Friday February 26--8:00 Am Session Carol Dweck Changing Mindsets
You may remember I spoke last year about Carol’s research. I heard her speak at NAIS, but she fainted about 15 minutes into her presentation. Carol is a professor of Psychology at Stanford. Her work centers on what she calls “fixed” mind sets as opposed to growth mind sets. Too often students get stuck with a label “doesn’t really have a math mind” Her studies show that that label can be a self fulfilling prophecy—when students where labels (randomly) as ones “about to realize their potential” a significant portion did. Teachers with a fixed mindset are less likely to encourage students who struggle and more likely to console “not everyone is good at math.”
Likewise the fixed mindset can hut those who are labeled as talented—promoting “laziness”—bright means getting the answer without working hard so the tendency when faced with a challenge is not to rise to that challenge. According to Dweck, we need to praise effort and be careful in our language. Low effort success is not to be praised.
See New York Magazine The Inverse Power of Praise:
Dweck explains her ideas to young people by letting them know that the brain is a muscle. This is supported by much of the new neuroscience. The brain changes itself.. See the work of Norman Doidge.
Her work can be viewed on her on-line program Brainology (mostly geared for younger students).
She also made a connection to fixed mindset and cheating. Someone with a fixed mindset believes there is no way to recover and is more likely to engage in cheating.
I have an extra copy of her book Mindsets, which I would be glad to loan to anyone interested in reading further.
9:30Keynote session with Juan Enriquez- As the future Catches You—The Impact of the Genetic, Digital, and Knowledge Revolution
As The Future Catches You
Enriquez is a life scientist and businessman, who, I have to admit, left me scratching my head. His information about cloning was especially impressive (and scary). It will be a very different world we live in-- in a very short time
His work on digital and genetic came down to three premises:
• All Wealth derives from code
• Code keeps evolving
• We are moving from reading life code to…copying life code…to writing life code.
Unlike any other animal we teach what we know
All life is imperfectly transmitted code
Enriquez reference the Green Cup Challenge and the accompanying video contest which is fun to check out.
Green Cup Challenge Video Contest
11:30 workshop- A Presentation by teachers at The Windward School in California.
This presentation focused on the schools design of their lab space, which they modeled on the Active Learning System at MIT. It made me think (again) about how we need to intentionally look at our learning spaces in light of how and what we are teaching.
Lots of their experience came from their Physics lab (Dolores and Aaron you should check out their website). They are also a “Physics First School”—as is MIT. Michelle, I made it a point to ask the AP Biology teacher on the panel why he said he loved the fact that the school was Physics first—he said three things: it demystifies physics: it’s not that course that folks look at with dread (and avoid if possible) in junior or senior year; he liked the fact that Physics first was Chemistry second and he was able to do so much more with the Bio-Chem section of his teaching—when he taught ninth grade Biology he felt pretty limited in what and how he could teach given the backgrounds of the students; finally, he said their school had some great Physics electives in grade 12—Physics (and related course) seems uniquely (or at least easily) positioned to give students much of the problem based learning we have spoken of.
1:30 Session Tony Wagner
Wagner was disappointing as a speaker and didn’t give my as much new insight as I would have like—I was looking forward to his presentation and expected more.
He talked about the seven survival skills for the 21st Century that we discussed in August.
He discussed how the youth of today is differently motivated to learn:
- The want instant gratification and are always on (Kaiser Foundation)
- They use the web: for extended friendship for self directed learning and for self expression
- The only place they do not multitask (usually) is school
- They have less fear of and respect for authority
- They want to make a difference---do interesting and worthwhile work
3.0 Learning
- "Just in time" Learning
- Habits of mind-learning to ask the right questions
- Increased accountability
- New work-extended internships and performance assessements
- New work in new ways: teams of teachers for collaborative inquiry
3:00 closing session with Irshad Manji
I had not heard of Irshad Manji and thought about not attending but was very glad I did. Manji is director of the Moral Courage Project at NYU. She is the author of the book The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform of Her Faith.
She defines courage as the recognition that some things are more important than fear. She defines moral courage as willingness to speak truth to power in your own community (where backlash is most likely to occur).
Young people have some to assoicate the classroom with passivity; we live in a culture where fear is deep seeded