Group items tagged

This book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methods--to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb. You can read the entire book online for free.

FROM OVERVIEW: "They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Persuasive Writing is recommended for use in Sages First Seminars. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein have created a book of templates useful for "Demystifying Academic Conversation" (Preface ix). While the book has received mixed reviews (mostly related to the contentious issue of whether or not templates are useful/proper tools for use in writing instruction; see "Responses to TSIS" below), we present the following information to help you decide for yourself. In addition, you will find sample exercises from the text (some of which have been tested in the classroom) under "Links." '

"As smartphones and handheld computers move into classrooms worldwide, we may be witnessing the start of an educational revolution. How technology could unleash childhood creativity -- and transform the role of the teacher. "

Students pay tuition to work for free ... unpaid internships are growing in this down economy, favoring the wealthy who can afford them. But internships are generally valuable for students, administrators say. The complementary courses involve journals, essays, oral presentations, or work portfolios. Independent studies lean toward academics. Companies often see academic credit as substitute compensation that qualifies interns as legally unpaid trainees and keeps them on their colleges' liability insurance. Advertisements specify: "Candidates must be able to receive academic credit." That makes some campus officials bristle. "What they're saying is holding the institution hostage," says Kathy L. Sims, director of career services at the University of California at Los Angeles. Employers don't know colleges' academic standards, she says. "It's really not their call whether their experience is creditworthy." Colleges have dealt with that quandary in various ways. Some, especially those with traditions of experiential learning, vet and monitor internships, enrolling students in courses designed to complement their real-world work. Others let professors sponsor independent studies based on internships. More and more have devised some form of noncredit recognition to try to satisfy employers without altering academic philosophies or making students pay tuition to work free. At Bates College, the game is up. "We're quite adamant about our refusal to play along," says James W. Hughes, a professor of economics. As chairman of the department eight years ago, he got dozens of calls from students, parents, and employers asking for credit for unpaid internships, mainly in the financial industry. "Why is it that we have to evaluate this experience," he says, "just so some multibillion-dollar bank can avoid paying $7.50 an hour?" But the law is vague, and arguably antiquated. In the for-profit sector, guidelines for legally unpaid internships come from a 1947 U

A college classroom also has its own particular ecology, involving a host of interlocking factors. Instructors-and the education researchers who study them-ignore that ecology at their peril, he says.

A Chronicle version that effectively surveys the issues. Maybe nothing new, but a few nuggets.

CRITIQUE OF E-LEARNING IN BLACKBOARD "Just as utopic visions of the Internet predicted an egalitarian online world where information flowed freely and power became irrelevant, so did many proponents of online education, who viewed online classrooms as a way to free students and instructors from traditional power relationships . . ." In "A Critical Examination of Blackboard's EˆLearning Environment" (FIRST MONDAY, vol. 14, no. 6, June 1, 2009), Stephanie J. Coopman, professor at San Jose State University, identifies the ways that the Blackboard 8.0 and Blackboard CE6 platforms "both constrain and facilitate instructorˆstudent and studentˆstudent interaction." She argues that while the systems have improved the instructor's ability to track and measure student activity, this "creates a dangerously decontextualized, essentialized image of a class in which levels of 'participation' stand in for evidence of learning having taken place. Students are treated not as learners, as partners in an educational enterprise, but as users."

"We should abolish faculties in universities. Faculties are the most conservative bulwarks against change. Europe must move to a radically different trans-disciplinary approach. Most of the interesting things happen on the boundaries of the discipline," he said. \n\n"Second, I emphasised the social perspective: the selection and meritocratic functions of schools often impose themselves as external limitations on the innovative capacities of schools. The 'pedagogy of failure', which often dominates schooling, is not the best environment for the development of creativity and heteronymous thinking. Innovation and creativity in the classroom can only flourish in a 'pedagogy of success', in which all talents of all children have the chance to develop. Well-performing school systems are those where the drive for excellence is linked with a strong equitable ambition."\n

Apparently NCATE is not sufficient according to some.

New realities rendered starkly.

Note: A "premium content" article -- you must be a paid subscriber to see it, not just a registered site user.

Hutchings is a critical leader in our work--good links to have available, too.

Another one in which the comments say more than I might--but the range of these accountability pieces underscore the work to do....

"Most university classrooms have gone through a massive transformation in the past ten years. I'm not talking about the numerous initiatives for multiple plasma screens, moveable chairs, round tables, or digital whiteboards. The change is visually more subtle, yet potentially much more transformative."

Connect this to the 10 point self assessment we did for AACU comparing institutional vs community-based learning https://teamsite.oue.wsu.edu/ctlt/home/Anonymous%20Access%20Documents/AACU%202009/inst%20vs%20comm%20based%20spectrum.pdf

Kohn, as usual, challenges convention, probably intractable assumptions about how people learn. But please don't confuse us with facts.

A critical indicator of why I see our work as work with accreditors rather than for accreditors.