tyrorist (messy notes of a master novice)

This week I blogged about a new study that suggests one reason why there are so few women in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math): they are vulnerable to feeling that they have to put in more effort than others to achieve the same results, and that therefore they must not "belong" in that sphere. There's a lesson here about the importance of a "growth mindset"—researcher Carol Dweck's term for the belief that success is all about effort, and that "even geniuses work hard"—but what I want to focus on today is this notion of belonging, and how crucial it is for effective learning.        Learning is social, as I wrote in this New York Times piece about social factors that affect intelligence. The level of comfort we feel in another person's presence can powerfully influence how intelligent we feel, and in some sense, how intelligent we actually are, at least in that moment. Now multiply that one-on-one interaction by tens or hundreds, and you start to get a sense of how important a sense of belonging to a learning community can be.        Early on in school, some children get the sense that, academically speaking, they don't belong—that they're not one of the "smart kids." The same thing can happen when young people start middle school, or high school, or college: they take a look around and think, "I don't belong here." In our work lives, too, we may form an assumption that we're not quick or sharp enough, not sufficiently creative or innovative, to belong at the top of our fields.....

Deborah Smith, assistant professor of science education, and two colleagues showed how teachers create opportunities for children to take up scientific discourses and practices in their classroom work. The research found that when the children acted in a community of peers, they not only attained a deep understanding of the science, but also an appreciation for how they could make scientific knowledge themselves.

Science of Productivity

Students design a ritual or ceremony through which new citizens are inducted into the nation or through which legal adults become eligible voters.... (Would such a thing be legal? Should it exist?)

- Playing piano for about 2 hours a day (in sum), even if I'm learning a piece from a score, makes it easier to improvise - opens up possibilities for different rhythms and resolutions. 

Really important reminder that it’s the experience, the process, that is important, and not the  external achievement. So you (or your child) didn’t become a concert pianist—the experience of learning and practicing still changes the brain for the better.

It so happens that you can occupy a bright child for most of a very quiet morning by challenging her to use that five times in a row in a single coherent sentence, to which stumper the solution is all about the present distinction: He said that that that that that writer used should really have been a which.” Read more here.

Call it the “learning paradox”: the more you struggle and even fail while you’re trying to master new information, the better you’re likely to recall and apply that information later. The learning paradox is at the heart of “productive failure,” a phenomenon identified by Manu Kapur, a researcher at the Learning Sciences Lab at the [...]

Being an expert doesn't necessarily make you a good teacher

In small group, choose a machine to perform. Everyone in the group must have a role. Other groups get 3 guesses to figure out what machine is being performed by the other groups.

As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time using them for purposes other than for education.

A kōan ( /ˈkoʊ.ɑːn/; Chinese: 公案; pinyin: gōng'àn; Korean: 공안 (kong'an); Vietnamese: công án) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement, which is used in Zen-practice to provoke the "great doubt", and test a student's progress in Zen practice. Kōans and their study developed in China within the context of the open questions and answers of teaching sessions conducted by the Chinese Chán masters. The recorded encounter dialogues, and the koan collections which derived from this genre, mark a shift from solitary practice to interaction between master and student: The essence of enlightenment came to be identified with the interaction between masters and students. Whatever insight dhyana might bring, its verification was always interpersonal. In effect, enlightenment came to be understood not so much as an insight, but as a way of acting in the world with other people[2] This mutual enquiry of the meaning of the encounters of masters and students of the past gave students a role model: One looked at the enlightened activities of one's lineal forebears in order to understand one's own identity [...] taking the role of the participants and engaging in their dialogues instead[3][a]

William F. Hanks in Foreword to "Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation"

- Q: How might this apply to Higher Ed? A: Grad school is kind of like this! :)