Tag: inquiry

Want to Get Smarter? Be More Childlike.

Posted on | by Sam | 1 Comment on Want to Get Smarter? Be More Childlike.

Interesting piece on NPR this morning in which Shankra Vedantam reviews some of the recent research in neuroscience. You can listen to it here, and you should because it highlights something simple and significant — that the best way to keep learning over one’s life is to keep hold of the boundless inquiry that characterizes early childhood.

“Using mathematical techniques that allow researchers to disentangle the effects of genetic and environmental influences on individuals,” Vedantam reports, researchers “noticed that kids who had higher IQs to begin with seemed to have an extended period in adolescence during which they retained the ability to learn at a rapid pace, just like much younger children.

“I found that twins that had a higher IQ were showing a more childlike pattern of influence during adolescence,” said one of the researchers, Penn State’s Angela Brant.

If that’s true, it would make sense to structure learning environments for children that are proactively designed to unleash each young person’s inherent sense of wonder and curiosity. And yet, here in DC and elsewhere across the country, we are doing the opposite. It’s true — too many young people are arriving in school with extreme deficits when it comes to literacy and numeracy. And it’s true — those things matter. But the best way to help all children thrive is not by making Kindergarten resemble a 10th grade honors class; it’s by making that 10th grade honors class more like Kindergarten.

That’s something educators have known for a long time. Now they have the research to boot.

How to Build a School System That Nurtures Creativity

Posted on | by Sam | 7 Comments on How to Build a School System That Nurtures Creativity

In case you missed it, there’s an important new piece in Newsweek about the declining capacity of Americans to think creatively — and what we can do about it.

This is, of course, the primary issue that has driven Sir Ken Robinson’s work (if you’re among the few who haven’t yet seen his hilarious and insightful 2006 TED talk on the subject, check it out). As Ken puts it, the problem is that our current system of education is more apt to “mine our minds” of its most precious materials than it is to plant fertile seeds that can sprout new ideas and ways of seeing the world. The Newsweek piece picks up on this theme, noting that “around the world, other countries are making creativity development a national priority.” Meanwhile, our focus in the U.S. remains on clarifying what exactly we need to put into all children’s minds, rather than how we can best pull out their individual talents and passions.

In addition to what Newsweek outlines as constructive steps to address the creativity crisis (hint: cognitive science and a deeper understanding of how the brain really works), I’d like to remind everyone what Finland did to become the world’s leader in public education: an intensive investment in teacher education (NOT performance pay), and a complete overhaul of the curriculum and assessment system in order to create a true “thinking curriculum” for all students.

More specifically, teachers in Finland receive 2 or 3 years of high-quality training completely at state expense. The program is extremely competitive, and it is followed by a full year of clinical experience and studying under a master teacher. All teachers also engage in critical friends group work throughout their careers, ensuring that they engage in continual self-reflection, evaluation, and proactive efforts to improve the quality of their professional practice.

The result of this deep investment in teaching, and in a curriculum that is focused on inquiry (as opposed to facts)? A learning environment that encourages both students and teachers to try new ideas and methods, learn about and through innovations, and cultivate creativity in schools. As Linda Darling-Hammond says in her excellent new book The Flat World and Education, “Over the past 40 years, Finland has shifted from a highly centralized system emphasizing external testing to a more localized system in which highly trained teachers design curriculum around very lean national standards. . . . The logic of the system is that investments in the capacity of local teachers and schools to meet the needs of all students, coupled with the thoughtful guidance about goals, can unleash the benefits of local creativity in the cause of common, equitable outcomes.”

Why can’t we do this? WHY AREN’T WE DOING THIS?