Tuesday 28 April 2015

What Should They Learn?

Part of a series...


So... I started to read this article about a Stanford Study to do with apps and "what will my child learn?" and before I was even through the start of it I could hear my head saying... "just what do you WANT them to learn... really?"

In a classroom students can't be forced to LEARN... at best you can co-erce them into activities (including 'playing' with apps) that consolidate learning, reinforce concepts, drill, etc - but it is all mostly just lower level Blooms stuff - remembering knowledge, reorganising knowledge, regurgitating knowledge - if you are lucky they may independently apply knowledge.

But can you please have a stern pedogogical talk with yourself... what do you actually want for your children/students? What is the point.. the end game of putting them in the public education system.

The traditional mainstream education system is still largely the same as it was when it was created - a factory for producing a person that fits into and supports that hierarchical / pyramid system for industrialised society.


The goal of this system was to produce clones for the British Empire that could be plonked anywhere in the world to run various branches of their colonisation.

To be continued.... (e.g. Not finished but I have a huge back log of draft posts and I need to get some of them published!! I will get back to this ASAP! and link it).




Wednesday 22 April 2015

Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset

Looking for ways to turn around fixed mindset pre-teens right now.
Below is an outline of Growth and Fixed mindsets.


Basically fixed mindset means you think you are as smart as you're ever going to get - this is reinforced by parent/teacher comments about how smart you are, if you won, how high was your score...
 It is likely that if you have a student who rolls their eyes at new tasks, blames others, has anger outbursts when it's time for assessment, hides their mistakes and declares they "suck at this" has a fixed mindset. They belief that effort is a BAD THING and if you have ability you should not have to apply effort. They believe that making an effort means you are not smart.
Fixed mindsets sap learner motivation!

Growth mindset is when you know that with effort and practise you can improve performance - reinforced by comments about how hard you worked and your process - did all your hard work pay off, what new things did you learn...
People with a growth mindset understand that mistakes are a part of learning. They embrace effort and challenge.

I have been noticing the difference in myself and others with the use of "yet" at the end of some of my critical statements.  Most recently I used this with some of the young folk in my loom band workshop at IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference).
The video below is where I got the idea to start with.



Learner: "I'm not good at maths"
Teacher: "...yet..."



BEWARE LAVISH PRAISE!
Praising intelligence actually turns people off to learning.
Praising process encourages a growth mindset.