From the Principal's Desk
At the Jackman Institute of Child Study Laboratory School, we are involved and engaged in current issues in education in many ways. Every month, I review an article or book for a professional e-journal at Teachers College, Columbia University. Below are some recent reviews.
Elizabeth Morley, Laboratory School Principal
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Undoing a Pervasive Addiction Carl Honoré, an articulate champion of Slow, a movement that encompasses not only slow food, but slow medicine, cities, businesses, schools and children's schedules, takes aim at the quick fix. He questions the bestsellers that promote the 60 second solutions and in-the-blink-of-an-eye timelines. His new book extends his critique of the "ethos of hurry." He makes the case for valuing collaboration, consensus and patience over multi-tasking and short-term responses. Pressure to move quickly toward answers, he says, usually produces superficial solutions that are unsatisfactory because they do not have a long horizon in view. His examples are international in scope, both familiar and new. In each case, he highlights the importance of finding the real root of a problem, learning from mistakes, consulting with those closest to the issue, and listening. He consistently makes three simple points: slow is not weak, time is not the enemy, and deliberate thinking is not optional. Though occasionally slipping into self-help language, Honoré's book is in itself a slow fix that requires the hard work of deep reflection. Avoiding the quick fix may produce better, more lasting and more humane solutions that have the added benefit of building the capacity for a more reflective social community. Random House, 2013 |
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Tools for Change Change will find us, whether or not we seek it. With sometimes little control over the financial, environmental, scientific, and social contexts in which we find ourselves, we can turn to the research on resilience to find insights, explanations, and maybe even hope. Zolli and Healy make such a turn easy. Through engaging examples and critical research, their book draws together - with startling clarity - exactly what is known about the skills of adaptation, shock absorption, and the role of interdependency in resilient people and systems. Concurrently, they tackle several important questions: Why do some bounce back while others become permanently broken? Why do some people, some circumstances, some responses promote rebounding and forward movement? Although this is not a book about education, or aiming for educators as its primary audience, its importance for schools increases when it is seen through the lens of even bigger and, for us, more essential questions: What tools does it take to navigate rapid change and unpredictable circumstances, and are those tools present in our schools? Free Press, 2012 |
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Free Press, 2012 |
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Harvard University Press, 2012 |
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A Rigorous and Inspiring Climb into the World of Math Hodder and Stoughton, 2012 |
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Attention Digital Disorder Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn by Cathy Davidson Cathy Davidson, Professor at Duke University, has polarized public opinion on more than one occasion and her most recent book is likely to do the same. Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn focuses on her expertise and strong opinions on cognition and the science of attention in the digital age. She made news in 2003 when, as Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University, she gave every freshman student an iPod. She invited and expected innovative learning and collaboration strategies to follow. Although some derided this untested digital largesse, public opinion began to shift toward her bold experiment as the results became evident. Her newest book outlines why she is optimistic about the digital age in education but also why she believes we are in peril if we do not become aware of how our attention actually functions and how multi-tasking in the internet age works for learners. Davidson is co-founder of the virtual organization HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), an international organization open to everyone and dedicated to rethinking the future of digital learning. To read her work may help us to stop being afraid that digital life erodes attention and begin to effectively reconcile the potential of digital learning with changing educational paradigms. Viking Press, Winter 2012 |
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Pedagogy of the Re-engaged Paula Marantz Cohen is frank in her assessment that for nearly three decades her method of teaching could have been called the "endurance test" approach. Distinguished professor of English at Drexel University, Cohen used to subscribe to the ways that she had been taught. Her recent article is a narrative account of what led to her shift in practice and pedagogy. She details the reasons for her current belief that without a different measurement of student engagement, her long reading lists, her assignments, her rubrics and her notion that good students would keep up with her comprehensive coverage were false indicators of student buy-in. She began the change process with a determination to see the material to be taught through the eyes of her students. This led to abandoning a prescribed syllabus for one that emerged in response to student discussion, interest, capacity and commitment. As she engaged in listening to her students, Cohen found that after a term of rich discussion and short papers on a regular basis, much had changed including an unexpected outcome: no one asked for a higher final grade. She posits that "students focus on grades when they believe that this is all they can get out of a course. When they feel they have learned something, the grade becomes less important." There is a convincing honesty to this writer's account of lessons learned in the process of exploring what students think about what we teach. The American Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa Magazine, Winter 2011
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Scientific Research and the "Empirical Hiccup"
The New Yorker's Annals of Science writer Jonah Lehrer explores the human side of science in his article on the troubling phenomenon called the decline effect, which is the tendency of exciting scientific results to become less accurate and more illusory over time. This "empirical hiccup", seen in fields of research as diverse as social psychology, physics, biology and medicine, defies simple explanation but may be linked to how subjective bias, conjuring significance, or confirming a preferred hypothesis distort original conclusions . Although the article does not tackle educational research specifically, the seductive nature of empiricism is a theme relevant to the teaching of any discipline that involves proof and experiment. Ideas that make ostensible sense and that we can't bear to let go of may be held at a cost. We, the humble readers or teachers, may have to recognize that "when all the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe." Sobering thoughts for those seeking firm ground in the disciplines. |
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Engineering Kindness David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas (Oxford University Press), is now pondering whether there is a cure for meanness. In his New York Times article, Fighting Bullying with Babies, Bornstein examines the research on a unique social innovation curriculum in schools that is offering an unexpected answer. Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program that has shown dramatic effect in reducing levels of aggression among schoolchildren by raising social/emotional competence and increasing empathy. A baby in a parent's arms comes to the classroom once a month throughout a school year and the students gather around to watch, ask questions, comfort, sing and make a tiny human being comfortable. Around babies, tough kids smile, disruptive kids focus, and shy kids open up. The baby, lying on a green blanket, invites a simple caring and a complex perspective taking combination that is effecting change in behavior and seeing outcomes maintained three years after the program ends. That change is more kindness and less bullying. All in a day's work for the youngest of teachers. The New York Times, November 2010 |
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Race Still Matters In this landmark collection of essays on race and ethnicity, co-editors Hazel Markus, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and Paula Moya, a professor of English, also at Stanford, have focused their science and scholarship on what race and ethnicity are, how they work, and why they matter. Everyday experiences and commonplace interactions like watching television, voting, shopping, going to the doctor or listening to music, are used to expose persistent misunderstandings, identifying some of the foundations for assumptions and misinformation in our public discourse. The book debunks and challenges, exposes and provides evidence that we are not at all in a "post-race" world, but rather one in which race and ethnicity are powerful organizers of modern society. Though it is not targeted only at educators, Doing Race is highly relevant to an understanding of how our schools display their values, and how we teach in intentional or unintentional ways about what we care about, whom we trust, who counts, and whom we include. A strong asset of the book is its interdisciplinary range, using perspectives from psychology, history, anthropology and sociology to broaden and ground the message. Norton, 2010 |
Review by Laboratory School Principal Elizabeth Morley, from Klingbrief, an electronic publication of recommended articles, websites, and books selected by and for independent school educators. To access the most recent full issue of Klingbrief, please visit the website here.