signs of trouble

• Time to Reset the School Clock“Every kid is different. Why force each mind to fit the same timetable?” asks this article written by a British Columbia teacher. If individuals learn in a variety of styles and on different schedules, who benefits from the formal rigidity of current school timetable? And if we know that learning is not confined to the classroom, couldn’t we ‘do’ school differently?
  
  
  
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  Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other BribesMon, 04/07/2008 - 14:28 -- adminIn this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm. Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.
  
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  The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia ApproachThu, 03/13/2008 - 16:53 -- adminOver the past forty years, educators there have evolved a distinctive innovative approach that supports children’s well-being and fosters their intellectual development through a systematic focus on symbolic representation. Young children (from birth to age six) are encouraged to explore their environment and express themselves through many “languages,” or modes of expression, including words, movement, drawing, painting, sculpture, shadow play, collage, and music.
  
  
  
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  Best Practices in Early Childhood Education: The Reggio Emilia ApproachHailed as the best pre-schools in the world by Newsweek magazine in 1991, the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education has attracted the worldwide attention of educators, researchers and just about anyone interested in early childhood education best practices. Today, the Reggio approach has been adopted in USA, UK, New Zealand, Australia and many other countries.
  
  
  
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  Early Years Study 2: Putting Science Into ActionIn 2007, the Council for Early Child Development published Early Years Study 2: Putting Science into Action, a report that focuses on the scientific evidence supporting the importance of early learning and care as it relates to childhood development. This report is a follow up to the 1999 Mustard/McCain Early Years Study, a groundbreaking report that recommended an integrated system of community-based early child development and parenting centres linked to the school system.
  
  
  
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  How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and SchoolMon, 03/10/2008 - 12:04 -- adminNew 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.
  
  
  
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  Teaching with the Brain in MindFri, 03/07/2008 - 23:48 -- adminEvery year, millions of parents trust that the professionals who teach their children know something about the brain and processes of learning. But most schools of education offer psychology, not neurology, courses. At best, these psychology courses provide indirect information about the brain and how children actually learn.
  
  Teaching with the Brain in Mind fills this gap with the latest practical, easy-to-understand research on learning and the brain. Consider important questions such as
  
  
  
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  The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries about the Teenage Brain Tell Us about Our KidsThu, 03/06/2008 - 17:49 -- adminWhile many members of the scientific community have long held that the growing pains of adolescence are primarily psychological, Barbara Strauch highlights the physical nature of the transformation, offering parents and educators a new perspective on erratic teenage behavior.
  
  
  
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  Magic Trees of the Mind : How to Nurture Your Child's Intelligence, Creativity, and Emotions from Birth Through AdolescenceThu, 03/06/2008 - 14:14 -- adminAt each stage of development, the brain’s ability to gain new skills and process information is refined. As a leading researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, Marion Diamond has been a pioneer in this field of research. Now, Diamond and award-winning science writer Janet Hopson present a comprehensive enrichment program designed to help parents prepare their children for a lifetime of learning.
  
  (Book description by publisher, Plume Books)
  
  
  
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  Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's BrainThu, 03/06/2008 - 14:06 -- admin
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  • cognitive apprenticeshipWe have all seen youth who can spend hours perfecting complicated skateboarding feats, learning new computer games or mastering animation techniques – it is impossible to stop them from learning. Yet these same teens may struggle with learning in a classroom setting. Part of the problem is that classroom learning is often abstract, disconnected from any real-life application or the natural context for using new information.
    
    
    
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    getting it wrongAbout one hundred years ago, American psychologists, observing the chaotic and dysfunctional life of adolescents with no purposeful work to do and no role models to follow, started to define adolescence as a kind of disease brought on, they assumed, by the rapid development of sex hormones. The “rebelliousness” of adolescence was seen as an aberration, something that had ‘gone wrong’; and something that meant that teenagers were becoming a threat to themselves.
    
    
    
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    a critical evolutionary adaptationWe have all witnessed the apparent ‘craziness’ of adolescence. Typically, the rebelliousness, risk-taking and contrary behaviour has been chalked up to raging hormones. It seems however, that there may be method in the madness – and that teenagers are, in fact ,‘crazy by design1’.
    
    
    
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    The mass of evidence that is now emerging about le-John Abbott, Terence RyanMon, 02/18/2008 - 17:16 -- adminThe mass of evidence that is now emerging about learning and brain development has spawned a movement towards educational practice which confirms that thinking skills (meta-cognition), as well as significant aspects of intelligence, are learnable.
    
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    As we learn more about the brain and how it natura-John Abbott, Terence RyanMon, 02/18/2008 - 17:09 -- adminAs we learn more about the brain and how it naturally learns, it is essential to devise learning environments that go with the grain of the brain.
    
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    The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every TeenMon, 02/11/2008 - 12:10 -- adminRobert Epstein, former editor in chief of Psychology Today, shows that teen turmoil is caused by outmoded systems put in place a century ago which destroyed the continuum between childhood and adulthood. Where this continuum still exists in other countries, there is no adolescence.
    
    
    
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    The Unfinished Revolution: Learning, Human Behavior, Community and Political ParadoxMon, 02/04/2008 - 15:29 -- admin
    
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    How People Learn: Bridging Research and PracticeThu, 01/31/2008 - 17:33 -- adminWhen 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?
    
    This book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to these and other questions. 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.
    
    
    
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    John Abbott on Critical Periods of Brain DevelopmentMon, 01/28/2008 - 19:23 -- admin
    John Abbott discusses the need for us to understand critical ‘windows of opportunity’ in human development in order to maximize learning. In particular, he discusses very key – and very different – opportunities afforded by the early years and the period of adolescence.
    
    Featured in this video:
    John Abbott is the President of the [[http://www.21learn.org/|21st Century Learning Initiative]], an initiative to facilitate the emergence of new approaches to learning in the United Kingdom.
    
    
    
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    John Abbott on Brain Development: Windows of Opportunity for LearningMon, 01/28/2008 - 19:10 -- admin
    John Abbott speaks about the nature of the human brain and the existence of developmental ‘windows of opportunity’ for learning.
    
    Featured in this video:
    John Abbott is the President of the [[http://www.21learn.org/|21st Century Learning Initiative]], an initiative to facilitate the emergence of new approaches to learning in the United Kingdom.
    
    
    
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    John Abbott on Learning With the Grain of the BrainMon, 01/28/2008 - 18:53 -- admin
    John Abbott discusses the nature of the human brain and critical periods for learning in a person’s development.
    
    Featured in this video:
    John Abbott is the President of the [[http://www.21learn.org/|21st Century Learning Initiative]], an initiative to facilitate the emergence of new approaches to learning in the United Kingdom.
    
    
    
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    how humans learn bestWe now understand that evolution has provided humans with a powerful toolkit of [[http://changelearning.ca/get-informed/understanding-human-learning/born-learn/early-years/predisposed-development?|predispositions]] that go a long way in explaining our ability to learn language, cooperate in groups, solve problems, plan for the future and empathize with others. This evolutionary inheritance both empowers us and constrains us. We are born ready to learn, but our brains are wired to learn more effectively under certain conditions.
    
    
    
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    adolescenceAlthough many people have begun to understand the importance of the [[early years]] to human development, achievement and lifelong success, we have been slow to recognize the elephant in our midst—the adolescent learner. Dropout statistics, plummeting rates of school connectedness, declining academic performance and an increased dislike of school are [[signs of trouble]] underlining a disturbing pattern of disengagement as youth enter their teens. It seems that we may be [[getting it wrong]] for adolescents learners more than anyone in our schools.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
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    early yearsMost people understand that the early years are an important time in a child’s development, but recent research is painting a startling picture of how the experiences and interactions that occur from conception to age six drastically affect the trajectory of children’s lives1, their success in school2 and who they will become as adults.
    
    
    
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    timing is everythingEvidence is mounting that we arrive into the world with a genetically pre-set timetable for how we go about growing that remaining 60% of our brains – complete with sensitive or critical periods when specific parts of the brain are primed to grow and develop. For example, researchers at McMaster University have found that babies with cataracts who miss fine visual input for the first two months, never develop the ability to recognize faces at a distance1.
    
    
    
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    A Policy Paper: The Strategic and Resource Implications of a New Model of LearningThis Policy Proposal, from the 21st Century Learning Initiative in the UK, is written to assist those in positions of influence to initiate powerful changes to current educational arrangements. The circumstantial evidence for such a transformation of learning is drawn from the best in research and practice from around the world. The paper shows that better informed, and more effective, models of learning could be organised through a redistribution of expenditures and responsibilities, at a total cost no greater than current levels of expenditure.
    
    
    
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    Learning with the Grain of the BrainIf young people are to be equipped effectively to meet the challenges of the 21st century it is surely prudent to seek out the very best understandings from current scientific research into the nature of how humans learn before considering further reform of the current system.
    
    This article by John Abbott and Terence Ryan appeared in the Spring, 1999 issue of Education Canada.
    
    
    
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    Constructing Knowledge, Reconstructing SchoolingRather than thinking of the brain as a computer, cognitive scientists now utilize a far more flexible, biological analogy, where the brain is seen as a unique, ever-changing organism that grows and reshapes itself in response to use. In this article, John Abbott and Terence Ryan discuss how emerging brain research that supports constructivist learning collides head-on with many of our institutional arrangements for learning. 
    The article first appeared in the November 1999 issue ofEducational Leadership.
    
    
    
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    can the learning species fit into schools?Education critic John Abbott quotes Bill Gates who states unequivocally; “High schools are obsolete… by that, I mean that even when they are working exactly as designed (they) cannot teach our kids what they need to know today”. Abbott explores what we know about our species that might help us understand better how humans learn and how to provide young people with the learning experiences they need. 
    (This paper was delivered to The Campaign for Learning, 10th June 2005, Kensington Town Hall, UK.)
    
    
    
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    battery hens or free-range chickens: what kind of education for what kind of world?There is more material now about the nature of human learning than at any previous time in history. Why, therefore, do we have a “crisis” in education? John Abbott, discusses what is known about how humans learn and develop from birth through adulthood and how our education systems have it “inside out and upside down”.
    
    
    
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    Over and over again, studies have demonstrated tha-David PerkinsTue, 12/18/2007 - 12:35 -- adminOver and over again, studies have demonstrated that we memorize best when we analyze what we are learning, find patterns in it, and relate it to knowledge we already have. In other words, when we think about it.
    
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