Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck conducted the groundbreaking research showing that praise intended to raise young people's self-esteem can seriously backfire. When we tell children, "You're so smart," we communicate the message that they'd better not take risks or make mistakes, lest they reveal that they're not so smart after all. Dweck calls this cautious attitude the "fixed mindset," and she's found that it's associated with greater anxiety and reduced achievement. Students with a "growth mindset," on the other hand, believe that intelligence can be expanded with hard work and persistence, and they view challenges as invigorating and even fun. They're more resilient in the face of setbacks, and they do better academically.
Now Dweck has designed a program, called Brainology, which aims to help students develop a growth mindset. Its website explains: "Brainology makes this happen by teaching students how the brain functions, learns, and remembers, and how it changes in a physical way when we exercise it. Brainology shows students that they are in control of their brain and its development." That's a crucial message to pass on to children, and it's not just empty words of encouragement-it's supported by cutting-edge research on neuroplasticity, which shows that the brain changes and grows when we learn new things. You, and your child, can learn to be smarter.
According to a yearly national survey of more than 200,000 first-year students conducted by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, college freshmen are increasingly "overwhelmed," rating their emotional health at the lowest levels in the 25 years the question has been asked. Such is the latest problem dropped at the offices of higher-education administrators and professors nationwide: Young adults raised with a single-minded focus on gaining admission to college now need help translating that focus into ways to thrive on campus and beyond.
Many young adults weren't taught the basic life skills and coping mechanisms for challenging times.
The consequences for students who lack those skills have become increasingly clear both on campus and after graduation. At Pitt, where I teach, and at other institutions, student-life administrators have noticed a marked decrease in resiliency, particularly among first-year students. That leads to an increase in everything from roommate disagreements to emotional imbalance and crisis. After graduation, employers complain that a lack of coping mechanisms makes for less proficient workers: According to a 2006 report by the Conference Board, a business-research group, three-quarters of surveyed employers said incoming new graduates were deficient in "soft" skills like communication and decision making.
Parents and high-school educators certainly have a role to play, but college administrators and professors cannot abdicate their role as an influential socialization force to guide young adults toward better self-management.
The way to combat the decline in emotional health among first-year students is to offer them opportunities to build such self-efficacy from the start.
Teaching interpersonal skills of self-presentation is also essential, as it makes students' interactions with roommates, professors, and professional colleagues flow more smoothly. By following suggestions popularized by Dale Carnegie during the Great Depression—to think in terms of the interests of others, smile, and express honest and sincere appreciation—my Generation WTF students report being happily stunned by more-successful interviews, better relationships with family members, and more-meaningful interactions with friends.
While much of my advice seems revolutionary to them, adults from previous generations know that I'm simply teaching a return to core values of self-control, honesty, thrift, and perseverance—the basic skills that will allow those in "emerging adulthood" to get on with life.
Highlighting text is really easy with Diigo. And adding a sticky note is very simple is well. It can be made private or shared with groups of people who are working with the same document
Other ways I encourage these kinds of discussions includes having students choose their own groupings and books for independent book "clubs" and using the Web as a vehicle to create audio and/or video "book trailers."
From a technology end, our kids are beginning to do more and more with tools like voicethread, animoto, imovie, etc. Digital storytelling is a great way for students to be creative, share insights and show what they know and can do.
One facet of our reading instruction that cannot be overlooked is the importance of teacher readers in building a classroom reading community. According to Morrison, Jacobs, and Swinyard (1999), "perhaps the most influential teacher behavior to influence students' literacy development is personal reading, both in and out of school."
I wonder how open ALL teachers are about what they are reading? How much conversation do teachers as a whole have about what they are reading?
If we don't read, why should our students?
Share your reading life with your students. Show your students what reading adds to your life. If you are reading a nonfiction book at the moment, tell them what you are learning. Pass the children's books you are reading to them when you are done. Describe the funny, sad, or interesting moments in the books you read. When you read something challenging, talk with your students about how you work through difficult text. It will surprise them that you find reading hard at times, too, but choose to read, anyway.
Many students in today's world do not read books outside of school. When they do read, it is text-messages, web pages or homework assignments. For students who did not grow up in homes with books, with adults who read and who read to them, this time to read in school is both necessary and pleasurable. Many of my students need catch-up time when it comes to "hours-in" reading. The 10 minutes at the beginning of each period that I allow my juniors each day equals hours of reading across the months of the school year. My most dedicated readers begin books in the classroom, finish them at home, and return to the classroom/school library to check out new books.
This is an important distinction in that I believe (and research indicates) that our kids ARE reading more than ever before. But it comes in non-traditional forms. We must acknowledge that web based reading is still reading, but it differs. Research also indicates that when kids read digitally, they read in a different pattern. In traditional reading, they read in a z pattern down a page. Digital reading is more of an F pattern,indicating skim and scan.
The research comes out as the idea of a "flipped classroom," in which students first watch videos or read texts and then do projects in the classroom, has been growing in popularity at colleges and graduate schools. The study's conclusion suggests that the current model of the flipped classroom should itself be flipped upside down. The researchers advocate the "flipped flipped classroom," in which videos come after exploration and not before.
A new study from the Stanford Graduate School of Education flips upside down the notion that students learn best by first independently reading texts or watching online videos before coming to class to engage in hands-on projects. Studying a particular lesson, the Stanford researchers showed that when the order was reversed, students' performances improved substantially.
A new study from the Stanford Graduate School of Education flips upside down the notion that students learn best by first independently reading texts or watching online videos before coming to class to engage in hands-on projects. Studying a particular lesson, the Stanford researchers showed that when the order was reversed, students' performances improved substantially.
When would-be college students apply for financial aid using the FAFSA, they are asked to list the colleges they are thinking about attending. The online version of the form asks applicants to submit up to 10 college names. The U.S. Department of Education then shares all the information on the FAFSA with all of the colleges on the list, as well as state agencies involved in awarding student aid. The form notes that the information could be used by state agencies, but there is no mention that individual colleges will use the information in admissions or financial aid -- and there is no indication that students could be punished by colleges for where they appear on the list.
Now, some colleges use this “FAFSA position” when considering students’ applications for admission, which may affect decisions about admission or placement on the wait list, said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
So the institution is disinclined to use up a precious admissions slot for a student who is unlikely to enroll.
“The student has no idea that this information is being used in this context,” Hawkins said. The federal government "doesn’t indicate it. Institutions certainly aren’t telling students they are using it. Certainly, this is a concern from this association’s standpoint.”
It's unclear if the Education Department was aware of this issue until contacted by Inside Higher Ed on Friday. The department now says it will review the longstanding practice of sharing the FAFSA positions with every college.
The use of the list on the FAFSA is just another example of how colleges are using increasingly sophisticated data mining techniques to recruit and shape their classes.
Now consider that, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, about half of all freshmen and sophomores are enrolled at the nation's 1,300 two-year colleges, and many of those students transfer to four-year institutions. For a large percentage of people who earn bachelor's degrees, then, the liberal-arts portion of their education was acquired at a two-year college. Next, factor in all of the community-college students who enter the work force after earning two-year degrees or certificates, and whose only exposure to the liberal arts occurred in whatever core courses their programs required.
The conclusion becomes obvious: Two-year colleges are among the country's leading providers of liberal-arts education, although they seldom get credit for that role.
Employers rank communication and analytical skills among the most important attributes they seek in new hires, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Perhaps those of us who teach those very skills at community colleges should embrace the integral role we play in preparing the nation's workers rather than rejecting the idea of work-force development as somehow beneath us.
More important, this new perspective could have a positive effect on student success. If we come to see ourselves as preparing students not just for transfer but ultimately for the work force, students may be more likely to understand the relevance of the skills that we teach them and better able to use those skills for some purpose other than just getting a passing grade.
Require lots of writing. As the management guru Peter Drucker argued, communication is the one skill required of all professionals, regardless of field. "As soon as you take one step up the career ladder," he said, "your effectiveness depends on your ability to communicate your thoughts in writing and in speaking."
Clearly, one of the best things we can do for students is to require them to write—a lot.
Focus on critical thinking. A common complaint of employers, as reflected in the NACE survey, is that many workers have difficulty thinking for themselves. They may be thoroughly trained, having mastered all of the concepts in the textbooks, but, inevitably, situations arise that weren't covered in the books. When that happens, the ability to think critically, independently, and creatively becomes indispensable.
Bring the real world into the classroom. Another strategy we can adopt, if we want our courses to be more relevant, is to make our class discussions, case studies, experiments, and assignments as real-world-based as possible.
For example, in my composition courses, I not only allow students to choose their own essay topics, but I also encourage them to write about issues related to their prospective majors. I also assign reading (in addition to the old textbook standbys) from newspapers, popular magazines, even the Internet.
Make the connection. Take advantage of every opportunity to connect what students are doing in class with what they will be doing some day as employees.
My students hear the term "the real world" so much that, by the middle of the term, they're starting to roll their eyes. But it's important for them to understand that the work we're doing now in class isn't just a series of meaningless exercises, another set of hoops for them to jump through on their way to a degree. They're going to have to do these things for real one day—describe processes, do research to find solutions, draw comparisons—and my course may be the last time anyone ever actually teaches them how.
Deep roots classical antiquity. Socrates, in dialogue with his followers, asked directed questions that led his students to realize for themselves the weaknesses in their thinking.
I agree - context, and culture play a very important role. And this might change from corner to corner, it can change quickly, neighbours etc
Believed that constructivists such as Piaget had overlooked the essentially social nature of language and consequently failed to understand that learning is a collaborative process.
Constructivist learning environments provide multiple representations of reality
Multiple representations avoid oversimplification and represent the complexity of the real world
Constructivist learning environments emphasize authentic tasks in a meaningful context rather than abstract instruction out of context.
Constructivist learning environments provide learning environments such as real-world settings or case-based learnin
Constructivist learning environments encourage thoughtful reflection on experience.
Constructivist learning environments support "collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation, not competition among learners for recognition.
Jonassen (1994)
There is no absolute knowledge, just our interpretation of it. The acquisition of knowledge therefore requires the individual to consider the information and - based on their past experiences, personal views, and cultural background - construct an interpretation of the information that is being presented to them.
Teaching styles based on this approach therefore mark a conscious effort to move from these ‘traditional, objectivist models didactic, memory-oriented transmission models’ (Cannella & Reiff, 1994) to a more student-centred approach.
Students ‘construct’ their own meaning by building on their previous knowledge and experience. New ideas and experiences are matched against existing knowledge, and the learner constructs new or adapted rules to make sense of the world
John Dewey (1933/1998) is often cited as the philosophical founder of this approach
while Vygotsky (1978) is the major theorist among the social constructivists.
Bruner (1990) and Piaget (1972) are considered the chief theorists among the cogn
Dewey
Piaget
John Dewey rejected the notion that schools should focus on repetitive, rote memorization & proposed a method of "directed living" – students would engage in real-world, practical workshops in which they would demonstrate their knowledge through creativity and collaboration
Piaget rejected the idea that learning was the passive assimilation of given knowledge. Instead, he proposed that learning is a dynamic process comprising successive stages of adaption to reality during which learners actively construct knowledge by creating and testing their own theories of the world.
A common misunderstanding regarding constructivism is that instructors should never tell students anything directly but, instead, should always allow them to construct knowledge for themselves. This is actually confusing a theory of pedagogy (teaching) with a theory of knowing. Constructivism assumes that all knowledge is constructed from the learner’s previous knowledge, regardless of how one is taught. Thus, even listening to a lecture involves active attempts to construct new knowledge.
social interaction lay at the root of good learning.
Bruner builds on the Socratic tradition of learning through dialogue, encouraging the learner to come to enlighten themselves through reflection
Careful curriculum design is essential so that one area builds upon the other. Learning must therefore be a process of discovery where learners build their own knowledge, with the active dialogue of teachers, building on their existing knowledge.
Social constructivism was developed by Vygotsky. He rejected the assumption made by Piaget that it was possible to separate learning from its social context.
On Vgotsky`s side here - I don`t think you can forget the role of "social learning", peer to peer learning and the role of social interaction.
The basic tenet of constructivism is that students learn by doing rather than observing.
By the 1980s the research of Dewey and Vygotsky had blended with Piaget's work in developmental psychology into the broad approach of constructivism
1. Discovery Learning (Bruner)
In discovery learning, the student is placed in problem solving situations where they are required to draw on past experiences and existing knowledge to discover facts, relationships, and new information.
Students are more likely to retain knowledge attained by engaging real-world and contextualised problem-solving than by traditional transmission methods.
Models that are based upon discovery learning model include: guided discovery, problem-based learning, simulation-based learning, case-based learning, and incidental learning.
"Picturing the 1930s," a new educational web site created by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in collaboration with the University of Virginia, allows teachers and students to explore the 1930s through paintings, artist memorabilia, historical documents, newsreels, period photographs, music, and video. Using PrimaryAccess, a web-based teaching tool developed at the university's Curry Center for Technology and Teacher Education, visitors can select images, write text, and record narration in the style of a documentary filmmaker. They can then screen their video in a virtual theater. PrimaryAccess is the first online tool that allows students to combine their own text, historical images from primary sources, and audio narration to create short online documentary films linked to social studies standards of learning, said Glen Bull, co-director of the Curry Center. Since the first version was developed in collaboration with U.Va.'s Center for Digital History and piloted in a local elementary school in 2005, more than 9,000 users worldwide have created more than 20,000 short movies. In creating digital documentaries, students embed facts and events in a narrative context that can enhance their retention and understanding of the material, said Curry research scientist Bill Ferster, who developed the application with Bull. Besides increasing their knowledge about the period, "Picturing the 1930s" enhances students' visual literacy skills, Ferster noted, adding that PrimaryAccess "offers teachers another tool to bring history alive."
According to the research, there was little evidence that today's students demand modern technology when entering university that the academic institution cannot provide. Technological integration is expanding, however in terms of study, students may not be as reliant on it to learn as we stereotype them to be.Are today's students truly 'tech savvy'? By Charlie Osborne
The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it's over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade.
know is that knowing who you're writing for and why you're writing might be the
most crucial factor of all.
young people today write far more than any generation before them
(something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense
of what constitutes good
kids today can't write—and technology is to blame.
"I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we
haven't seen since Greek civilization," she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't
killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold
new directions
Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that
wasn't a school assignment
Lunsford's team found that the students were remarkably adept at what
rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their
tone and technique to best get their point across.
students today almost always write for an audience
(something virtually no one in my
generation did) gives them a different sense
of what
constitutes good
A new analysis of existing online-learning research by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) reveals that students who took all or part of their class on line performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.
Most of the studies examined by researchers dealt with college-level courses, and ED officials cautioned against generalizing the report's findings to the K-12 level. Still, the report could help educators as they seek to create effective learning environments for all students.
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
researchers found they could pick out the best teachers in a school and even predict roughly how much their students would learn if they rated the educators through a formula that put equal weight on student input, test scores and detailed classroom observations by principals and peers
Judging teachers primarily by student performance on state tests, for instance, turned out to be highly unreliable, with little consistency from year to year. Judging them chiefly by a principal's observations failed to identify those teachers who could be counted on to boost student proficiency on state math and reading tests.
This should be a very big red flag to all those policy makers who think they can have test-based accountability be half or more of a teacher's evaluation
"(Reuters) - Effective teachers can be identified by observing them at work, measuring their students' progress on standardized tests - and asking those students directly what goes on in the classroom, according to a comprehensive study released Tuesday."
The rooms are part of a larger faculty development program intended to promote active learning techniques and cut down on lecturing
university is researching whether teaching at-risk students -- those withdrawing from or earning a D or F in a basic math course -- in the classrooms could improve academic outcomes and, eventually, graduation rates.
Pavlechko described the two spaces as “intake classrooms” -- faculty members who work in the development program are required to teach in them for two semesters. By the end of this academic year, the classrooms will have hosted 68 faculty members representing 29 of the university’s 48 departments and more than 3,500 students.
How do we set ourselves apart? In our case, by the development of these interactive learning space classrooms, we are demonstrating to everyone that we are committed to the concept of faculty development.”
researchers found at-risk students who took the course in classrooms that promoted active learning (which included some rooms other than the renovated ones) were 2.8 times more likely to succeed -- that is, to earn a grade higher than a D -- than students in traditional classrooms.
The company has surveyed hundreds of students and faculty members at the universities it has worked with, and says it has found a statistically significant correlation between classroom configuration and student engagement. The survey doesn't include any academic results.
“We actually found a fairly moderate to strong correlation between what they think of these areas and if they think they have the ability to get a higher grade -- or their motivation to attend class and also their engagement in class,”
“Perception-wise, students are telling us ‘I can do better when I’m in these spaces,’ ” Jones said. “Maybe that’s enough of a win?”
Research comparing the two methods has consistently found that students over all perform better in active-learning courses than in traditional lecture courses. However, women, minorities, and low-income and first-generation students benefit more, on average, than white males from more affluent, educated families.
research has demonstrated that we learn new material by anchoring it to knowledge we already possess
low-stakes quiz at the start of each meeting of their introductory psychology course. Compared with students who took the same course in a more traditional format, the quizzed students attended class more often and achieved higher test scores; the intervention also reduced by 50 percent the achievement gap between more affluent and less affluent students.
act of putting one’s own thoughts into words and communicating them to others, research has shown, is a powerful contributor to learning. Active-learning courses regularly provide opportunities for students to talk and debate with one another in a collaborative, low-pressure environment.
An examination of the educational records of more than 62,000 adult undergraduates at 48 colleges finds that students who had sought and been awarded academic credit by their institutions for "prior learning" earned in the military, corporate training and other non-classroom settings were more than twice as likely to graduate, and to persist even if they did not graduate, than were their peers who had not earned such credit.
“CAEL’s research confirms that prior-learning assessment can help adults move faster toward their associate’s and baccalaureate degrees. We need to see more institutions offering this option and more adults participating in it.”
The concept of "prior learning assessment" is decades old, and it has grown to include multiple types of mechanisms for measuring knowledge and skills that students have accumulated through various types of formal and less formal formats, such corporate training, work experience, and independent study. The most common types of assessments include standardized exams developed by the College Board (the College Level Examination Program exams and Advanced Placement exams), the American Council of Education's guides for recognizing credit for instructional programs offered in the military and by employers, and institutional reviews of individualized student portfolios.
credit awarded through prior learning assessments offers an opportunity to entice adults back to college with the prospect that they can build on learning they've already gained and reduce both the time and money they might have to expend to earn a credential.
"Do PLA students have higher graduation rates because PLA enhances the self-esteem and motivation of students by showing them that they have already mastered college-level learning? Is it also because PLA students already possess characteristics that are associated with better academic outcomes? What institutional policies are influencing whether and how students are using (or not using) PLA, and whether or not this helps them achieve a shorter time to degree?"
Students today are using more tech in more places than even Popular Science imagined back in the atomic age. 98% of students own a gadget and 70% of them use a gadget in class-some for note-taking and study, some for poke wars on Facebook during lecture. And while the time spent online in a day might set off some warning bells, the good news is that a breakdown of that time shows much of it is spent learning.
"For decades, there has been evidence that classroom techniques designed to get students to participate in the learning process produces better educational outcomes at virtually all levels.
And a new Harvard study suggests it may be important to let students know it.
The study, published Sept. 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that, though students felt as if they learned more through traditional lectures, they actually learned more when taking part in classrooms that employed so-called active-learning strategies."
Over time, students' personal values become more similar to those of their school principal, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Associational for Psychological Science. The findings indicate that head-teachers' values are linked with aspects of school climate which are, in turn, linked with students' own values.
"Students from some of England's worst-performing secondary schools who enrol on medical degrees with lower A Level grades, on average, do at least as well as their peers from top performing schools, a new study has revealed.
The research also found that students from poorly performing schools who match the top A-Level grades achieved by pupils from the best performing schools, go on to do better during a medical degree."
Howard Rheingold on 03 Feb 12Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck conducted the groundbreaking research showing that praise intended to raise young people's self-esteem can seriously backfire. When we tell children, "You're so smart," we communicate the message that they'd better not take risks or make mistakes, lest they reveal that they're not so smart after all. Dweck calls this cautious attitude the "fixed mindset," and she's found that it's associated with greater anxiety and reduced achievement. Students with a "growth mindset," on the other hand, believe that intelligence can be expanded with hard work and persistence, and they view challenges as invigorating and even fun. They're more resilient in the face of setbacks, and they do better academically. Now Dweck has designed a program, called Brainology, which aims to help students develop a growth mindset. Its website explains: "Brainology makes this happen by teaching students how the brain functions, learns, and remembers, and how it changes in a physical way when we exercise it. Brainology shows students that they are in control of their brain and its development." That's a crucial message to pass on to children, and it's not just empty words of encouragement-it's supported by cutting-edge research on neuroplasticity, which shows that the brain changes and grows when we learn new things. You, and your child, can learn to be smarter.
