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Jim Tiffin Jr

9 Elephants in the (Class)Room That Should "Unsettle" Us | The Creativity Post - 0 views

  • there are a number of practices in our current systems of schooling that “unsettle” us, primarily because they don’t comport with what Seymour Papert calls our “stock of intuitive, empathic, common sense knowledge about learning.”
  • Yet we continue to focus our efforts primarily on content knowledge, as is evidenced by the focus of our assessments.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      Again, assessment is the most powerful lever for changing teacher practice.
  • in many cases, these practices are attempting to do “the wrong thing right” rather than “do the right thing” in the first place.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • the new contexts for modern learning forged by the networked world in which we now live are creating an imperative for new ways of thinking about our work in schools.
  • notes, “For more than 75 years, studies have consistently found that only a small fraction of what is learned in the classroom is retained even a year after learning.” That’s primarily because the curriculum and classroom work they experience has little or no relevance to students’ real lives.
  • The reality in K-12 schooling today is that the majority of what we assess, content, knowledge, and basic skills, is the easiest to assess, not the most important.
  • by the way, let’s stop pretending that we can solve the engagement problem by handing kids iPads or other technologies. Hand them more agency over their own learning instead.
  • When we look at the things that each of us has learned most deeply in our lives, the same certain conditions almost always apply: Among other things, we had an interest and a passion for the topic, we had a real, authentic purpose in learning it, we had agency and choice, deciding what, when, where, and with whom we learned it, and we had fun learning it even if some of it was “hard fun.”
  • But in the vast majority of curriculum driven schools, however, students sit and wait to be told what to learn, when to learn it, how to learn it, and how they’ll be assessed on it. Rarely do they get to choose, and just as rarely does the learning they do in class have any impact beyond the classroom walls.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      I especially like this last part about "impact beyond the classroom walls."
  • But what’s also notable about those practices is that we rarely want to discuss them aloud, content instead to let them hover silently in the background of our work.
  • It’s much more difficult to assess the literacies, skills, and dispositions that are required to succeed and lead a healthy, happy life, especially in a world where answers are everywhere via the technologies we carry in our pockets. In that world, creativity, curiosity, a change mindset, the ability to create, connect, and participate in networks…all of those are now required, yet few of those are currently assessed at all.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      This reminds me of the quote by Alvin Toffle: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
  • We need to stop training students for exams that computers can pass.”
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      **************DING DING DING DING****************** Winner!!! :-)
  • We know that grades, not learning, are the outcomes that students and parents are most interested in.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      This makes me so sad...
  • antidisciplinary thinking and doing
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      Curious what this means...
  • To quote Mitch Resnick* again,
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      More props from Mitch Resnick again. So many people here that have been square in the radar of Gary Stager, CMK, and MIT. Also, in order to open this PDF link from the post: (*Use the password "reviewer" to open the pdf.)
  • we know that much of what every student in 1894 was supposed to learn isn’t really what every student in 2015 needs to learn. Yet we seem loathe to mess with the recipe. And as Seymour Papert so famously asks, now that we have access to pretty much all there is to know, “what one-billionth of one percent” are we going to choose to teach in school?
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      More props to Seymour Papert in this article.
  • there is a strong argument building that we have reached “peak education” as we continue to do try to do the wrong thing right and get “wronger” in the process.
  • tacit knowledge and the ability to learn from others, in the moment, both face to face and in networks is vastly more important and effective.
  • Those that will flourish in the modern world will be those who can learn what they need to learn “just in time” from a variety of networks and sources and experiences.
  • put these unsettling truths front and center in our conversations about education
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      Who should be having these conversations?
  •  
    An article that calls to mind many of the ideas discusses in David Perkins' 'Futurewise". The idea that sticks in my mind the most is after reading this article is: "It's not about just in case, it's about just in time" which is a reference to #9 A list of things that we don't really want to talk about in education. 1. We know that most of our students will forget most of the content that they "learn" in school. 2. We know that most of our students are bored and disengaged in school. 3. We know that deep, lasting learning requires conditions that schools and classrooms simply were not built for. 4. We know that we're not assessing many of the things that really matter for future success. 5. We know that grades, not learning, are the outcomes that students and parents are most interested in. 6. We know that curriculum is just a guess. 7. We know that separating learning into discrete subjects and time blocks is not the best way to prepare kids for the real world. 8. We know (I think) that the system of education as currently constructed is not adequately preparing kids for what follows if and when they graduate. 9. And finally, we know that learning that sticks is usually learned informally, that explicit knowledge accounts for very little of our success in most professions.
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