JTC

Quote

Jessica and Tim Lahey:

“Education has entered the era of Big Data. The Internet is teeming with stories touting the latest groundbreaking studies on the science of learning and pedagogy. Education journalists are in a race to report these findings as they search for the magic formula that will save America’s schools. But while most of this research is methodologically solid, not all of it is ready for immediate deployment in the classroom.”

Read the rest of the article in The Atlantic here, which includes guiding questions to make more informed decisions based on data.

This reminds me of the site Spurious Correlations which provides dramatic visual evidence of #4: Is it the chicken, or the egg, or a rooster?

Children approach solving the problem differently than adults.

Problem Solving

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have found that 4- and 5-year-olds are smarter than college students when it comes to figuring out how toys and gadgets work …

Exploratory learning comes naturally to young children …  Adults, on the other hand, jump on the first, most obvious solution and doggedly stick to it, even if it’s not working. That’s inflexible, narrow thinking.

Or, is it possible, that schools encourage kids to “unlearn” their natural problem-solving abilities? After all, it doesn’t take much flexibility or expanded thinking to color in bubbles on a standardized test.

Read the article here. Access the study here.