We how work in education have been thrown into chaos this past year. The chaos has not been as bad as our reaction to it, but that is a topic for another post. What has become clear in the past year has been educators’ assumptions about teaching and learning and schooling. As often happens, my Read More
Category: Schools
Curriculum Repository Proposal
A few years ago, I was asked to draft a proposal for a curriculum repository for a community college. The had seen some of my ideas about this type of resource such as is explained on my post “Curriculum Repositories” and also “Curriculum Repositories Defined” and wee interested in how I might craft a more Read More
On Familiarity and Novelty
Teachers who create classrooms in which students pay attention are skilled at finding the correct balance between familiar and novel. Human brains are adapted to figuring out “just the right amount of change.” The logic behind this adaptation is simple: If a situation is familiar, then it is predictable so we have a sense of Read More
Thoughts on Standardized Education
My career has approximately coincided with the history of personal computers in schools. I was an undergraduate student when “computer” meant a device that sat on a desktop and was turned on only after placing a diskette in the drive that loaded the only program that could be used during the session. The display was Read More
Being Data-Driven is Nothing to Brag About
Being Data-Driven is Nothing to Brag About (c) 2016 Dr. Gary L. Ackerman “Data-driven” has been the mantra of educators for the last generation. This mantra captures the practice of using students’ performance on tests to make instructional decisions. This model can be criticized for several reasons including the dubious reliability and validity of tests, Read More
Thinking About Digital Reference Tools
Watching some children in my life (from a distance) grow to through into adolescence has led me to think about reference tools in emerging students’ lives. Specifically, I’m thinking about dictionaries, encyclopedias, and maps and I am led to the conclusion that the digital versions we have are better for two of these, but worse Read More
Culture and Learning
The culture (comprising beliefs, attitudes, symbols, and similar concepts) that learners experience when they are young contributes to their views and perspectives. These influence what behaviors in schools that learners value, how they define learning, and ideas about how learning occurs. These all affect how individual interact with curriculum, teachers, and peers in school. Differences Read More
A Response to Standard Education
Education has broad and diverse goals in our society: free and appropriate education for all. Despite the connotation of “standard” education, most recognize that “one size fits all” education is not what most students need. That suggests we recognize contingencies in education, just as scientists recognize contingencies. Science has centuries of managing contingencies, so we Read More
Elevator Pitch on the Nature of Schools
The purpose of education is to help people learn. Learning is a natural physiological process of the human brain. That nature defines the rules within which educators (and education policy makers) must play. While it might be convenient for policy makers to define test scores as a measure of learning, if test scores are a Read More
How I Started in Education
I recently rediscovered a piece I wrote about why I entered my profession… “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night.” Those words begin the second paragraph of Edgar A. Poe’s short story “The Tell Tale Heart,” in which the narrator attempts Read More