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Want to Really Disrupt Education? Make students smarter!

Want to Really Disrupt Education? Make students smarter!

“Incremental change isn’t going to get us where we need to go. We’ve got to be disruptive. You can’t keep doing the same stuff and expect different results.”

– Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, in recent comments  quoted by Tom Friedman in November 20, 2010, New York Times Opinion section

 

Too true. But now what, Mr. Secretary? Better curriculum? Improved national standards? Web 2.0 technologies? Value added teacher evaluations? Union cooperation? Longer school days? Better yet, more school days? More charters? Fewer charters? And so on.

I say, “Let’s disrupt.” Really disrupt. Here’s how: Stop tinkering with teaching and instead marshal all the personal technologies and best practices in peak performance available today—all field tested and proven, by the way—to help young human beings become better, smarter learners. In fact, don’t stop there. Make every child smarter—period.

First, it’s possible. IQ scores are rising ten points a generation. In cognition circles, this is known as the Flynn Effect, named after James Flynn, a leading expert in intelligence. But this fact tells us little, other than confirming what neuroscience proved a decade ago: Human beings are malleable, not fixed. No one agrees on why IQ scores have risen, and I won’t discuss the competing theories. Just the fact that IQ does rise, however, should have every educator frothing at the mouth.

But it doesn’t, partly because educators know virtually nothing about the brain, the tool of their trade, except that it houses some vague form of multiple intelligences or learning styles. These ideas are both popular. Unfortunately, cognitive scientists can’t find evidence for either one, though it is clear to any teacher, and most everyone in the world, that the human brain is infinitely multi-faceted. If you haven’t already picked it up, this is the first clue as to why we don’t yet try to make children smarter. To do so would be to nudge them to think outside the box. That’s disruptive.

But let’s assume that the days of prescribing in endless detail what every child must know—and who certainly will wither, die, and not compete in the global economy if they fail to know it—are over. As a society, we’ve moved ahead. Our objective is to make every child smarter, in school and in life, by increasing their focus, creativity, flexibility, resiliency, communication and teamwork skills, and problem solving capability. In other words, we’ve decided to educate a child for the 21^st century.  

How would we do it? I can think of five ways to start:

• Tell students their genes have not failed them. This is an easy one. Just share with students what we know—and don’t know—about intelligence. I mentioned the most important finding: IQ is not fixed. The second finding: IQ rises when you believe it can rise, and when you try harder. See the research of Carol Dweck, who I have mentioned in the past. Most of all, tell your students the truth: IQ is a terribly flawed, stop-gap, out-dated measure of intelligence that cannot be described by any accurate scientific model. It’s a ‘something’ that we don’t understand. Then tell your students another fact: Intelligence may be influenced by genes, but your mother is not responsible for you not having the math gene. Intelligence is too complicated to be linked to specific genes. And your environment—an environment that you can choose, as you get older—will affect your intelligence just as much as your chromosomes, and maybe more. We just don’t know.

 

• Forget your brain. This will be disruptive to the textbook industry (imagine!) but I doubt many students will mourn if told they can get smarter by using their heart and body than by exclusively focusing on their brain. But it’s true. I’ve done many a blog on this topic, so I won’t cover old ground. Here are the core facts, however. The Decade of the Brain, the legacy of behaviorism, and the almost total reliance on cognitive research as a guide to learning and intelligence is doing education a monumental disservice. As whole human beings, we function from the neck down as well as the neck up. The research into meditation, mindfulness, and heart intelligence all yield the same, sound results: A focus on the heart calms the hindbrain (the mediator of flight, fight, and stress), integrates emotions into the midbrain, encouraging creativity and divergent thinking, and pushes neural activity forward into the frontal lobes, the most evolved part of the brain and the site of planning, problem solving, and test taking. If every student in America spent the first ten minutes of the day in heart-focused meditation, the U.S. would lead the world in NAEP, PISA, or any other tests offered in the galaxy. This is the most powerful, proven method we have for making kids smarter, and we don’t use it. Disrupt, disrupt, disrupt!

 

•  Make everyone smarter. In the global age, everyone can now benefit from what Asian societies have done well for centuries: use the power of the group mind to make each individual smarter. In high performing industries, networks and teams are commonplace. Consultation is a must. In schools, we call this cheating. There has been progress: ‘Group’ work is commonplace in schools. But there is a reason that the Dallas Cowboys aren’t called a football group. Teams draw upon a deeper level of commitment, purpose, synergy, intentionality, and transparent communication to achieve a goal. These techniques can be taught, practiced, and assessed in schools—and should be the norm. One beginning point: Stop the mass media’s archaic portrayals of the row-style classrooms from the 1950’s. I see these photos alongside articles purporting to ‘change’ education—and I cringe. All of us should.

 

• Get real about creativity. Big subject, little progress—and there won’t be until a mass epiphany occurs. The sudden awakening: Creativity does not—and cannot—flourish within a standardized system. The more that educators attempt to control outcomes, the less creative students will be. Now, we spend a lot of energy trying to talk around that point (listen to student ‘voice’, ‘empower’ students, etc.), but students see through the disguise. The goal of industrial schooling is to define what children should know, instead of letting them tell us what they want to know. This disconnect is the true source of stress in education—and eventually some sort of quake will shake things loose as a desperate global society looks for out of the box solutions to critical issues. BTW, only one form of instruction supports the natural creativity of students: Start with questions, not a curriculum.

 

• Stop calling them ‘subjects’.  I took this one from Sir Ken Robinson, the creativity leader in the U.K. Instead, use the term ‘discipline’ to describe the topics that students study. The difference: ‘Subject’ is a static term, implying information and facts in isolation, while ‘discipline’ ties knowing and doing into a single process, in which students learn to use information to do something useful. There are clues to this distinction: Discipline comes from the same root as ‘disciple.’ In every class, a teacher should be a leader of process, not a deliverer of the subject matter. Plus, have you ever heard of ‘intersubject’ education?

 

Yes, we want to disrupt education. I don’t question the motives of the Secretary of Education, teachers, or anyone interested in the future of the 1.5 billion young people on the planet. But we are not yet emotionally and intellectually prepared to transform education—and in this age, like it or not, disruption and transformation are synonymous.  Education will not be an exception to this process, which means that eventually we will confront the question of whether we direct

 

Ten Ways to Teach Innovation

Ten Ways to Teach Innovation

 

One overriding challenge is now coming to the fore in public consciousness: We need to reinvent just about everything. Whether scientific advances, technology breakthroughs, new political and economic structures, environmental solutions, or an updated code of ethics for 21st century life, everything is in flux—and everything demands innovative, out of the box thinking.

 

 

 

 

The burden of reinvention, of course, falls on today’s generation of students. So it follows that education should focus on fostering innovation by putting curiosity, critical thinking, deep understanding, the rules and tools of inquiry, and creative brainstorming at the center of the curriculum.

 

 

 

This is hardly the case, as we know. In fact, innovation and the current classroom model most often operate as antagonists. The system is evolving, but not quickly enough to get young people ready for the new world. But I do believe there are a number of ways that teachers can bypass the system and offer students the tools and experiences that spur an innovative mindset. Here are ten ideas:

 

 

 

Move from projects to Project Based Learning. Most teachers have done projects, but the majority do not use the defined set of methods associated with high-quality PBL. These methods include developing a focused question, using solid, well crafted performance assessments, allowing for multiple solutions, enlisting community resources, and choosing engaging, meaningful themes for projects. PBL offers the best method we have presently for combining inquiry with accountability, and should be part of every teacher’s repertoire. See my website (www.thommarkham.com) or the Buck Institute (www.bie.org) for methods.

 

 

 

Teach concepts, not facts. Concept-based instruction overcomes the fact-based, rote-oriented nature of standardized curriculum. If your curriculum is not organized conceptually, use you own knowledge and resources to teach ideas and deep understanding, not test items.

 

 

 

Distinguish concepts from critical information. Preparing students for tests is part of the job. But they need information for a more important reason: To innovate, they need to know something. The craft precedes the art. Find the right blend between open-ended inquiry and direct instruction.

 

 

Make skills as important as knowledge. Innovation and 21^st century skills are closely related. Choose several 21^st century skills, such as collaboration or critical thinking, to focus on throughout the year. Incorporate them into lessons. Use detailed rubrics to assess and grade the skills.

 

 

 

Form teams, not groups. Innovation now emerges from teams and networks—and we can teach students to work collectively and become better collective thinkers. Group work is common, but team work is rare. Some tips: Use specific methods to form teams; assess teamwork and work ethic; facilitate high quality interaction through protocols and critique; teach the cycle of revision; and expect students to reflect critically on both ongoing work and final products. For peer collaboration rubrics, see the Top Ten Tools, downloadable from my website.

 

 

 

Use thinking tools. Hundreds of interesting, thought provoking tools exist for thinking through problems, sharing insights, finding solutions, and encouraging divergent solutions. Use Big Think tools or the Visible Thinking Routines developed at Harvard’s Project Zero.

 

 

 

Use creativity tools. Industry uses a set of cutting edge tools to stimulate creativity and innovation. As described in books such as Gamestorming or Beyond Words, the tools include playful games and visual exercises that can easily be used in the classroom.

 

 

 

Reward discovery. Innovation is mightily discouraged by our system of assessment, which rewards the mastery of known information. Step up the reward system by using rubrics with a blank column to acknowledge and reward innovation and creativity. I call it the Breakthrough column. See the Top Ten Tools.

 

 

 

Make reflection part of the lesson. Because of the coverage imperative, the tendency is to move on quickly from the last chapter and begin the next chapter. But reflection is necessary to anchor learning and stimulate deeper thinking and understanding. There is no innovation without rumination. If you’re looking for ideas on how to reflect on learning, contact me and I’ll send you what I use.

 

 

 

Be innovative yourself. This is the kicker, because innovation requires the willingness to fail, a focus on fuzzy outcomes rather than standardized measures, and the bravery to resist the system’s emphasis on strict accountability. But the reward is a kind of liberating creativity that makes teaching exciting and fun, engages students, and—most critical—helps students find the passion and resources necessary to design a better life for themselves and others.

 

 

 

 

 

Teacher as Coach: The key to better projects Our goal as PBL advocates is to design powerful projects. By powerful, I mean projects that fully engage students, offer a potent blend of skills and intellectual challenge, and prompt or awaken a deeper curio

Teacher as Coach: The key to better projects

 

Our goal as PBL advocates is to design powerful projects. By powerful, I mean projects that fully engage students, offer a potent blend of skills and intellectual challenge, and prompt or awaken a deeper curiosity about life. Nothing less, I believe, is going to serve us in the decades ahead.

 

 

 

 

The methods for designing projects are well evolved. But to help PBL realize its potential, a shift in teaching philosophy is also required. Central to that shift is redefining teacher as coach.

 

 

 

I distinguish teaching from coaching in this way: Teaching is primarily about delivering information (think ‘in’-struction); while coaching focuses on eliciting the best performance from students (‘con’-struction).

 

 

 

Obviously, teachers do both. But successful PBL requires excellent coaching—and I believe there is a simple way for PBL teachers to check themselves on whether they’re designing projects from a teacher or coach’s point of view. I like to lay out the project planning process in seven stages. Each stage represents a fault line—a point at which good coaching measurably improves projects.

 

 

 

Identify the Challenge

 

 

A coach begins by designing ‘projects that matter.’ A project that gives students an opportunity to contribute to their community or prepares them for life will invite their best efforts and whole-hearted participation. Generally, if projects originate from a laundry list of standards, they lack a big idea to power the project. There must be a reason to learn beyond covering the curriculum.

 

 

Craft a Driving Question

 

 

A coach gets better performance out of students by capturing the challenge in a question that provokes interest and compels inquiry. An effective Driving Question taps a deep level of motivation, often by appealing to the feeling world instead of the knowing world. For example, here’s how a social studies team shifted their driving question on a Depression-era project to get at deeper lessons from the 1930’s that resonate today:  ‘What can we learn from the 1930’s?’ was changed to ’How important is self-reliance in today’s world?’

 

 

 

Start with Results

 

 

A teacher focuses on test results, but a coach thinks more broadly: How will students behave, speak, perform, and hold themselves at the end of the project? Through PBL, students learn both skills and content. But in PBL, skills are decisive. Students who work well in teams learn more content; students who practice to mastery on presentations bring that rigor to their content exams. The more skillful your students, the more responsibility and work can be off-loaded to them.

 

 

 

Build the Assessment

 

 

First, a coach distinguishes assessment and evaluation. Assessment is a constant tool, used to improve performance and support growth over time; evaluation is the final score. Second, a good PBL coach views content as the core of a broader process designed to help students become more skillful, be reflective about their capabilities, and prepare for post secondary success. This means designing evaluations in five areas: (1) 21^st century skills; (2) conceptual understanding; (3) personal strengths or habits of mind; (4) innovation and creativity; and (5) critical content.

 

 

Enroll and Engage

 

 

Introducing a project is a sales event—and a good coach knows how to sell. A teacher relies on handouts and a brief introduction; a coach uses the tools of the trade—entry events, need to knows, and refining protocols—to get the project started with the right focus. Above all, a coach takes as much time as necessary to get students hooked into the project.

 

 

 

Focus on Quality

 

 

The chief aim of the PBL coach is to facilitate deep thinking through inquiry. This requires a relentless focus on the process of the project, a two step process that begins with effective teamwork. By forming student teams according to well-thought out guidelines and using proven team-building methods, coaches help team members take collective responsibility for the quality of their products, commit to each other’s success, and collaborate respectfully. Once that happens, the real work begins: Coaching students as they use the tools of inquiry and  practice the skills of dialogue, visible thinking, peer evaluation, and critique.

 

 

End with Mastery

 

 

 

Instead of concentrating on a test at the end of a unit, coaches work backward from the main event, allowing sufficient time for preparation, drafting, and refinement of products, presentations, and skills. Prototypes and a well thought out project schedule are the chief tools of a PBL coach—plus plenty of time to practice, just like on the field. 

 

Our goal as PBL advocates is to design powerful projects. By powerful, I mean projects that fully engage students, offer a potent blend of skills and intellectual challenge, and prompt or awaken a deeper curiosity about life. Nothing less, I believe, is going to serve us in the decades ahead.

 

 The methods for designing projects are well evolved. But to help PBL realize its potential, a shift in teaching philosophy is also required. Central to that shift is redefining teacher as coach.

 

I distinguish teaching from coaching in this way: Teaching is primarily about delivering information (think ‘in’-struction); while coaching focuses on eliciting the best performance from students (‘con’-struction).

 

Obviously, teachers do both. But successful PBL requires excellent coaching—and I believe there is a simple way for PBL teachers to check themselves on whether they’re designing projects from a teacher or coach’s point of view. I like to lay out the project planning process in seven stages. Each stage represents a fault line—a point at which good coaching measurably improves projects.

 

Identify the Challenge

 

A coach begins by designing ‘projects that matter.’ A project that gives students an opportunity to contribute to their community or prepares them for life will invite their best efforts and whole-hearted participation. Generally, if projects originate from a laundry list of standards, they lack a big idea to power the project. There must be a reason to learn beyond covering the curriculum.

 

 Craft a Driving Question

 

 A coach gets better performance out of students by capturing the challenge in a question that provokes interest and compels inquiry. An effective Driving Question taps a deep level of motivation, often by appealing to the feeling world instead of the knowing world. For example, here’s how a social studies team shifted their driving question on a Depression-era project to get at deeper lessons from the 1930’s that resonate today:  ‘What can we learn from the 1930’s?’ was changed to ’How important is self-reliance in today’s world?’

 

 Start with Results

 

A teacher focuses on test results, but a coach thinks more broadly: How will students behave, speak, perform, and hold themselves at the end of the project? Through PBL, students learn both skills and content. But in PBL, skills are decisive. Students who work well in teams learn more content; students who practice to mastery on presentations bring that rigor to their content exams. The more skillful your students, the more responsibility and work can be off-loaded to them.

 

 Build the Assessment

 

 First, a coach distinguishes assessment and evaluation. Assessment is a constant tool, used to improve performance and support growth over time; evaluation is the final score. Second, a good PBL coach views content as the core of a broader process designed to help students become more skillful, be reflective about their capabilities, and prepare for post secondary success. This means designing evaluations in five areas: (1) 21^st century skills; (2) conceptual understanding; (3) personal strengths or habits of mind; (4) innovation and creativity; and (5) critical content.

 

 Enroll and Engage

 

 Introducing a project is a sales event—and a good coach knows how to sell. A teacher relies on handouts and a brief introduction; a coach uses the tools of the trade—entry events, need to knows, and refining protocols—to get the project started with the right focus. Above all, a coach takes as much time as necessary to get students hooked into the project.

 

 Focus on Quality

 

The chief aim of the PBL coach is to facilitate deep thinking through inquiry. This requires a relentless focus on the process of the project, a two step process that begins with effective teamwork. By forming student teams according to well-thought out guidelines and using proven team-building methods, coaches help team members take collective responsibility for the quality of their products, commit to each other’s success, and collaborate respectfully. Once that happens, the real work begins: Coaching students as they use the tools of inquiry and  practice the skills of dialogue, visible thinking, peer evaluation, and critique.

 

End with Mastery

 

Instead of concentrating on a test at the end of a unit, coaches work backward from the main event, allowing sufficient time for preparation, drafting, and refinement of products, presentations, and skills. Prototypes and a well thought out project schedule are the chief tools of a PBL coach—plus plenty of time to practice, just like on the field. 

 

Establishing a PBL-friendly Culture

Establishing a PBL-friendly Culture

 

It’s surprising to me, but I see little discussion within education of why PBL succeeds. To experts in the field of human performance, however, there is no mystery. Three decades of research—including findings from youth development, organizational psychology, positive psychology, and emotional intelligence—has identified three core factors that maximize individual effort and the desire to achieve:

 

• · Caring relationships. Whether growing up in a household, studying in school, or working in a job, people perform better when they feel cared for and attended to. A caring relationship begins with recognizing and respecting the autonomy of the individual.

 

• · The desire for meaning and purpose. Human beings work harder when they have a goal and purpose. The goal must be relevant to the person’s needs and desires.

 

• · The power of mastery. Achievement is a natural state of being. People enjoy doing tasks well, and feel intrinsic rewards that sustain more effort.

 

Carefully-designed projects tap into these intangibles. That is the core strength of PBL; it can inspire drive, passion, and purpose in students. 

 

But if the goal is peak performance, then the culture of the classroom must support the methodology. Here are simple suggestions to establish a ‘PBL-friendly culture’ by translating the principles of human performance into daily teaching practices:

 

• Trust. Trust encourages peak cognition and intelligent behavior. Successful PBL depends very much on your belief that young people desire to learn and will perform well when respected by an adult and guided appropriately.

 

• Use the language of peak performance. IQ is malleable and performance is driven by self-fulfilling belief systems. Students who move from a ‘fixed mindset’ to a ‘growth mindset’ will believe in themselves, and in their creative potential. Your language will shape their beliefs.

 

• Treat ‘soft’ skills as ‘hard’ skills. Writing an essay or solving a math problem is traditionally regarded as a ‘hard’ skill, while communicating with someone who disagrees with you is a ‘soft’ skill. The reverse is actually true: Communication and collaboration are the most difficult of human skills—and need to be taught and practiced relentlessly.

 

• Expect mastery. Setting high expectations for academic performance is usual in good teaching. But setting high expectations for performance is crucial in PBL. Expect students to communicate and collaborate according to the standards of high performing industries.

 

• Train the imagination. Teaching innovation, problem solving, and creativity to the global generation is now a primary goal. Creativity will soon be valued as a basic skill and has been identified as the number one leadership competency of the future. Use creativity exercises, encourage brainstorming, and—most important—design projects that challenge the imagination.

 

• · Reward ‘wow!’ Currently, we have no measure for peak performance in schools. But you can design rubrics with a ‘breakthrough’ category—a blank column that invites students to deliver a product that cannot be anticipated or easily defined in words. The breakthrough column goes beyond the A, rewarding innovation, creativity, and unusual performance—a kind of ‘wow’ column.

 

• · Pass along the 10,000 hour rule. Mastering a skill at a high level takes 10,000 hours of practice. Your students aren’t likely to put that many hours into Algebra 1. But let them know that practice works—and the more they practice, the better they will be. Most important, let them know that achievement comes from hard work, not a special gene for brilliance. 

 

• · Teach to the iceberg. Remember that the deeper self—the domain of creativity and motivation—is not immediately accessible or public. Think in terms of an iceberg. Below the tip of the iceberg is 90% of the human being. If we want skillful, motivated creators, we need to pay attention to empathy, bias, and all the normal variations in a young person’s emotional makeup. Take time and care to surface the deeper aspects of learning.

 

• · Be aware of your ‘emotional content.’ PBL involves ‘up close and personal’ teaching. As you work side by side with students, they will closely observe your own attitude toward skills, lifelong learning, and emotional balance. Be aware. Be positive.

 

• · Do the small things. Small acts of kindness and respect can leverage larger shifts in your classroom culture. Stand at the door and greet students at the beginning of the period. Wish them well as they exit. Reward them with unexpected five-minute breaks when they perform well. Celebrate on occasion.

 

• · No ‘teacher’ talk. Sarcasm and put-downs by teachers are all too common in classrooms. Be firm when necessary—but don’t question character or use a tone of voice that a respected friend would find offensive. This violates the first rule of performance: care.

 

Ten Ways to Change the World through Education

Ten Ways to Change the World through Education

Innovation and renovation are constant themes in life today. Technology reminds us daily of the forward thrust and pace of change. Arguments over health care, business, politics, and environment highlight failing systems, crumbling institutions, and the pressing need to reinvent our world. Everything feels ripe for transformation—and it’s coming, even if we don’t know how or when.  

But one institution, schooling, that grand sector of life that provides the foundation for all other enterprise, remains immune to drastic overhaul. Despite education’s promise to help us create the future we want, it stands alone as most resistant to the demands of our radically different world.

 

In this space, I won’t analyze why this is so. Suffice to say that fear of the future, parental nostalgia, industrial obsessions with measurement, and a general confusion as to how to proceed in a suddenly-transformed world have combined to form a Maginot line yet to be breached by reformers.

Beyond the visible issues, though, is a fundamental block. In a Google-based, one-click, information-rich environment, we know future education must be process-based, not information heavy. We also understand that children need to collaborate, communicate, and problem-solve—the kind of 21^st century skills now being introduced in schools. But here’s the block: As we stop teaching information, then we begin a new era of teaching young people how to be more effective human beings, along with designing systems that maximize human performance.

This goal is doubly important as the world economy destabilizes and environmental issues become more severe. More than ever, we need to grow human capacity, not just prepare young people to go to college or work. But this shift cuts against the grain of five hundred years of history and requires a fundamental reorganization of our thinking—and we’re not there yet. To paraphrase Einstein’s famous observation, we continue to try to solve problems at the same level of imagination that created them in the first place. So here’s my ten point plan to start the conversation. I call it edge-ucation:

1. Don’t look to education for answers—Think, instead: If you were to invent schooling for the present world, what would it look like? Search out solutions from peak performance psychology, personal growth methods, entrepreneurship, and high-performing industries. The redesign starts with incorporating the best of what we know about human excellence.
2. Redefine ‘smart’—Let go of the myth that we understand human capacity, IQ, or the ultimate function of the brain. Every day we seem to discover that people can do much more than believed. Free each and every child to surprise us.
3. Trust love—There is too much fear in school. Fear motivates, but it has also been proven to shut down the frontal cortex, as well as being a handmaiden to neurosis, poor performance, and general unhappiness. Love, in the form of caring relationships, respectful communication, and gentle expectation, is considered by most of us to be a much more powerful force. It works in schools just as well as it does at home.
4. Recover the heart—It’s time to bring back 5,000 years of wisdom from indigenous peoples and other civilizations in history, all of whom knew that the heart is as critical as the brain to performance, wellness, and emotional stability. New research proves this, but we continue to operate as if the brain works in isolation. Not true. More important, we possess proven technologies that help children tap the power of the heart.
5. Teach resiliency—How to raise successful, adaptable human beings is no longer a mystery. Children who master important tasks, find meaning in their life, and have an adult mentor to help them define their path and navigate rough patches do just fine in life. Breakthrough findings in resiliency and positive psychology confirm this; we currently ignore it in mainstream education.
6.  Stress collaboration, not competition—This is a key shift. For education experts, it’s all about teaching kids to beat the competition overseas. Each country applies the same mantra (U.S. needs to beat China; China needs to beat India; India needs to beat UK, and so on.) One problem: Competition will prolong, not solve, the world’s pressing issues. Plus, I’ve never heard a student say, “I can’t wait to beat those guys in the other country.” In fact, it’s the opposite. Global children want to collaborate and serve. Their instincts tell them that their future depends on it. 
7. Let go of curriculum—As we transition to a full-fledged, cloud computing, global society, no one can agree on exactly what children should ‘know.’ But in general: Less is more. Teach core information, but just enough so they can find more and use it on their own. A world full of highly effective human beings will do just fine in figuring out what else they need to know.
8. Require teachers to be mentors—The model from the 1500’s still prevails: Stand at the front of the room and channel information from God. This ‘Lord of the Board’ routine is fading, but we need to go to the next level in a hurry. Every teacher should be trained as a mentor. This also means recruiting teachers with personalities that welcome, understand, and foster human development.  
9. Start with questions—The list of major problems to be solved keeps growing. Add this one: Recent research shows that U.S. students are becoming less creative. Why? First, students passively consume information; then they are tested for recall. And, given a stuffed curriculum, teachers can only skim the highlights. As the principal of my son’s high school said, “We only do surface learning here.” Not good enough for today’s world. We need to routinely use powerful methods to encourage creativity and problem-solving.
10. Open the mind—Speaking of questions, how about letting kids know we don’t have all the answers? A standard curriculum treats reality as if it is fixed, rarely referencing the momentous scientific breakthroughs and general upending of known truths likely to occur in the next 50 years. Study physics in high school, and you’d never know that Einstein had a few choice observations about Newton’s world. Study math, and you’d never learn about complexity and chaos, the drivers of a mathematical revolution. How about a taste of the future to get our multi-talented youth curious and excited—and primed to reinvent our world? 

 

Guest Post | Helping Students Motivate Themselves

January 9, 2012, 3:03 pm

Guest Post | Helping Students Motivate Themselves

By KATHERINE SCHULTEN

Daniel Pink on “the surprising science of motivation,” a TED talk that is one of many resources Larry Ferlazzo, a teacher and author, uses in this post.

Today, in lieu of a lesson plan, we’ve invited Larry Ferlazzo, a teacher and author, to write a guest post that brings together a number of recent Times and Learning Network pieces about motivation — and shows practical ways teachers can use them to help students learn to exert self-control, gain self-confidence and motivate themselves to learn and achieve.

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Three Ways to Help Students Develop Intrinsic Motivation

By Larry Ferlazzo

A recent Times article, “Motivating Students With Cash-for-Grades Incentive,” looks at efforts around the world to pay students for academic achievement.

 

In it, Edward Deci, a psychologist at the University of Rochester and author of of “Why We Do What We Do,” is quoted:

“It is easy to get people to do things by paying them if you’ve got enough money and they’ve got the necessary skills,” he said. “But they will keep doing it only as long as you keep paying them. And even if they were doing it before, when you stop paying them the behavior drops to a lower level than when you started paying them. We’ve done thousands of experiments on this over 40 years and the data is incredibly robust.”

“There is no evidence that paying people helps them learn — and a lot of evidence that it doesn’t,” Mr. Deci said. Then why do parents — and governments like the United Arab Emirates — resort to paying students? “Because it’s easy,” Mr. Deci said. “It’s much harder to work with people to get them motivated from the inside.”

This is not a revelation for teachers. We know that it is often easier to get students to do what we want them to do by dangling a carrot — or threatening a negative consequence. The problem with this kind of strategy is that, as Daniel Pink discusses in his TED talk, the research shows it generally works for just the short-term, and it appears to work only in generating simple actions, not in inspiring the kind of higher-order thinking skills and abilities we want our students to develop.

As Mr. Deci writes in his book, “The proper question is not, ‘How can people motivate others?’ but rather, ‘How can people create the conditions within which others will motivate themselves?’ ”

Here are several ways teachers can create those conditions and help students develop intrinsic motivation to learn.

Praising Effort Instead of Intelligence

Carol Dweck, a Stanford professor, has researched and written a great deal about the importance of praising effort and not intelligence. Her research shows that by praising the persistence of students and the strategies they have used to overcome an obstacle, we reinforce a “growth mindset” — one where students feel energized and knowledgeable about how to get beyond problems.

She contrasts that with a “fixed mindset” that is promoted by praising intelligence (“You’re so smart for getting that project done quickly”). Students with this kind of “fixed” perspective tend to want to look “smart,” and value that image more than learning. They tend to want to do easier work or might cheat to avoid making mistakes, because making mistakes is not part of their self-image. They believe it may make them look not smart.

Dr. Dweck has done several experiments praising one group of students for their intelligence and the other for their effort, all with similar results.

In one, both groups were given I.Q. tests and then, after receiving one type of praise or the other, were asked to solve difficult puzzles. The students who were praised for their effort worked much harder at the puzzles than those praised for their intelligence, many of whom gave up in frustration. Students were then given an I.Q. test similar to the first one. In these second tests, the students who had been praised for their effort increased their score over the first time, while the other group, those praised for intelligence, scored lower than they had originally.

When trying to remember “in the moment” about what kind of feedback to give to students, it might be helpful to think of this guideline: “describe or question.” Here are examples of praise that use this framework and will tend to develop more of a “growth” mindset:

It’s impressive that you did two drafts of that essay. What made you want to put that extra effort into it?

You worked on that project for the entire period without getting distracted, just focusing on doing the best job you could. That’s great!

You really listened to the other questions students were asking, and clearly tried to think of an original one. That really stood out!

How were you able to come up with such an interesting opening to the essay?

To a student who might be facing behavior challenges: You were really focused on classwork today. Can you tell me what you did or thought to help yourself not get distracted? It would give me some ideas that I could suggest to other students.

What about a student who can easily and quickly do classwork? This is what Dr. Dweck says:

What about a student who gets an ‘A’ without trying? I would say, “All right, that was too easy for you. Let’s do something more challenging that you can learn from.” We don’t want to make something done quickly and easily the basis for our admiration.

Explore the related New York Times Learning Network lesson If Memory Serves for more information on Dr. Dweck’s work.

Helping Students Understand and Develop Self-Control

One way to help students want to develop a greater capacity for self-control is to show them the longer-term advantages of doing so, and to teach effective strategies they can use to be successful.

Here are two ideas that build off recent Student Opinion questions posted on The Learning Network, each of which links to Times content about the topic. The first asks How Impulsive Are You?, and the second, Do You Have a Hard Time Making Decisions? (You might also invite students to post answers to these questions via the “comments” section for each post.)

The Marshmallow Experiment

The psychologist Walter Mischel initiated the famous “marshmallow experiment” 40 years ago, and it has since been replicated by others. As the Op-Ed columnist David Brooks summarizes it:

Around 1970, Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn’t ring the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two marshmallows.

The children who waited longer went on to get higher SAT scores. They got into better colleges and had, on average, better adult outcomes. The children who rang the bell quickest were more likely to become bullies. They received worse teacher and parental evaluations 10 years on and were more likely to have drug problems at age 32.

Teachers can have students read Mr. Brooks’s piece, “Marshmallows and Public Policy,” or they can read “Don’t! The Secret of Self-Control”, an article about the experiment by Jonah Lehrer in The New Yorker. Students might also watch this short and humorous TED talk that shows a marshmallow test in action.

After reviewing what the articles say about strategies to reinforce self-control, you might ask students to brainstorm times they wanted to do something they knew was wrong, inappropriate or not in their long-term best interests — whether in school, at home, with friends or elsewhere. When have they successfully delayed gratification? What happened as a result?

Invite them to choose one situation in which it is hard to exert self-control, and draw a cartoon depicting it on one half of a piece of paper. Then, on the other half, have them draw what they can do instead, perhaps including a “thought bubble” detailing how they could divert themselves from losing control. They can share these posters in pairs, small groups or even with the whole class, and the posters might be hung on the wall as reminders.

Another option? Create a mini-marshmallow test in class, or challenge your students to design a similar test for their peers.

Replenishing Self-Control

The Learning Network’s Student Opinion question, Do You Have a Hard Time Making Decisions?, discusses the research of Dr. Roy Baumeister and his finding that the mental energy involved in making decisions and exerting self-control can be a limited resource that needs to be replenished as it gets depleted.

Other researchers have used Dr. Baumeister’s discoveries to explore ways to help people increase their self-control, including using self-affirmation exercises and remembering better times. I share these findings with my classes, and have developed short “reflection cards” on cardstock that I give to students when they are having difficulties. I ask them to leave the room and return when they have written responses to these two requests printed on the card:

1. Please write at least three sentences about a time (or times) you have felt successful and happy.

2. Please write at least three sentences about something that is important to you (friends, family, sports, etc.) and why it is important.

I’ve never thought that asking students to write why they were misbehaving was particularly useful, especially right “in the moment.” Often they don’t have a clue! But I have found that invariably students return to the classroom in a much better frame of mind after they complete the card.

In fact, it’s not unusual for students — before a situation reaches a point requiring my intervention — to go to my desk where the cards are kept, take one and bring it back to their seat where they will fill it out and give it to me later. A number of students over the years have told me that they now remember to silently ask themselves those questions when they are feeling tempted to do something they might regret. It is just another tool they can use to distract themselves.

Assigning a 15-Minute Writing Activity on Values to Build Confidence

Researchers have found that doing a simple 15-minute writing activity three to five times during a school year at important transitional times, like the beginning and end of the year, or right before a final exam, can result in long-lasting academic benefits, especially to students experiencing academic challenges.

They concluded that having students write about values that are important to them develops resiliency and reminds them that “their entire self-worth was not riding on a single test result.” Researchers have found that having a greater sense of self-worth leads people to work harder and get less discouraged by setbacks.

Here is my summary of the three-part exercise the researchers did:

1. Students are given a list of “values,” which can change each time the activity is done. For instance, creativity, religious values, sense of humor, family, etc. They are asked to circle (or write down if the list is on an overhead) the one that is most important to them.

2. They are then asked to think about a specific time when the circled value was important and write a few sentences about it: When was that time? Why was it important to you then?

3. Finally, students are given three phrases:
“This value has influenced my life.”
“In general, I try to live up to this value.”
“This value is an important part of who I am.”
They are asked to write one of five ratings next to each one — Very Strongly Agree, Strongly Agree, Agree, Strongly Disagree, or Very Strongly Disagree

Students can then share their responses in small groups or with the entire class.

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I was a community organizer for 19 years before becoming a high school teacher nine years ago. The ideas in this post are just a few ways that we might move from what organizers call “irritation” — challenging people to act on our goals — to “agitation” — challenging them to act on their goals.

The main way to help students develop this kind of intrinsic motivation, of course, is to have teachers take the time to learn the interests, hopes and dreams of their students. Through this relationship-building process, we can help our students connect what is happening in class each day with their self-interests.

And perhaps we can develop the mutual trust needed to help us successfully challenge our students, and help students challenge us, to stretch and expand what we see as our interests, hopes and dreams.

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Larry Ferlazzo teaches English and social studies at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif. He writes a blog for educators, and a teacher advice column for Education Week Teacher. Portions of this column are excerpts from his latest book,“Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers to Classroom Challenges.” His previous guest post at The Learning Network was “English Language Learners and the Power of Personal Stories.”

10 maneras de dar control a los estudiantes...

10 maneras de dar control a los estudiantes...

 

Me comentaba un maestro que la sesión de menos éxito que había facilitado a sus colegas profesores fue una en la que había pedido hablar sobre la manera de establecer metas. Algo en lo que no se sentía cómodo, ni era muy experto. El no se ponía metas formales, por lo que no era auténtico. No estaba seguro del valor de la sesión y pensaba que  estaba actuando para formar el guión de otras personas.

 

Otra colega me dijo que se sentía incómoda al enseñar en un nuevo grado y pensó que su experiencia no era adecuada para la enseñanza de esta edad. En realidad, tenía poco que ver con los estudiantes y mucho que ver con el hecho de que se guió por lo que había enseñado en las grados anteriores. Ella utilizaba planes de estudio que no siempre encajan con su estilo de enseñanza o de creencias sobre el aprendizaje. Estaba actuando para el guión de otros.

 

Los actores de talento pueden realizar el guión de alguien y poner algo de sí mismos en el papel. Pero a la mayoría de nosotros nos resulta más fácil llevar a cabo un guión de nuestra propia creación, lo que refleje nuestras propias creencias, valores e ideas. Tenemos que cuestionar las cosas en las que no me siento bien. Tenemos que seguir nuestros instintos. Tenemos que escuchar nuestra voz interior. Tenemos que tomar riesgos y experimentar con nuestras ideas. Tenemos que crear nuestros propios guiones...

 

¿De qué manera esto mismo funciona para nuestros estudiantes? ¿Cómo podemos asegurarnos que no pasan la mayor parte de su vida escolar realizando el guión de otro?

 

1. Asegúrese de que  tienen otra opción en lo que aprenden y cómo aprenden.

 2. Conocer sus opiniones y escucharles.

 3. Cuidado en lo que dicen.

 4. No tomar todas las decisiones por ellos.

 5. Proporcionar un ambiente seguro para la experimentación de ideas.

 6. Manifestarles que los errores son parte del aprendizaje y no fracasos.

 7. Animarles a seguir sus intereses y sus pasiones.

8. Proporcionar oportunidades para la creatividad. 

9. Crear una cultura de pensamiento, donde se valora el pensamiento de todos.

 10. No esperar que ellos hagan las cosas sin saber por qué.

 

Las cosas en el camino de los alumnos siguen exigiendo planes de estudio, programas previsibles, contenidos basados en los libros de texto, exámenes estandarizados, hacer hincapié en las calificaciones, las expectativas de los padres…y nos tenemos que preguntar: ¿con lo mismo de siempre, consiguen los estudiantes pensar, actuar y hacer las cosas de manera diferente? O siguen actuando bajo el guión de otros? Podrán los estudiantes desde ya, aprender a tener el control de sus propios guiones?

 

Start from the learning…

Start from the learning…

February 11, 2011

Do you plan engaging activities for your class? Do you look at your topic and think about how you can teach it in the most exciting way? Do you explore new tech tools and think about how you can incorporate them into your teaching? Do you examine your classroom space and think about how best to teach in it?

If you answered yes, you might be feeling pleased with yourself and so you should. After all, there are some teachers who don’t even use tech to support their teaching. And some who simply hand out worksheets or stand out front and teach in the same old ways they always have.

But you might not be starting at the right place. I think it’s important to focus more on learning and less on teaching. Have you considered what you believe about how learning best takes place? Has your school articulated its beliefs about learning? Have you? If you follow this blog, you’ll have seen our learning principles and possibly even read about the process of developing them.

To support our teachers in their unit planning, in improving their practice, in the best use of our flexible learning environment and in the implementation of technology, our approach this year will be to start from our learning principles. We plan to unpack the belief statements one at a time, consider what they might look like and how they might play out in the classroom, like this…

Principle #1: We learn in different ways, depending on abilities, learning styles, preferences and interests.

So…

 

• Students have choices.
• Small groups are engaged in different things.
• Learning is expressed through drama, art, music, movement and technology.
• The teacher isn’t talking at the whole class at once.
• There is individual attention for those who require it.
• Independent learners are applying their learning unassisted.
• There are clear scaffolds in place for learners to manage their own learning.
• The learning environment is arranged to accommodate the variations.

What’s your learning goal? Use new vocabulary in context? Create a literature response? Develop problem-solving skills? Understand a particular mathematical concept? Compare the life cycles of  living things?  See above first…

NOW plan your learning experiences!

 

Cada día...