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Blog
Want Better PBL? Use SEL.October 17th, 2011
An unfortunate legacy of the cognitive model that dominates education is the belief that everything important in life takes place from the neck up. This belief is the primary reason that many teachers struggle with PBL. At its best, PBL taps into intangibles that make learning effortless and engaging: Drive, passion, purpose, and peak performance. But peak performance doesn’t start with a standardized curriculum.
From Groups to Teams: The Key to Powering Up PBLApril 25th, 2011I don’t believe that we have yet tapped the true power of project based learning. Right now, PBL is still kind of a cool way to address standards and, too often these days, is simply coverage by another name. But its ultimate benefit is to help students think, learn, and operate in the new century by challenging them at deeper levels. That requires reversing the equation between skills and content: PBL is method for teaching students to find, process, understand, and share information, not a way to extend the industrial landscape of regurgitation and recall.
Why STEM Education Needs PBLMarch 13th, 2011STEM education—the focus on science, technology, engineering, and math—has become the choice du jour for educational reform and was prominently mentioned in President Obama’s State of the Union address. I’ve worked with several very successful STEM schools, so I like the trend. But I also see a tendency to regard STEM as ‘just another thing we do,’ instead of seizing the opportunity to further develop 21st century learning principles. Here are some of the pitfalls I’ve encountered… Late last spring I was asked to conduct a PBL workshop for teachers in a district that trumpeted STEM principles. But their definition of STEM? Every high school in the District had adopted an extra math course. Want Your Students College Ready? Use PBL!March 13th, 2011I notice that college readiness, always a hot topic, is getting hotter, for two reasons. One, the Obama administration has set a national goal of having the highest proportion of college-educated citizens in the world by 2020. And two, recent research reported by Education Week (12/23/2010) found that an average of two out of five college students are not equipped to handle the academic, financial, and social responsibilities of college. In other words, 40% of high school students aren’t ‘college ready.’
Making the World RoundDecember 2nd, 2010In all my years as an educator, I have never heard an American student express the thought, “I can’t wait until I’m in the job market so I can beat the Chinese!” Yet U.S. schools, in their push for reform and performance, invoke competition and dominance on a regular basis. The current prevailing theory says the world is ‘flat’—that students from around the world enter the work world with equal skills. So, with the field now level, American students need to work harder to outsmart the other players—and win the race for the jobs of the future. I believe this competitive stick is ineffective, outmoded, even self-defeating as a means for motivating young people to learn. For one thing, international competition is the opposite of what appeals to today’s youth. Studies show that this is the most intimate and connected generation of young people in history—and those connections reach beyond geographic borders. A global youth culture has emerged of individuals who share tastes in music, fashion, and lifestyle—and who also think alike. The research also shows that youth in cities as diverse as New York, Seoul, and Caracas have more in common with each other than they do with peers in the their own countryside. This trend puts us squarely on the path to greater collaborative and synergistic efforts that could improve the quality of life on a global level. Want to Really Disrupt Education? Make students smarter!December 2nd, 2010“Incremental change isn’t going to get us where we need to go. We’ve got to be disruptive. You can’t keep doing the same stuff and expect different results.” – Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, in recent comments quoted by Tom Friedman in November 20, 2010, New York Times Opinion section Intelligence: The Great Mystery (Part 2)December 2nd, 2010On a recent plane trip, I sat next to a hip young man, about 20 years old with an earring and an iPod, who was doing something that many young people don’t. He was reading a serious book on politics and history. Ever on the lookout for success stories, I struck up a conversation about his education. Turns out, his account of how he educated himself caused me to wonder, again: Do schools help students master intelligent behaviors that lead to success in life? Or not? Here’s the thumbnail: After spending two years at a community college, the young man had just won a prestigious, full-ride Regents scholarship to the University of California at Irvine. Attending a two-year college out of high school had been his choice, he told me. Each of his three older siblings had graduated with 4.3 grade point averages from his highly regarded suburban high school—and he noticed that they all ended up hating high school. Too focused on grades, they felt stressed and time pressured. And, in an ironic twist, his sister was not accepted by the college of her choice because she hadn’t participated in extracurricular activities. He also told me that earning a 4.3 G.P.A. wasn’t a motivating challenge for him. “It’s easy enough to get good grades in high school,” he shrugged. “You just study all the time and don’t do anything else.” Intelligence: The Great Mystery (Part 1)December 2nd, 2010My earliest years of high school teaching were spent in a student support class working with what I called the artists, rebels, and misfits. Included in this group, as a sort of flag bearer, was a boy named Cody, a big, tough 15-year-old with a keen look in his eye. I liked him immediately, but he had a reputation that was probably deserved. If there was a fight in the hallway, Cody was usually there—and he seemed to have something to do with it. The assistant principal never could gain a conviction, though. Back in elementary school, Cody had mastered plausible denial. In his first year of high school, Cody failed nearly every class, and by his sophomore year, he was completely disengaged. However, in the middle of tenth grade, something caught my eye: Cody always carried a wad of cash in his pocket, usually amounting to more than a hundred dollars. The assistant principal said it was drug money. But I asked Cody about it one day, and he had a surprising explanation: He was the acclaimed master mechanic in his neighborhood. He fixed cars and motorcycles for friends and neighbors—and they paid him in cash. Will Change Come to American High Schools?December 2nd, 2010When I grew up, my parents believed that General Motors was a fail-safe stock that could guarantee the future. No one would have predicted that an institution so central to the American dream would one day be scrambling to turn a profit, let alone stay in business. But the unthinkable has happened, and I wonder how the crumbling of GM, along with many other hallowed institutions, will impact education. A piece of our society this big can’t disappear without inviting other radical changes. In particular, I wonder whether public sentiment about the American high school will suddenly shift, at a speed we didn’t expect. Think for a moment about three parallels: Heart Intelligence: The New FrontierDecember 2nd, 2010Like many other problems facing us today, solutions will come only after a deep rethinking process. I believe this is true of education: How we retool education for the 21st century hinges on how we define the nature of intelligence itself. The standard ‘scientific’ approach of measuring intelligence through IQ tests feeds the notion that performance is a fixed commodity, and that learning can be defined and measured in terms of numbers. This drives the testing mania that most educators now see as counterproductive—and which results in a narrowed curriculum that shortchanges kids and stifles creativity. The recent resurrection of the whole child approach to education is a first response to these concerns. Intuitively, we recognize that integrating both academic and human development into schools helps students act more ‘intelligently.’ We also can see that our children, who are growing up in the throes of searing change and fragmented values, need stronger emotional support systems than ever before if they are to have the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities.
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