A person who becomes self-empowered in this way uses her inner powers (her innate capacities) again and again to solve problems — to create opportunities — and to empower others.
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Empowering Teachers to Empower Young People - A New Game - Medium - 2 views
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Being self-empowered — changemaking — requires a sophisticated understanding of the world — an understanding that your wellbeing is inextricably entwined with everyone’s wellbeing. And it means taking responsibility — taking the lead — and collaborating with others to make life better for yourself and family and friends and community and humanity and the planet.
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Being self-empowered is a way of being. It involves being empathic, thoughtful and creative — being curious, resilient and effective. Becoming self-empowered, then, is a process of finding, using and developing a complex array of changemaking powers.
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And for most, the experience of school reflects limited conceptions of the human mind, the human being and human potential.
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To make these changes, we need pioneering teachers and educators to come together as change leaders — to form collaborative teams — and to execute strategically-focused projects. And to lay the foundations upon which these strategic projects can have massive impact, we need to build a global community of education professionals who are fully committed to self-empowering educators — for self-empowering young people.
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Neuroscience Should Inform School Policies - Education Week - 1 views
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key secondary school reform efforts need to emphasize learning activities involving metacognition, goal-setting, planning, working memory, reflection on one's learning, and frequent opportunities to make responsible choices.
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What is essential for kids at this time of life is to be engaged in real-life learning experiences and peer-learning connections that put them under conditions of "hot cognition," where educators can help them along in the process of integrating their impulsiveness (positively viewed as excitement and motivation) with their reasoning abilities.
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The implications for reform of secondary school are clear. Schools should provide more opportunities for students to be involved in apprenticeships, internships, service learning, community-based learning, small peer-learning groups, entrepreneur-based programs, and student-directed project-based learning
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key part of the secondary school curriculum should involve the teaching of stress-reduction methods, such as mindfulness meditation, yoga, and aerobic activity; exercise breaks during class; a strong physical education curriculum; and a broadly based extracurricular sports program for all students, not just the star athletes.
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prefrontal cortex, which is the region controlling inhibition of impulses and the ability to plan, reflect, self-monitor, and make good decisions, doesn't fully develop until the early 20s. This means that while the limbic system or "emotional brain" is working at close to full capacity by early adolescence, the areas of the brain that could temper those feelings and impulses are still in the process of being constructed.
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Consequently, key secondary school reform efforts need to emphasize learning activities involving metacognition, goal-setting, planning, working memory, reflection on one's learning, and frequent opportunities to make responsible choices.
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Classroom teaching that focuses largely on delivering content through lectures and textbooks fails to engage the emotional brain and leaves unchanged those prefrontal regions that are important in metacognition.
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Locking students into a set academic college-bound program of courses takes away their ability to make decisions about what most interests them (a process that integrates the limbic system's motivational verve with the prefrontal cortex's decisionmaking capacity).
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Neuroscience research tells us that the teenage brain is exquisitely sensitive to environmental influences. This neuroplasticity makes it vulnerable to a wide range of societal dangers—traffic accidents, drug abuse, suicide, violence. But it also makes it acutely sensitive to the influence of teachers, for good or for ill.
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02_future_competences_and_the_future_of_curriculum_30oct.v2.pdf - 1 views
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An analysis of current contributions show that although there are substantial variations, most agree that competence is far more complex than skill, and that it comprises knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes.
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The most recurring examples include: – Creativity, communication, critical thinking, problem solving, curiosity, metacognition; – Digital, technology, and ICTs skills; – Basic, media, information, financial, scientific literacies and numeracy, – Cross-cultural skills, leadership, global awareness; – Initiative, self-direction, perseverance, responsibility, accountability, adaptability; and – Knowledge of disciplines, STEM mindset.
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Many contributors agree that a competence is a complex construct, comprising knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, etc. But in the actual listing of the competences, they mix competences with their constituent elements.
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While there is consensus on the need to transition to competence-based curricula, views on the structure of curricula remain divergent between the maintenance of traditional subjects and learning areas interwoven with competences, and the more radical view that curricula should be restructured around competences.
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However, the world still lacks a global normative instrument that can be used as a global reference point for curricula transformation.
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Competence is herein defined as the developmental capacity to interactively mobilize and ethically use information, data, knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, and technology to engage effectively and act across diverse 21 st century contexts to attain individual, collective, and global good.
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A competence-based curriculum is grounded in the understanding of the demands of the learners’ context.
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In contrast to competence-based curricula, subject-based curricula are mostly grounded in an understanding of the subject matter content or the disciplines. They generally prepare learners to know the subject matters and to gain a deep understanding of advancements in the field. They don’t necessarily emphasize immediate use of acquired knowledge. The application is often deferred to real life situations that learners may confront later in life, forcing them to apply what they had learned. Because of insensitivity to context, it is often easy to have the same curriculum across different contexts, mostly borrowed from what are considered to be advanced contexts. The risk of irrelevance of the curriculum is also higher.
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A key consideration is how best to facilitate curriculum specialists to gain an in-depth understanding of the learners’ current and future contexts, and how to identify competences, which should be reflected in curricula.
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Competence-based curricula emphasize the ability to use what is learned. Acquisition is important but not sufficient.
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A key consideration is how to support educators to reach for the deeper impact of learning, and how to assess it.
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Especially at the post-primary level, a key consideration is how to enable educators to master their specific disciplines, and at the same time, to have adequate knowledge of other disciplines enough to make transdisciplinary linkages. Another challenge is how to design curricula in a way that makes linkages across subjects and learning areas.
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Competence-based curricula are structured around competences and not around subjects, and progression relates to the competence rather than subject matter difficulty.
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As the last word, competence-based curricula are not against subject matter content. Effective application of content across disciplines actually requires a high level of mastery of the content.
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seven macro competences that are considered relevant across contexts. These are: (i) Lifelong learning; (ii) Self-agency; (iii) Interactively using diverse tools and resources; (iv) Interacting with others; (v) Interacting with the world; (vi) Multi-literateness; and (vii) Trans-disciplinarity. Because of their universality, macro competences are quite stable. They allow for curricula stability across transformations and reforms. They are the bigger picture and the overarching "why" of a curriculum.
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Responsible use of tools and resources is also at the heart of responsible consumption and sustainable lifestyles, which contribute to sustainable development.
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It demands collaboration to resolve complex problems and create integrated solutions across contexts.
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Increasing complexity requires ever more sophisticated solutions that integrate knowledge from multiple disciplines and from domains of knowledge.
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This framework therefore balances the need for dynamic change in curricula with the equal need for stability.
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shared by Bo Adams on 23 Dec 15
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Students Design, Tinker, Create and Discover through Maker-based Learning | NextGen Lea... - 1 views
nextgenlearning.org/...r-through-maker-based-learning
Maker makered makereducation agency #MustRead badging
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The nature of maker-based learning actively engages students, nurtures their agency, improves efficacy, and develops a creator or producer identity instead of a (passive) consumer one.
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In Thomas’ experience, too many people fail to reflect on WHY they’re choosing certain tools, and HOW those tools will be integrated into the curriculum and culture of school.
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Sometimes the impetus for making is a practical problem. Other times, play, curiosity and imagination are the motivators. Regardless, researchers from Harvard's Project Zero agree, "maker experiences help students learn to pursue their own passions and become self-directed learners, proactively seeking out knowledge and resources on their own" (Agency by Design, p. 3). HT Parker Thomas
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shared by Meghan Cureton on 09 Feb 19
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NAIS - A Standards-Based Assessment Model Can Help Build More Diverse and Equitable Com... - 0 views
www.nais.org/...erse-and-equitable-communities
SBG assessment mtc grading equity self-reflection mindset self-directed_learning culturally-responsive
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For students to take critical feedback constructively, they have to believe that it is possible for them to improve.
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school’s assessment and feedback philosophy can encourage a sense of belonging as well as promote a culture that embraces all students as capable of growing and improving as thinkers, learners, and doers. To build on the authentic social justice work being done in our schools and to make real progress in our efforts to create inclusive and equitable communities, we must adopt and employ assessment practices that support this work.
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Hammond argues that teachers are culturally responsive when we help students to be “active participants in tracking their own growth.”
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Hope is a critical ingredient for positive relationships needed for culturally responsive teaching. SBA, with clearly communicated goals, actionable feedback, and opportunities for reassessment, helps teachers to be “merchants of hope in their role as allies in the learning partnership.”
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We have chosen efficiency over efficacy; the education system decided to assess what is easy, not what matters. If we want our learners to have the intra- and interpersonal skills to navigate, negotiate, and solve relevant and pressing problems, we must teach, assess, and report on these skills.
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Educators have the power to immediately change the way they assess to support a culturally responsive model.
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shared by Trey Boden on 08 Sep 15
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The perils of "Growth Mindset" education: Why we're trying to fix our kids when we shou... - 0 views
www.salon.com/...the_harmful_lessons_it_imparts
mindset growth mindset carol dweck learning assessment leadership
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The problem with sweeping, generic claims about the power of attitudes or beliefs isn’t just a risk of overstating the benefits but also a tendency to divert attention from the nature of the tasks themselves: How valuable are they, and who gets to decide whether they must be done?
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Unfortunately, even some people who are educators would rather convince students they need to adopt a more positive attitude than address the quality of the curriculum (what the students are being taught) or the pedagogy (how they’re being taught it).
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praise kids for their effort (“You tried really hard”) rather than for their ability (“You’re really smart”)
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But the first problem with this seductively simple script change is that praising children for their effort carries problems of its own, as several studies have confirmed: It can communicate that they’re really not very capable and therefore unlikely to succeed at future tasks.
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It’s a verbal reward, an extrinsic inducement, and, like other rewards, is often construed by the recipient as manipulation
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Moreover, praise communicates that our acceptance of a child comes with strings attached: Our approval is conditional on the child’s continuing to impress us or do what we say.
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We need to attend to deeper differences: between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and between “doing to” and “working with” strategies.
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If students are preoccupied with how well they’re doing in school, then their interest in what they’re doing may suffer.
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A 2010 study found that when students whose self-worth hinges on their performance face the prospect of failure, it doesn’t help for them to adopt a growth mindset.
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Even when a growth mindset doesn’t make things worse, it can help only so much if students have been led — by things like grades, tests, and, worst of all, competition — to become more focused on achievement than on the learning itself.
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And this brings us to the biggest blind spot of all — the whole idea of focusing on the mindsets of individuals.
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Ironically, the more we occupy ourselves with getting kids to attribute outcomes to their own effort, the more we communicate that the conditions they face are, well, fixed.
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But why have so many educators who don’t share that sensibility endorsed a focus on mindset (or grit) whose premises and implications they’d likely find troubling on reflection?
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I’m not suggesting we go back to promoting an innate, fixed, “entity” theory of intelligence and talent, which, as Dweck points out, can leave people feeling helpless and inclined to give up.
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A 'University' Model for High School | Edutopia - 0 views
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recent launch of Learning Pathways, a competency-based approach to instruction that emphasizes self-paced, personalized learning.
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To evolve their teaching practice, teachers need to carve out dedicated time to regularly observe and reflect—on themselves and their peers—say Anderson and other staff.
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The campus also offers microcredentialing, a system that allows teachers to pitch ideas and a plan of action for their own professional development.
Finding Clarity in Assessment and Grading | Edutopia - 0 views
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Are You Teaching Content Or Teaching Thought? - - 3 views
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If our job is to teach critical thinking, design, and problem-solving–fluid intelligence–then thinking is our collective circumstance, and our curriculum becomes thought.
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To learn to think, students need powerful and inspiring models that reflect the design, citizenship, creativity, interdependence, affection, and self-awareness we claim to want them to have. To teach careful, creative, and truly innovative thinking, students need creative spaces and tools, and frameworks to develop their own criteria for quality and success. They need dynamic literacy skills that they practice and build upon endlessly. Not projects that have creativity and design thinking added on, but projects that can’t function without them. And they need control of it all.
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"Will this be on the test?" - The Startup - Medium - 1 views
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Experiences are at the heart of change. We change when we do something, when we interact with the world.
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It turns out that the best way to cause change is for people to actually change someone or something else. We learn what we do, not what we’re told.
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Cohort-based, with groups of five to twenty people engaged constantly with each other (we use Slack as a surprisingly powerful peer-to-peer setting for experiential learning)
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takes the five or ten comments received and turns them into a reflective script, detailing actual change, actual growth.
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every admitted student shares the same mindset of seeking true growth. Self-selection plus curated admissions means that the support network is strong. Enrollment—in the outcome and the process—is the secret of effective education.
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If you want people to become passionate, engaged in a field, transformed by an experience — you don’t test them, you don’t lecture them and you don’t force them. Instead, you create an environment where willing, caring individuals can find an experience that changes them.
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The Case Against Grades (##) - Alfie Kohn - 2 views
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Collecting information doesn’t require tests, and sharing that information doesn’t require grades. In fact, students would be a lot better off without either of these relics from a less enlightened age.
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As I’ve reported elsewhere (Kohn, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c), when students from elementary school to college who are led to focus on grades are compared with those who aren’t, the results support three robust conclusions:
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For example, a grade-oriented environment is associated with increased levels of cheating (Anderman and Murdock, 2007), grades (whether or not accompanied by comments) promote a fear of failure even in high-achieving students (Pulfrey et al., 2011), and the elimination of grades (in favor of a pass/fail system) produces substantial benefits with no apparent disadvantages in medical school (White and Fantone, 2010).
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Extrinsic motivation, which includes a desire to get better grades, is not only different from, but often undermines, intrinsic motivation, a desire to learn for its own sake (Kohn 1999a).
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Achievement: Two educational psychologists pointed out that “an overemphasis on assessment can actually undermine the pursuit of excellence” (Maehr and Midgley, 1996, p. 7).
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There is certainly value in assessing the quality of learning and teaching, but that doesn’t mean it’s always necessary, or even possible, to measure those things — that is, to turn them into numbers. Indeed, “measurable outcomes may be the least significant results of learning” (McNeil, 1986, p. xviii)
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Once we’re compelled to focus only on what can be reduced to numbers, such as how many grammatical errors are present in a composition or how many mathematical algorithms have been committed to memory, thinking has been severely compromised. And that is exactly what happens when we try to fit learning into a four- or five- or (heaven help us) 100-point scale.
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Portfolios, for example, can be constructive if they replace grades rather than being used to yield them. They offer a way to thoughtfully gather a variety of meaningful examples of learning for the students to review. But what’s the point, “if instruction is dominated by worksheets so that every portfolio looks the same”? (Neill et al. 1995, p. 4).
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It’s not enough to replace letters or numbers with labels (“exceeds expectations,” “meets expectations,” and so on). If you’re sorting students into four or five piles, you’re still grading them. Rubrics typically include numbers as well as labels, which is only one of several reasons they merit our skepticism (Wilson, 2006; Kohn, 2006).
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It’s not enough to disseminate grades more efficiently — for example, by posting them on-line. There is a growing technology, as the late Gerald Bracey once remarked, “that permits us to do in nanoseconds things that we shouldn’t be doing at all” (quoted in Mathews, 2006). In fact, posting grades on-line is a significant step backward because it enhances the salience of those grades and therefore their destructive effects on learning.
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It’s not enough to add narrative reports. “When comments and grades coexist, the comments are written to justify the grade” (Wilson, 2009, p. 60). Teachers report that students, for their part, often just turn to the grade and ignore the comment, but “when there’s only a comment, they read it,”
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To address one common fear, the graduates of grade-free high schools are indeed accepted by selective private colleges and large public universities — on the basis of narrative reports and detailed descriptions of the curriculum (as well as recommendations, essays, and interviews), which collectively offer a fuller picture of the applicant than does a grade-point average. Moreover, these schools point out that their students are often more motivated and proficient learners, thus better prepared for college, than their counterparts at traditional schools who have been preoccupied with grades.
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Even when administrators aren’t ready to abandon traditional report cards, individual teachers can help to rescue learning in their own classrooms with a two-pronged strategy to “neuter grades,” as one teacher described it. First, they can stop putting letter or number grades on individual assignments and instead offer only qualitative feedback.
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Second, although teachers may be required to submit a final grade, there’s no requirement for them to decide unilaterally what that grade will be. Thus, students can be invited to participate in that process either as a negotiation (such that the teacher has the final say) or by simply permitting students to grade themselves.
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Without grades, “I think my relationships with students are better,” Drier says. “Their writing improves more quickly and the things they learn stay with them longer.
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Drier’s final grades are based on students’ written self-assessments, which, in turn, are based on their review of items in their portfolios.
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A key element of authentic assessment for these and other teachers is the opportunity for students to help design the assessment and reflect on its purposes — individually and as a class.
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Grades don’t prepare children for the “real world” — unless one has in mind a world where interest in learning and quality of thinking are unimportant. Nor are grades a necessary part of schooling, any more than paddling or taking extended dictation could be described that way. Still, it takes courage to do right by kids in an era when the quantitative matters more than the qualitative, when meeting (someone else’s) standards counts for more than exploring ideas, and when anything “rigorous” is automatically assumed to be valuable. We have to be willing to challenge the conventional wisdom, which in this case means asking not how to improve grades but how to jettison them once and for all.
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ChangeLeaders Community - 0 views
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How often do you see learners being ‘blamed’ for not understanding a challenging idea or concept, rather than that being a reflection on the teaching? To what extent is the learning architecture of our schools, the grading, grouping, and scheduling really allowing our students to learn most deeply and powerfully?
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The reality is that today’s schools were simply never designed to change proactively and deeply —they were built for discipline and efficiency, enforced through hierarchy and routinization.
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But how much evidence do you have that your colleagues also see themselves as learners, be they teachers, principals or superintendents? How open and transparent are they about their learning? About what and how they are learning? And what and how do they learn from their mistakes? Being vulnerable, transparent and open are now prerequisites for modern leaders who are true learners
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And finally, what about you? What have you learned about your learning? How self-aware are you about how you learn? How do you learn best, and what are the conditions that make that possible for you?
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shared by Meghan Cureton on 28 Oct 18
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Want to Assess Noncognitive Competencies? Examine Student Work | GOA - 1 views
globalonlineacademy.org/...petencies-examine-student-work
CompetencyBased CBE mastery mindsets growthmindset noncognitive skills future transformation School Change assessment
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Unfortunately, many transcripts or report cards simply give course titles and grades. We should have transcripts and final reporting mechanisms that show the whole child, beyond their grades and their work in typical cognitive domains.
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Using noncognitive competencies as assessment tools in courses and student projects is often something that teachers don’t have much expertise in. Many teachers have been hired for their content expertise and they are much more invested in, and/or have been trained in, the assessment and reporting of cognitive competencies.
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Ensure competencies are written in student-friendly language.Use single point rubrics.Encourage student reflection about their own work.Explore school models which encourage public exhibitions of student work and deep examination of student work, with students heavily involved and perhaps leading the assessment process.