Curriculum leaders have focused intently in recent years on outcomes. Education, they claim, must be directed by outcomes that are specific and measurable. While there is evidence such outcomes can contribute to learning in some settings, most educators counter there are other aspects of becoming educated that are equally or even more valuable, but that Read More
A synopsis of a paper I developed at a conference earlier this spring: Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) arrived in schools in a serious way in the final months of 2022 when ChatGPT became widely available (Emmert-Streib, 2024). Since then, GAI has followed a pattern familiar to those who study technology. Commonly called the Gartner hype cycle (Dedehayir & Read More
Students are typically encouraged to perform well in school to “get a good job.” This suggests that each individual is the primary benefactor of his or her education. This is a rather recent, and limited, view of the benefits of becoming educated. If we assume that those who are educated are more efficient and more Read More
When there is information organizations find their members need, the leaders of the organization will arrange training. The model is familiar to most everyone who has worked in a profession: “something” new is arriving (perhaps hardware, software, or a procedure) and time is taken away from “work” to learn what the information necessary is that Read More
I am cleaning out my files and discovered (rediscovered is more correct as I knew these pieces were there), writing from decades ago. I must say that teacher looking forward to a career in education knew his stuff. For proof, I submit this from the fall of 1992. (At the time, I was starting my Read More
Fifteen years ago, I was teaching high school courses. I used to give my students “how to write essay questions” advice when they were preparing for exams. Near the end of one seasons, a senior asked me, “How come no one ever told us this?” As a result, I created this file. I wonder if Read More
This is another post that I wrote after reading old papers written when I was a graduate student… this one from 1999. Our goal for students is typically understanding; we don’t want our students to simply recall, we hope to see in them knowledge of facts and comprehension on concepts. But maybe we don’t. Actually, Read More
195: Generative AI: We Are Getting What We Asked For I just finished reading of a pre-print paper on AI (Shaw & Nave, 2026). It is a paper I expect to be the subject of a longer post in the future, but I was struck by a sentence in the “Societal Implications” section of the Read More
194: Inquiry and Authentic Assessment I have been looking through old papers I wrote as an undergraduate and graduate student years ago… actually decades ago. In 1997, I enrolled in a curriculum development course and a graduate student, and made this observation: An inquiry-based science curriculum that includes authentic assessment is not familiar to most Read More
I once took a stand with a colleague against a program intended to encourage reading. I was responsible for managing the IT in the school along with my teaching duties and she was the school librarian. In this program, students read books, then took computer-based tests on the contents; students were expected to earn a specific number of points by passing tests each marking period. The librarian was frustrated by students asking for books Read More