The idea seemed too simple, and it seemed that it did not really explain what I observed with my students. “Learning Read More