Rowland Foundation

"... one of the world's leading psychologists, Professor Carol Dweck visited the RSA to discuss how students' mindsets shape their motivation and learning. She discussed new research showing: a) how parents' and teachers' praise can create fixed mindsets and undermine children's motivation, b) how fixed-mindset school environments can decrease the representation of women and minorities, and c) how teaching students a growth mindset increases their success in school."

Is "grit" something that educators need to develop in students? Or rather, is grit inherent in all children? If so, instead of asking if it needs to be developed in their learning, should we be more introspective and work on not suppressing it through our teaching?

Praising a student on process and effort contributes to their learning and their desire to learn more. Praising success based on intelligence has the opposite effect...it actually inhibits growth. What implications does this have on how we assess student learning and communicate those assessments?

This excellent Horizon Report, generated by the New Media Consortium, sets a remarkable and aggressive timetable for significant changes in teaching and learning due to emerging technologies.

It's been a lot of fun to work on.

Thanks so much Jim for this post. It's a great piece with lots of very interesting links. The RF is investing directly in learning about the two technologies--cloud computing and mobile devices-- on the report's most immediate time horizon. These two, among the others, are poised to take education in new directions. They are transformative, in and of themselves, and it's exciting to think about how they can and will (and do) support the other many initiatives being worked on by RF Fellows.

PARIS -...The test does not evaluate the most relevant of students' capabilities, many critics say.

LONDON - The global financial crisis has amplified the value of a good education, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. "The people who really paid the price for the financial crisis are those without baseline qualifications," Andreas Schleicher, the O.E.C.D.'s deputy director for education and skills, said last week at a London news conference.

"If examinations challenge learners to solve problems the way they are solved in real life today, the educational system will change for ever. It is a small policy change that is required. Allow the use of the internet and collaboration during an examination. If we did that to exams, the curriculum would have to be different. We would not need to emphasise facts or figures or dates. The curriculum would have to become questions that have strange and interesting answers. "Where did language come from?", "Why were the pyramids built?", "Is life on Earth sustainable?", "What is the purpose of theatre?" Questions that engage learners in a world of unknowns. Questions that will occupy their minds through their waking hours and sometimes their dreams. Teaching in an environment where the internet and discussion are allowed in exams would be different. The ability to find things out quickly and accurately would become the predominant skill. The ability to discriminate between alternatives, then put facts together to solve problems would be critical. AThat's a skill that future employers would admire immensely."

"We have a romantic attachment to skills from the past which are no longer relevant on a curriculum for today's children."

If you have not seen doctopus and Google docs used in conjunction with assessments you ought to check it out! It is so phenomenal that I cannot express how super fantastic a tool it will be for you.

Many American students may say that they would like to go overseas. But according to the Institute of International Education, only 1 percent of U.S. students study abroad during any academic year.

Really interesting Jill. Thanks!

It appears that we are not the only group having this conversation. Here is an article that parallels our own. (It is actually eerily similar in its stream of thought.)

"...it's easy to see why students are disengaged from the learning tasks that we give them. The big question is whether we care. So far, most of our school systems don't seem too bothered by their environmental deficiencies when it comes to fostering internal motivation. Our actions put the lie to our school mission statements that state that we're about creating 'self-motivated, life-long learners.'" "As school leaders and classroom teachers, how long can we continue to ignore core principles of intrinsic motivation?"

I could not agree more and this is a critical topic for the independent schools with which I work.

I wonder if Dan Pink makes a good point? Ha ha just kidding! I was trying out his advice. I haven't read the new book, but find his book DRIVE very useful.

"...Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it's a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking..."

Colin, I immediately thought of your work when I read this article.

"A brand that stands for what all brands stand for stands for nothing much." At the first RF conference Peter McConville and Tom Sabo ran a really interesting activity where we looked at schools' mission statements from across Vermont. As a part of this activity they asked if individuals could recall their own. Not many (if any) could. It is too bad really. Coming from a corporate background myself, I understand the power of an organization having a common and driving statement of intent. To me what was striking, and unfortunate, was that it wouldn't be at all challenging to get fairly close if you just said something about students who strive to become life-long learners who are global citizens that give back to their community. Maybe it is just me, but I think that a mission statement should be as unique as the schools, communities, and individuals that are striving to fulfill that mission. It should be a mantra, a way to identify what is truly important to your school, a means of sharing your school's common sense of purpose, to communicate your school's common sense of direction to fulfill that purpose. My sense is that a mission statement should be the keystone for the very unique work that we do in our schools, it should be more akin to Dan Pink's My Sentence. But, read though most and you'll find that they seem interchangeable and ambiguous. I think that it may be better to not have one at all if it doesn't really share the message of what your individual school is about and what it specifically strives to be. Does your school's mission statement really share your school's mission?

Jason Thanks for posting this. Question - how do I copy this post over to another Diigo group I am working with? Jim

Mission statements are pretty generic... NEASC is moving away from asking schools for mission statements but instead for statements of core values and beliefs about learning in the hope of getting more school specific statements.

Sam Chaltain provides commentary on the final installment of the Year At Mission School series focusing on the Boston elementary and middle school founded by Deborah Meier. Video is embedded. Spend the time to watch all 10 installments (most are around 5 minutes - this one is 10).   

What if we treated foreign language in America the way we treat sports. It is not unusual to see kids in high school spending two hours after school, every day, in football or basketball practice.

I know we at Edudemic get excited (probably overly so) about new technology. We try to figure out how and if it belongs in the classroom or what else can be done with each new tool. So it's no surprise that we're over the moon about Google Glass and it's potential for education.

The best part of the rise of online education is that it forces us to ask: What is a university for? Are universities mostly sorting devices to separate smart and hard-working high school students from their less-able fellows so that employers can more easily identify them?

The experience of a middle school teacher moving away from grading towards comments and her finding that this creates a better environment for all... and more work is being done

Thanks for posting! I have heard this statement come out of more than one teacher's mouth. It will take time, but if we can create common language around proficiency based standards and learning and be consistent in its use, kids will catch on. My hope is that more and more of our classrooms begin to look like the one described.

"...summarizes the research on five categories of noncognitive factors that are related to academic performance: academic behaviors, academic perseverance, academic mindsets, learning strategies, and social skills..."

Publication Summary Page of CCSR Report http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/teaching-adolescents-become-learners-role-noncognitive-factors-shaping-school Great related blog post on Grit by Jonathan Martin "Developing Grit via Mindset and Learning Strategies: Learning from the CCSR report" http://21k12blog.net/2013/05/19/developing-grit-via-mindset-and-learning-strategies-learning-from-the-ccsr-report/

An absolutely fabulous article about teaching history well.

Excellent article.