Posts Tagged ‘Education’

Sailing the 7 C’s of Motivation

May 1st, 2009

There are many theories comprising the concept of motivation, each providing insight into the begging question that many educators have: “How can I get students to remain interested, take ownership, forgo procrastination, and ultimately become a self-regulated learner?” In this short blog we will briefly examine the concept of motivation and assess how we as educators can foster a climate conducive to motivated learners who actually enjoy classroom instruction, are empowered education recipients, and don’t require nagging to complete assignments.

Motivation can be viewed as an internal state of arousal that drives us to take action, pursue a particular direction, and help keep us engaged in certain activities. It can be the deciding factor in what we learn, the extent to which we learn it, and aid in our continuing to partake in activities that involve previous learning. Generally speaking it can affect:

· Energy and activity level
· Actualization of goals
· Initiation and persistence in certain activities
· Time on task
· Active thinking or cognitive engagement

Facilitating motivation involves a multitude of processes, seven of which will be examined here.

1. Challenge
2. Choice
3. Control
4. Caring
5. Curiosity
6. Competence
7. Connectedness

Challenge: Simply put people enjoy challenge, and indeed need challenge to enter into desirable states of affect, such as Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). If there is no challenge, students will be bored, like they are when teachers lecture and nothing else. If the perceived challenge outweighs their perceived ability, then students will be anxious. It is the responsibility of educators to find the right balance, and engage students in classroom instruction that gradually builds their efficacy or ability to meet increasingly challenging tasks (Shernoff, Csikszentmihaly, Schneider, 2003).

Choice: Choice is empowering; it provides a sense of ownership. We are more likely to work harder at things we choose to do, which in turn will increase the amount of effort we put into doing it, which increases our persistence, which improves our achievement and ultimately our self-efficacy (the belief we have about our ability in a certain domain). The opposite spiral is also a potential issue, so educators must be cognizant of where students are in actualizing goals.

Control: If we believe we can make improvements and that chance and luck are not the sole contributors to our ability to perform, then we are likely to attribute success to actual causes such as hard work, dedication, etc. If students believe they are in control of their academic success they are indeed likely to see greater academic success and higher grades, put forth more effort, and spend more time on task. Intrinsic motivation increases when students believe they have control, which can be enhanced when teachers offer the ability to make choices, selections, and actions that will produce desired results. Doing so provides a much needed sense of autonomy. (See Weiner’s work on Attribution Theory- 1979; 1985; 1986; 1992 for more).

Caring: If you don’t care, then chances are your students won’t either. Additionally, ask yourself, “Does this material provide relevance?” “Is the information I’m providing interesting?” “Have I provided opportunities for recognition?” If you have and you do, student motivation is likely to be high. If not, then you need to put more thoughtful effort into your planning and presentation of information.

Curiosity: Humans are a naturally curious bunch, and so are drawn to phenomena that happen to pique their curiosity. By presenting information in a manner that bolsters curiosity, perhaps through deliberate and thoughtful questioning, educators can foster and develop a sense of inquisitive curiosity in their students.

Competence: Success at challenging tasks provides a sense of competence, which builds self-confidence. See above information on self-efficacy and the upward cycle under Choice.

Connectedness: When are you more engaged, when listening to a lecture or solving problems with peers? Chances are you are more enthralled when working with colleagues or peers, and so it goes with students. We need to feel connected to not only others around us, but to the information being presented as well, which can be accomplished as easily as facilitating meet and greets in the early sessions, 3 minute standing conversations, or group projects and discussion. As an educator find a way to let your students interact with one another, the results my surprise you.

Teachers can foster motivation in a variety ways that are not examined above, including the issuance of contracts, incentives, recognition, social support, feedback that is specific and immediate, and importantly instruction in proper goal setting. In the end, educators must determine if the material they present, the activities they provide, and the climate they set in their classrooms and lecture halls is of the nature that addresses the 7 C’s of motivation. If not, chances are that absenteeism will be high, concentration and learning diminished, and Outstanding Teacher Awards will remain chronically elusive.

I would especially like to thank Dr. Peter Doolittle, Associate Professor at Virginia Tech and Director of the Center for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, for providing discourse and resources on the topic of motivation, and particularly the notion of the 7 C’s.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper
and Row.

McKenzie, J.F., Neiger, B.L., Thackery, R. (2009). Planning, implementing, and evaluating
health promotion programs: A primer (5th ed). San Francisco: Pearson Education Inc.

Ormrod, J. E. (2008). Human learning (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Inc.

Shernoff, D. J., Csikszentmihaly, M., Schneider, B. (2003). Student engagement in high
school classrooms from the perspective of flow theory. School Psychology Quarterly, 18(2), 158-176.

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Posted in E. Lee Rakes

Tags: Education Instruction Motivation Teacher Efficacy

Learning: Three Basics to Improve Teaching

April 28th, 2009

“Well, I don’t really know much about how a car runs,” the mechanic explains, “but I do have a garage full of tools that I know how to use. One of them will probably do the trick.”

Would you trust your car to this repairperson? What if you were given a similar explanation by a plumber? a pharmacist? a surgeon?

We expect experts to have more than a collection of tools; we expect them to have an understanding of what they need to accomplish so they can tailor their actions accordingly. An air pump, while a useful tool for certain tasks, will do little good if used to address an oil leak.

Similarly, teachers need more than a collection of teaching methods. They need to understand learning. Knowing how people learn increases a teacher’s intentionality, the capacity to design instruction that fits both the material and the learners.

What, then, are some basics of learning that every school leader and teacher should know? Here are three starter principles:

Memorization ≠ Learning: It amazes me how many times teachers argue that memorization equals learning and offer the times table as proof. Let’s imagine that a child memorizes the times table but never understands the concept of multiplication (same-sized groups being combined and the total items tabulated) nor the pattern that calls for multiplication as a solution (same-sized groups needing to be combined to determine a total). Of what value, beyond the teacher’s timed tests, will having memorized the times table be? The student will not understand what he is doing when answering multiplication questions from memory, nor will he be able to ever use multiplication to solve word or real-world problems. Yes, some elements need to be memorized, but equating memorization with authentic learning is a mistake, because…

The brain constructs learning. “We often talk of knowledge as though it could be divorced from thinking, as though it could be gathered up by one person and given to another in the form of a collection of sentences to remember,” explains Richard Paul. “When we talk in this way we forget that knowledge, by its very nature, depends on thought. Knowledge is produced by thought, analyzed by thought, comprehended by thought, organized, evaluated, maintained, and transformed by thought. Knowledge exists, properly speaking, only in minds that have comprehended it and constructed it through thought.” To learn, the brain labels and sorts incoming data, seeks patterns within it, and recalls prior experiences related to it. The new data and the prior experiences are then blended to construct understanding. Unless we engage students in thinking about new material, they will not learn. And they will lack the ability to use new knowledge because…

Authentic learning empowers transfer. Students transfer learning when they use it outside of the classroom. Unfortunately, transfer rarely occurs. According to Eric Jensen, the “abysmal failure of students to transfer learning from school subjects to real life…cuts across age, IQ, and social status.” What contributes to a student’s ability to use knowledge in widened or varied contexts? “The first factor that influences successful transfer is degree of mastery of the original subject,” conclude Bransford, Brown, and Cocking. “Without an adequate level of initial learning, transfer cannot be expected. This point seems obvious, but it is often overlooked…Transfer is affected by the degree to which people learn with understanding rather than merely memorize sets of facts or follow a fixed set of procedures.”

Understanding learning involves more than comprehending these three principles, and neurocognitive researchers are uncovering new insights almost every day. However, even basic knowledge of learning influences instructional decisions. Teachers who grow in their understanding of learning develop more than a cache of instructional methods. They increase in intentionality. They are able to design instruction that fosters authentic learning. They know why they do what they do, and they know why what they do achieves the goal: student learning.

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.), How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press, 1999), 41, 43.
Jensen, E., Enriching the Brain: How to Maximize Every Learner’s Potential (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), 20.
Paul, R., “The State of Critical Thinking Today: The Need for a Substantive Concept of Critical Thinking,” retrieved December 2006 from http://www.criticalthinking.org/resources/articles/the-state-ct-today.shtml.

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Posted in Kevin Washburn

Tags: Curriculum Education learning teaching Understanding

Mayoral control is NOT the answer

April 13th, 2009

Now that I can post here directly, I thought I would go back and share this diary which was posted at Daily Kos this past Saturday
I was not a supporter of the selection of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education, but I was willing to withhold judgment, to see where he would attempt to take the nation in education policy. I thought perhaps policy might be made in the White House, with him serving as the public face. I was wrong. Duncan is attempting to drive education in ways that will destructive. Many of the policies he is pushing demonstrate his fundamental lack of understanding.

Today I will briefly explore the issue of mayoral control of big city school systems. Remember, such is Duncan’s experience in years in Chicago. He started as an assistant to Paul Vallas in a system controlled directly by Mayor Richie Daley, succeeding him in that position for a number of years before being tapped by his basketball buddy, the new President, to head our national educational efforts.

In this exploration I am going to rely on an op ed in yesterdays New York Times entitled Mayor Bloomberg’s Crib Sheet, by Diane Ravitch.

Diane Ravitch is currently a research professor of education at New York University. One of her books is The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973. Trained as an educational historian, she served as Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander from 1991 to 1993, where she was responsible for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. As Assistant Secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of state and national academic standards. She holds positions as a senior researcher simultaneously at Hoover and at Brookings. She has become an outspoken critic of No Child Left Behind. While I do not always agree with her, I consider her a friend. And before we start with her op ed, I have to put you on notice: she is NOT a fan of Duncan, having recently described him as “Margaret Spellings in drag.”

Ravitch begins by noting Duncan’s call for mayors to take control of the nation’s school and of his pointing at New York City as an example. She then writes

Actually, the record on mayoral control of schools is unimpressive. Eleven big-city school districts take part in the federal test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Two of the lowest-performing cities — Chicago and Cleveland — have mayoral control. The two highest-performing cities — Austin, Tex., and Charlotte, N.C. — do not.

Stop for a moment, remember that Chicago has had mayoral control of its schools since Paul Vallas was put in place by Daley in 1995, with Duncan succeeding him in 2001. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is considered the best single, independent measure of school performance we have. Let me quote from the linked Wikipedia article to provide a bit of context:

NAEP conducts assessments periodically in mathematics, reading, writing, science, and other areas.[1] New assessments in world history and in foreign language are anticipated in 2012.[2]
NAEP is administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the US Department of Education.
Since NAEP assessments are administered uniformly to all participating students using the same test booklets and identical procedures across the nation, NAEP results serve as a common metric for all states and selected urban districts that take the assessment. The assessment stays essentially the same from year to year, with only carefully documented changes. NAEP reports all results at the national level and provides state results for some assessments. On a trial basis, NAEP is releasing the results for a number of large urban districts.
NAEP results are based on representative samples of students at grades 4, 8, and 12 for the main assessments, or samples of students at ages 9, 13, or 17 years for the long-term trend assessments. These grades and ages were chosen because they represent critical junctures in academic achievement. NAEP provides data on subject-matter achievement, instructional experiences, and school environment for populations of students (e.g., all fourth-graders) and groups within those populations (e.g., female students, Hispanic students). NAEP does not provide scores for individual students or schools, although state NAEP can report results for selected large urban districts.

Educational researchers consider the main NAEP the best single indicator of educational performance over time. There is somewhat less confidence in the accuracy of what is known as state NAEP, especially since participation became mandatory in 2001 with the passage of No Child Left Behind. State NAEP scores provide a check on claims by states for improvement on their own state assessments, those state assessments being used to determine Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB.

Two quick comments about what NAEP has shown before we return to Ravitch. First, an examination of NAEP scores completely destroys the idea of any Texas miracle in education during the 6 years G. W. Bush was governor – and remember, it was that Texas miracle that was used to sell the nation on NCLB. The Nation’s Report Card, as NAEP is sometimes described, showed no improvement for Texas in the 1990s, and has shown little improvement in the 6+ years since NCLB went into effect. Second, Duncan spent 7 years in charge of Chicago schools in a system of mayoral control that predated him by another 6 years. Vallas was cited by Clinton for raising test scores, but (a) the scores that were raised were a selective set of Illinois tests, not consistent across all of the state tests, and the city showed little progress on NAEP. As we return of Ravitch remember her point – that of the 11 urban districts participating in NAEP for separate scoring, the two lowest scoring were under mayoral control while the two highest were not. And Chicago, after 13+ years of mayoral control, including more than 7 under Duncan, was at the bottom.

I cited the one book by Ravitch because writing it provided her with probably more knowledge about the history of schools in New York City than anyone else in the country. Diane was trained as an educational historian, and IIRC, her dissertation was supervised by perhaps the greatest historian of education we have had, Lawrence Cremins. While I will sometimes disagree with the conclusions she draws, she is a solid researcher on educational history. When evidence proves her previous ideas to be inaccurate, she will acknowledge and correct them, as she is doing in the book on which she is currently working.

Duncan recently came to New York to urge renewal of the state statute, passed in 2002, that gives the mayor control of the schools in New York City. That law expires at the end of this school year. Ravitch points out two key things to know about NYC schools

1. Mayoral control is nothing new: “From 1873 to 1969, the mayor appointed every single member of the Board of Education. The era of decentralization from 1969 to 2002 was an aberration, because the mayor had only two appointees on a seven-member board.”

2. The control over schools Bloomberg currently has is unrivaled in the city’s history, with previous mayors respecting the independence of school board members they appointed. By contrast, “The present version of the board, the Panel on Education Policy, serves at the pleasure of the mayor and rubber-stamps the policies and spending practices of the Department of Education, which is run by Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.”

Let me deviate from Ravitch a bit. One of the ironies of mayoral control has been the pattern of appointing people to run schools who really lack the background as professional educators one might expect. I teach in Maryland. A superintendent must meet certain qualifications in order to head one of our 24 school divisions (23 counties and the City of Baltimore). One of those requirements is a doctorate in education, although that State Superintendent can waive some of the requirements (and Superintendent Nancy Grasmick, who herself started as a teacher, has done so). Ever since Seattle experienced some success with hiring a non-educator to run their schools, mayors and governors have somehow thought such an approach was the solution to the seemingly intractable problems of urban education. But retired Maj. Gen. John Stanford was sui generis, and the success he had in Seattle has not been duplicated by similar appointments, whether of Generals (Julius Becton in DC), former Governors (Roy Romer in Los Angeles), financial managers (Paul Vallas in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans), or lawyers (Duncan in Chicago and Joel Klein in New York). [Michelle Rhee in DC did spend several years in a classroom with Teach for America, during which time by her own admission she was a lousy teacher until near the end of her second year. Her subsequent experience was running The New Teacher Project, a non-profit that was one of many spinoffs from the TFA family. Her highest degree is a Masters in Public Policy]

Ravitch – and remember her background and her responsibilities in the US Dept of Education – examines the claims of supporter of the Bloomberg-Klein regime of spectacular improvements. They argue for approval without change of the current law. She quotes Sec. Duncan

I’m looking at the data here in front of me,” he said while in New York. “Graduation rates are up. Test scores are up … By every measure, that’s real progress.”

Except that claim is unsupported by independent measures:

On the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress — widely acknowledged as the gold standard of the testing industry — New York City showed almost no academic improvement between 2003, when the mayor’s reforms were introduced, and 2007. There were no significant gains for New York City’s students — black, Hispanic, white, Asian or lower-income — in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading or eighth-grade mathematics. In fourth-grade math, pupils showed significant gains (although the validity of this is suspect because an unusually large proportion — 25 percent — of students were given extra time and help). The federal test reported no narrowing of the achievement gap between white students and minority students.

When supporters of the Klein regime try to point to scores on state tests, which have improved, Ravitch responds:

indeed, the state scores have soared in recent years, not only in the city but also across New York state However, the statewide scores on the N.A.E.P. are as flat as New York City’s. Our state tests are, unfortunately, exemplars of grade inflation.

She also points out how other measures, such as graduation rates reported by the city schools, do not indicate improvement:

The city says the rate climbed to 62 percent from 53 percent between 2003 and 2007; the state’s Department of Education, which uses a different formula, says the city’s rose to 52 percent, from 44 percent. Either way, the city’s graduation rate is no better than that of Mississippi, which spends about a third of what New York City spends per pupil.

Moreover, the city’s graduation rates have been pumped up with a variety of dubious means, like “credit recovery,” in which students who fail a course can get full credit if they agree to take a three-day makeup program or turn in an independent project. In addition, the city counts as graduates the students who dropped out and obtained a graduate-equivalency degree.

Let me step back for a moment. First, remember the requirement of NCLB to participate in NAEP. This was required precisely to serve as a check on state’s manipulating their own tests to “show improvement.” One can establish a first year cut score (the raw score which represents passing) to show a low pass rate, then lower the cut score to show” “improvement” even if the raw scores have not changed. I experienced that in the one year I taught middle school in Virginia. The year before I arrived our school had a 58% pass rate on middle school American History. The year I was there, with the other two teachers being first year teachers and me being new to the curriculum, our pass rate was 81%, which seems to be a spectacular improvement. Except that the cut scores were changed to have a more acceptable passing rate – if we had restated the previous year’s scores according to the new pass rate, it would have been about 71-72% – we improved, but not that much. And of course, we were comparing two different cohorts of students.

The manipulation of graduation rates is a well-known phenomenon. We saw it in Texas during the tenure of Gov. Bush, especially in Houston under Rod Paige. Students would be held back, sometimes more than once, in th grade (because the Texas tests were in 10th grade), until they dropped out, then they would not be listed as a drop out if you could get them to say they might go eventually for a GED, instead being listed as transferring to an alternative educational program. All this was in this professional literature in work by Walt Haney BEFORE NCLB was passed into law near the beginning of Bush’s first term.

Let’s return to Ravitch. She notes that the NY figures do not include as dropouts those listed as discharged during their hs years:

Some discharges are legitimate, like students who moved to another school district. But many others are so-called push-outs, students who were ejected from school even though they had a legal right to be there, often because their grades and test scores were bringing down their schools’ averages. The Department of Education refuses to disclose how many students are in each of these categories. We do know, however, that more than one-fifth of the members of the class of 2007, or 18,524 students, were discharged and not counted as dropouts.

One point to bear in mind is that Ravitch is not totally opposed to some level of mayoral involvement in the governance of schools. She is opposed to the model one sees in NYC, in which there is no oversight of the actions taken by the mayor and his designee, and hence no public participation in s school governance. She is willing to have the mayor appoint the members of the Board of Education for fixed terms,

Candidates for the board should be evaluated by a blue-ribbon panel so that no mayor can stack it with friends. That board should appoint the chancellor, and his or her first responsibility must be to the children and their schools, not to the mayor.

What a remarkable idea – the head of the school system has as first responsibility the children. If one returns to the history of Paul Vallas, for example, one finds him finishing second in 2001 (to Blagojevich and ahead of Burris) for the Democratic nominee for Governor of Illinois, has since considered running again in 2010 and has announced that he plans to run this year for the Cook County Board as a Republican. Reasonable people might well question his dedication to the children that should have been his primary responsibility.

Ravitch believes that school boards need to make their decision in public, subject to public scrutiny. She further advocates for some level of parental control, writing

Local school boards composed of parent leaders should oversee the schools in their districts, although they should not have any financial authority.

She wants independent auditing to evaluate claims of improvements in test scores and graduation rates. The current New York law has none of these features. Instead all power resides within the hands of a chancellor / ceo, Joel Klein, who is answerable only to the mayor. So far that model has not proven successful, and yet that is what Duncan wants to propagate across the nation, perhaps because that is his own personal experience, an experience which has not shown positive results.

If our schools are truly public schools, they should be answerable to the public. Their governance should be democratic. The model of mayoral control, especially as implemented in New York City, meets neither of these criteria. By itself that should be sufficient reason to reject that model of governance. The model is further undercut by the lack of success that can be demonstrated by independent evaluation, not only in New York, but also in Chicago under the leadership of Duncan and of his predecessor.

Let me offer the final paragraph penned by Ravitch in this piece:

Not every school problem can be solved by changes in governance. But to establish accountability, transparency and the legitimacy that comes with public participation, the Legislature should act promptly to restore public oversight of public education. As we all learned in civics class, checks and balances are vital to democracy.

checks and balances are vital to democracy – we have just escaped from an 8 year administration that did not believe it should be subject to checks and balances, and we came close to destroying our economy and our international standing as a result of actions taken without such checks and balances. If nothing else, we should have learned that no public function can be trusted to people who are not subject to checks and balances. Our public schools should be preparing our children not only to be employed, but to be participating citizens in a representative liberal democracy. The model of governance advocated by Duncan is opposed to that. By itself that should be sufficient reason to reject it. And it does not work, as both his experience in Chicago and the tenure of Joel Klein in New York demonstrate.

Peace.

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Posted in Kenneth Bernstein

Tags: Arne Duncan Diane Ravitch Education mayoral control Michael Bloomberg Paul Vallas

Emerging Trend: Collaborative Curve

April 12th, 2009

Recently, on the Harvard Business Publishing website, The Big Shift team (John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison) posted an article titled, Introducing the Collaborative Curve.

They tell the story of how a fax machine, by itself, is pretty worthless. However it becomes increasingly more valuable as more fax machines are added to the network (Network Effect). They go on to suggest that if the fax machines “improved their performance” when new units were added to the network it would not only have “an amplifying effect on the first level of exponential performance,” but it would also bring about a second amplifying effect as the machines’ performance improves.

To illustrate their point they provide an example from the World of Warcraft:

What happens, for instance, as you add more participants to a carefully-designed environment? The online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) provides an intriguing example. More than 11.5 million people around the world now play World of Warcraft. Performance in the game is measured by experience points, which are awarded to players as they successfully address progressively more difficult challenges. It takes roughly 150 hours of accumulated game play to earn the first 2 million experience points but players on average are able to earn another 8 million experience points in the next 150 hours of accumulated game play. Even though, within the game, experience points become more difficult to acquire as you advance, World of Warcraft players are improving their performance four times faster as they continue to play the game.

They postulate that this is the result of the numerous interactions between practitioners of the game and each others’ knowledge base. Through blogs, wikis, forums, and databases, they learn from and with one another at an exponentially amplified rate.

Calling this emerging trend “Collaborative Curve,” they define it as, “the more participants–and interactions between those participants–you add to a carefully designed and nurtured environment, the more the rate of performance improvement goes up.”

While this is an introduction to the trend, the behavior itself is not news to anyone who’s ever lived off the land.

Take the nomadic hunters of the ice age for example. Surely they collaborated in order to capitalize on and innovate new technologies, such as the atlatl. I imagine them, cloaked in fur, sitting around their fire, perhaps even gnawing on a deer bone, discussing methods for more effectively bringing down a mastodon using the new tool. Comparing experiences and then applying each others’ lessons surely advanced mastery and utility beyond what one could achieve alone, and at a much faster rate.

However, the emerging nature of this trend relates to the utilization of a new technology — interactive media. By ‘meeting’ at digital gathering points, the expertise of like minded enthusiasts, even across vast distances, accelerates the growth of ideas, knowledge, and ultimately innovation far beyond what was feasible with traditional trade publications, snail mail, or conference calls.

In the past, proximity has played a key role in meaningful collaboration. With the advent of Web 2.0 that obstacle has been effectively flattened, or at least lessened.

What does this mean for education? Depends on what we make of it.

If the anecdotal evidence proves true, the ramifications might lead us to two conclusions:

Through our use of networking as professionals in the field of education (such as through the emerging on-line communities on twitter, wikis, skype, podcasts, blogs, etc) as well as efforts in our schools (through intentional practices such as PLC), we stand to exponentially improve the art and science of our pedagogical practices.
By learning to utilize collaborative communities to their fullest potential, we can better implement tools that enable students to take advantage of these opportunities for their own growth. The benefits of this are two-fold. One, they have access to a broad range of content, yet depth in whatever topic they focus on. Two, If we can provide more opportunities for students to learn strategies for utilizing collaborative communities, we equip them with skills that will help them not only learn and understand more, but to apply that content in new and innovative ways.

I look forward to the emergence of new research on collaborative curves, because this trend could be a game changer. If researchers find that collaborative networks do accelerate learning for both individuals and groups, we might all benefit — students, teachers, administrators.

What else might we garner from this trend as it relates to teaching, learning, and constructing classroom environments that lead to a relevant education?

Jason Flom spends 10 months of the year being schooled by 4th graders (leading him to wonder if he missed the “101 Clever Kid Tricks” lecture at the University of Florida, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s in education). He recently founded Ecology of Education, a multi-author blog committed to exploring ideas and issues in education and learning from various niches in related fields. He can be reached at on twitter (jasonflom) or by e-mail (jason.flom@ecologyofeducation.net) or out in the woods on a hike with his wife and daughter.

Image: spekulator

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Posted in Jason Flom

Tags: Collaborative Curve Education Harvard