The End of School as We Know It

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practices meet modern learners’ needs. In The End of School as We Know It, author Bruce Dixon challenges K–12 school administrators and leaders to let go of their assumptions about traditional schooling’s effectiveness and explore emerging, digitally rich methods. To better engage modern learners, educators need to hone new strategies before time runs out.

Readers will:

THE END OF SCHOOL AS WE KNOW IT

In our highly connected world, educators must re-examine how well school

• Explore modern learner exemplars • Discover what deeper learning means in a digitally rich curriculum • Evaluate the limitations of research on improving traditional schooling rather than discovering alternative schooling approaches • Study the elements necessary to build a change platform that can cultivate a modern learning environment • Consider alternative and emerging models of school that emphasize what modern learners need to know

solution-tree.com

BRUCE DIXON

Solutions Series: Solutions for Modern Learning engages K–12 educators in a powerful conversation about learning and schooling in the connected world. In a short, reader-friendly format, these books challenge traditional thinking about education and help to develop the modern contexts teachers and leaders need to effectively support digital learners.

Bruce Dixon


Copyright © 2016 by Solution Tree Press All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction of this book in whole or in part in any form. 555 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404 800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700 FAX: 812.336.7790 email: info@solution-tree.com solution-tree.com Printed in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15

1 2 3 4 5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015952659

Solution Tree Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO Edmund M. Ackerman, President Solution Tree Press President: Douglas M. Rife Senior Acquisitions Editor: Amy Rubenstein Editorial Director: Lesley Bolton Managing Production Editor: Caroline Weiss Senior Production Editor: Rachel Rosolina Proofreader: Elisabeth Abrams Text and Cover Designer: Rian Anderson Compositor: Laura Kagemann


Table of Contents About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction: What’s Going on Here? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Understanding the Role of School. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Finding a Way Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Chapter 1: Acknowledging the Transformation Mirage . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Access Myth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Consequences of Legacy Pedagogies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 The Art and Science of Science and Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Moving Forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Chapter 2: Clarifying Beliefs About Modern Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 The Essential Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 How Students Learn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 The Best Conditions for Student Learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Moving Forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Chapter 3: Creating New Pedagogies for Modern Learning . . . . . . 23 The Possibilities of Digital Richness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Defining Deeper Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 v


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T H E END O F S C H O O L A S W E K N O W I T Defining the Principles of Modern Learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

The Implications for the Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Moving Forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Chapter 4: Reimagining the Learning Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Legacy Practice and the Grammar of School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 The Building Blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 The Importance of Respecting Learners’ Talents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 The Structure of the School Schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Moving Forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Chapter 5: Leading Modern Learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 A Change Platform. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 School as It Could Be. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Moving Forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Epilogue: The Modern Learner’s Commencement Speech . . . . . . . 51 What Really Matters, and What Is Worth Doing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

References and Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53


About the Author Bruce Dixon works as a strategic advisor in the development of programs that assist governments, policymakers, and school leaders to make more effective use of technology across education. His insights have enabled education leaders around the world to better manage large-scale, one-toone personal technology deployments, ensuring outcomes that drive both school improvement and ultimately systemic transformation. Bruce is cofounder of the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation, and he has run workshops and strategic briefings in more than forty countries. As one of the developers of the original 21 Steps to 21st Century Learning program, Bruce is recognized as a pioneer and world leader in scaling change management in schools. He has received commendations from the Smithsonian Institution and the National School Boards Association for his work, and he has keynoted for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; and many international conferences. His background in software development and school leadership combined with several technology-related start-ups—both commercial and social—means he draws on a unique breadth of knowledge and experience in his advisory work. While his ability to build big-picture strategy is at the forefront of much of his work, he also allocates a deliberate amount of his time to sharing his thinking through his writing, keynotes, and workshops, which support his advocacy for bolder and more ambitious thinking around what universal access to technology now makes possible for students. Bruce is an education graduate from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia; was an education columnist with the Age newspaper; and has authored and coauthored several commissioned publications and white papers, including The Right to Learn: Identifying Precedents for Sustainable Change and A Policy Agenda for a 21st-Century Education. vii


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To learn more about Bruce’s work, visit www.modernlearners.com and www .brucedixon.net or follow @bruceadixon on Twitter. To book Bruce Dixon for professional development, contact pd@solution-tree .com.


Preface

By Will Richardson

In the 1960s and 1970s, Penguin published a series of what it called education specials, short books from a variety of authors such as Neil Postman, Ivan Illich, Herb Kohl, Paulo Freire, Jonathan Kozol, and others. All told, there were more than a dozen works, and they were primarily edgy, provocative essays meant to articulate an acute dissatisfaction with the function of schools at the time. The titles reflected that and included books such as The Underachieving School, Compulsory Mis-Education and the Community of Scholars, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Deschooling Society, and School Is Dead, to name a few. Obviously, the messages of these books were not subtle. Progressive by nature, the authors generally saw their schools as unequal, undemocratic, and controlling places of conformity and indoctrination. They argued, mostly to nonlistening ears, that traditional school narratives were leaving their learners disengaged and lacking in creativity and curiosity, and the systems and structures of schools were deepening instead of ameliorating the inequities in society. A number of the authors argued that universal schooling was a pipe dream from both economic and political perspectives, and schools, if they were to remain, needed to be rethought from the ground up. Reading many of these works now, it’s hard not to be struck by how precisely they describe many of the realities of today’s world. It’s inarguable that an education in the United States (and elsewhere) remains vastly unequal among socioeconomic groups and various races and ethnicities. The systems that drove schools years ago prevail and, in many cases, are less and less economically viable by the day. By and large, education is something still organized, controlled, and delivered by the institution; very little agency or autonomy is afforded to the learner over his or her own learning. Decades of reform efforts guided principally by politicians and businesspeople have failed to enact the types of widespread changes that those Penguin authors and many others felt were needed for schools to serve every learner equally and adequately in preparing him or her for the world that lies ahead. It’s the “world that lies ahead” that is the focus of this book, part of the Solutions for Modern Learning series. Let us say up front that we in no way assume that these books will match the intellectual heft of those writers in the Penguin series ix


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(though we hope to come close). However, we aspire to reignite or perhaps even start some important conversations about change in schools, given the continuing longstanding challenges from decades past as well as the modern contexts of a highly networked, technology-packed, fast-changing world whose future looks less predictable by the minute. Changes in technology since the early 1990s, and specifically, the Internet, have had an enormous impact on how we communicate, create, and most importantly, learn. Nowhere have those effects been felt more acutely than with our learners, most of whom have never known a world without the Internet. In almost all areas of life, in almost every institution and society, the effects of ubiquitously connected technologies we now carry with us in our backpacks and back pockets have been profound, creating amazing opportunities and complex challenges, both of which have been hard to foresee. In no uncertain terms, the world has changed and continues to change quickly and drastically. Yet, education has remained fairly steadfast, pushing potentially transformative learning devices and programs to the edges, never allowing them to penetrate to the core of learning in schools. Learning in schools looks, sounds, and feels pretty much like it did in the 1970s, if not in the early 1900s. Here’s the problem: increasingly, for those who have the benefit of technology devices and access to the Internet, learning outside of school is more profound, relevant, and long lasting than learning inside the classroom. Connected learners of all ages have agency and autonomy that are stripped from them as they enter school. In a learning context, this is no longer the world that schools were built for, and in that light, it’s a pretty good bet that a fundamental redefinition of school is imminent. While some would like to see schools done away with completely, we believe schools can play a crucially important role in the lives of our youth, the fabric of our communities, and the functioning of our nations. But moving forward, we believe schools can only play these roles if we fully understand and embrace the new contexts that the modern world offers for learning and education. This is not just about equal access to technology and the Internet, although that’s a good start. This is about seeing our purpose and our practice through a different lens that understands the new literacies, skills, and dispositions that students need to flourish in a networked world. Our hope is that the books in the Solutions for Modern Learning series make that lens clearer and more widespread.


Acknowledging the Transformation Mirage If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow. —John Dewey The desire for school change is not new. The conversation around school transformation has been with us since the early 1900s, yet it has rarely been realized. Much of the reform talk across the United States since the turn of the 21st century has too often been focused solely on improving schools rather than seeking new models, and too often, any vision of genuine transformation has been nothing but a distant mirage. Progressive thinkers have inspired great debates about the purpose and form of schools for the better part of a century, yet their ideas failed to gain scale or have an impact at any systemic level. The question is, why? While there are remnants of such energy in clusters of schools—such as the Democratic Schools—around the world (www.educationrevolution.org), it is interesting to reflect on why they haven’t become more mainstream or at least more common. If you look back over the initiatives that have sought change in our schools, there has been a consistent but naïve belief in the power and intrinsic worth of a good idea whose time has come. While such naïveté about the nature of change can be explained by a passionate trust in the goodness and virtue of an idea, its continued repetition cannot. Many education reformers have had confidence that the moral purpose of an idea would bring about the advocated changes. Progressives like John Dewey, John Holt, and their contemporaries were, for the most part, driven by an education philosophy that they felt was compelling and irrefutable. In fact, their “brand,”

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

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By itself, dividing a classroom into interest areas does not constitute open education; creating large open spaces does not constitute open education; individualizing instruction does not constitute open education. . . . For the open classroom . . . is not a model or set of techniques; it is an approach to teaching and learning. The artifacts of the open classroom . . . are not ends in themselves but rather means to other ends. (p. 297)

The ultimate outcome ended up being open spaces for learning without any real shift in pedagogy, let alone anything approaching transformation (Cuban, 2004). For all the logic of the powerful philosophies of those visionaries, many people dismissed their motivation as ideological (Cuban, 2004) or of limited benefit to all but a marginalized group of students, be they overindulged, underachieving, or dropout students from the mainstream schooling system. Adding to this, there was a consistent lack of any clear shared vision that was fully understood, agreed on, or easily articulated. Time after time, the transformation mirage on the horizon is never realized in any substantive or meaningful way. Even so, educators continue to develop countless variations on the traditional model, loosely described as progressive schools. These schools have emerged across many countries, most notably the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and several Nordic countries, often as familyor community-owned schools. Few, however, have the energy, commitment, or strategic intent required to be sustainable. Most notable is the lack of attention to the fundamental development of new pedagogies aligned with the philosophical vision. Any real shift in practice is often limited or, at the extreme, absent.

Š 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

broadly described as child-centered learning, gained significant momentum, especially during the 1970s. But child-centered learning is one of those phrases that everyone interprets differently. While some believe it is about learner autonomy and students constructing meaning for themselves, others assume it means anarchy and a lack of significant adult direction. The absence of a clear definition led to vague and uncertain interpretations of exactly what a child-centered school should look like, let alone what the pedagogical implications would be. This inconsistency created enormous variability in how schools implemented progressive education principles. Ultimately, parents were too often unsure of the benefits of opting out of traditional schooling. The idealists and ideologues of the open-classroom movement were similarly naĂŻve as they sought a shift away from the didactic, teacher-directed classroom to a more open and democratic learning environment (similar to what the earlier progressives advocated for). The movement was, in some ways, a victim of its own success. As the appeal of the open-plan brand grew rapidly, the understanding of its foundational philosophy grew inversely until it became trivialized to teaching without walls. As Charles Silberman (1973) writes,


Ack nowledging the Tr ans for mation Mir age

The Access Myth The latest inspiration to seek new school models has been driven, in part, by the advent of personal computing and its potential uses for learning. Many of these uses align with the thinking of progressive educators, only this time the possibilities seem unlimited; this time it is about technology, not walls. Unfortunately, by assuming the technology itself will drive transformation, the inevitable result is— again—simply a shift from traditional practice with pen and paper, to traditional practice with computers. Same pedagogy, different medium. Up until the 21st century, the use of computers in schools was marked by exceptionally low expectations for what digital richness could make possible. Those expectations reflected a mindset of looking at computer use through traditional “school-colored spectacles” (Papert, 1997a). As with anything else, the expectations we have for what technology makes possible directly relate to the context in which we live and work. While this new view of technology is now evident in almost every aspect of our lives, from entertainment and communication to banking and financial management, to be effective or transformational in any way, it constantly requires us to reconceptualize the way we do things. One example is how we have listened to music over the years. Reimagining music as a digital medium rather than a physical one and then, in less than a decade, reimagining the digital medium as something you use rather than own took many visionaries and has revolutionized the entire music industry. So why should we think a high school mathematics teacher can intuitively reimagine how access to digital tools will enable her students to develop a deeper understanding of complex mathematical concepts? The reality is that as educators and school leaders become more aware of the digital context, their first reactions are to simply fit this richness into the version of schooling they already know and are most familiar with. Ironically, what school leaders too often missed in the past were the broader affordances of access the web gave students. You cannot give a learner true agency when his or her access is limited to a couple of hours per week or an occasional, scheduled visit to a computer, be it in a lab or on wheels. Access to a digitally rich learning environment free from arbitrary limitations, such as scheduled visits to

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Much as we may smile, or even cry, at the irony of progressive principles yielding traditional classroom practices, it has happened too often for us not to realize there is more to genuine transformation than great intentions or attractive brands. Removing walls was never going to be transformational without a serious commitment to an accompanying shift in practice. And with the imperative of the significant technological shift schools are now facing, that commitment is even more necessary.

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The Consequences of Legacy Pedagogies The cost of ignoring the impact of legacy pedagogy is severe. It’s not just about being better or improving existing practice; more critically, it’s about exploring new contemporary ideas about how we engage our young people in learning. Every year in the United States alone, 1.2 million students drop out of schools; that’s one student dropping out every twenty-six seconds (Miller, 2011). Michael Norman (2003) asks, “Do we really expect all youngsters to enjoy the narrow-gauge standardised outcomes we cherish?” Rather than see the significant numbers of students who are dropping out of schools as the problem, we should realize that they are actually highlighting a solution: these students are, in fact, the canary in the education coal mine. They are telling us something we can no longer ignore: the air they are breathing in their schools is not letting them live. It is not providing them with the essentials for their livelihood, and it’s way past time to take notice. What we do not hear, however, are the voices of those who stay in school and are simply compliant or those who’ve gone on to succeed not because of their schooling but in spite of it. Then, of course, there are even more who have carried on in good faith within the traditional education system only to find after

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

a computer lab, allows a teacher to better understand just how modern learners might engage in the inspiration of scientific or historical discovery rather than simply learn about science or history. Interestingly, little to none of John Hattie’s (2009) meta-analysis of four thousand studies around computer use and student achievement challenges the validity of the computer-access model chosen by schools or how that choice impacts student outcomes. While impressive in scale, the research is rather narrow in scope. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the studies focus on evaluating the impact of computer use in classes where there had been little to no pedagogical shift leveraging the potential of the technology. It is just one example from the mountain of research around computer use in schools that seeks to better understand the traditional context rather than consider any alternative models. I feel there would have been more value in testing the basic assumptions that underpin that model itself, rather than assessing any outcomes. After all, emerging technologies demand new pedagogies, not legacy practice. Such highly structured, limited access compromises the opportunities that genuine access so readily provides; in general, computer-access models built around computer labs limit the time most students spend in front of a computer at school to less than an hour a week (Meredyth, Russell, Blackwood, Thomas, & Wise, 1999). It’s no wonder that both teachers and parents continue to have such limited expectations for what technology can make possible for learners.


Ack nowledging the Tr ans for mation Mir age

The Art and Science of Science and Art As much as pedagogy is about the science of teaching, it is equally about the art of teaching. It is about developing the ability to take the best knowledge about how students learn and apply it creatively to each student within his or her own context. For some teachers, there is still something a little mysterious about the word pedagogy. Perhaps they think teaching is following a script that is predefined by some third party, like a textbook or workbook. That is probably a reasonable conception, given the schooling experience many people have had; however, such a view is also the result of the shallow manner in which teaching is often portrayed in the media. Either way, such an outdated view of education marginalizes both the profession of teaching and the inspiration of learning. More importantly, it complicates any analysis of existing practice, and in turn, makes reform or transformation conversations that much harder. Pedagogy is the language of the profession, because it defines the experience of teaching and learning. Yes, teaching is an art and a science, yet so few teachers seem to celebrate the scope and opportunity it offers to everyone involved. There’s a boldness, almost a brashness, that balances the intersection of art and science; in the hands of the best in the profession, it is this balance that defines the learning experiences that many students never forget. This balance is also far more complex than many wish to acknowledge, because in its purest form, such an intersection requires such subtlety and deep understanding that can be daunting. Our readiness to engage in repeated discussions about content and curriculum rather than pedagogy belies the central and critical role pedagogy plays in what and how a student learns. Talking about content and curriculum is easy, timeconsuming, and pleasingly controversial because the conversation feigns complexity

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

graduation that school has failed to provide them with any serious employment opportunities. The current system is simply not working for large numbers of our students globally. In Europe alone, we know that those who have been failed by school number in the many millions. In 2013, college graduates in Europe expected to submit as many as sixty applications before landing their first job (Sedghi, 2013). In 2014, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that “rising joblessness among new university graduates in China and India is creating an army of educated unemployed that some fear could destabilise these huge economies” (Sharma, 2014). While all of this has been an emerging phenomenon over many years, it is now imperative that we rethink our priorities and policies around the structure of schooling for our modern learners so that it is more relevant, rigorous, and challenging.

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Moving Forward The landscape has changed dramatically. There is now a digital explosion that not only provides rapidly increasing numbers of students with ubiquitous access to technology but also—and even more profoundly—impacts every aspect of their daily lives. Our students are growing up in a world that is dramatically different from the one our schools were created for. Schools must catch up, or the costs and consequences will grow. As technology has become more pervasive, educators are finally moving from thinking of technology as a means of doing things differently to a means of doing different things. Finally, we are starting to see schools respond by creating learning environments that reflect that new digital reality. One of the best examples of this is the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in Philadelphia. From the outside, SLA’s science classes look similar to those in other schools. But what’s happening inside those classrooms is decidedly different. During a visit to the school, I heard a collective scream from the back of the room where ten students were tightly clustered around a deep sink. When I asked the science teacher, Matt VanKouwenberg, what the outburst was about, he described it as “a breakthrough moment” in his students’ attempt to manufacture graphene. But, as it turned out, the making of graphene was only a small part of the work. VanKouwenberg explained that as a part of his class’s major inquiry project for the year, his students had been communicating with a team of students in Venezuela who were looking for a way to more efficiently store energy so their government could sell their surplus of hydro-generated energy to Brazil. His students came across this wonder material called graphene, which is derived from graphite, a potent conductor of electrical and thermal energy, extremely lightweight,

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

and importance. The true expertise of a great teacher is what he or she does with all of the content and curriculum. It inevitably becomes the focus for politicians, policymakers, and populist media personalities alike. The outcome is a new coat of paint with a great brand like National Curriculum or Common Core State Standards, while everything else pretty much stays the same. Such has been the reform cycle that we have seen for decades—even centuries; it has ultimately trivialized the critical role of school and its impact on the lifetime achievements of students. It has often resulted in a deprofessionalization of teaching; it becomes scripted, highly structured, and above all, not trusted. Can you imagine someone doing the same for the medical profession? Maybe it’s time to dig a little deeper. Maybe it’s time to think a lot more about the experiences our students have at school during their formative years. Maybe it’s about time to take pedagogy far more seriously.


Ack nowledging the Tr ans for mation Mir age

In other words, mistakes are opportunities to learn, not to fail. It has been an incredibly complex undertaking, and they have all thrived on it over the five months they have been working on it. The other great benefit, of course, is the connections the students have made with scientists and others in the industry in completing this work.

Here, the rationale for change is very different. Technology has allowed the learning experiences for students at SLA to be engaging, challenging, and relevant reflections of the world they are growing up in. This is the way science is meant to be learned. It’s a shift from hearing about the known to discovering the unknown. If we are serious about more students engaging in more science, this is how we do it. Unlimited open access to the necessary digital research tools makes this change possible. No longer are the imperatives for change driven by progressive education theories that struggle to build momentum in a sea of pedagogical inertia that is content with existing practices. This time, the rationale for change goes beyond the boundaries of school. This time, the changes impact every aspect of our lives, and they demand that schools pay attention.

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

chemically inert, and flexible with a large surface area. It’s also eco-friendly and sustainable. For instance, Elon Musk, the innovator behind Tesla cars, believes graphene could double the capacity of the battery for his Model S electric car. However, graphene manufacturing is still in the early stages, so the students decided they would see if they could figure out a way to make it. While that process fascinated me, I was even more intrigued by his response when I asked how he assessed his students’ work. “Our focus is on scientific discovery,” he said, “and that is, of course, a process that is about experimentation and iteration. So to be successful they must have a lot of failures—like any scientist. But we don’t count those; we do, however, closely scrutinize repeated failure” (M. VanKouwenberg, personal communication, January 23, 2015). He continued, saying,

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practices meet modern learners’ needs. In The End of School as We Know It, author Bruce Dixon challenges K–12 school administrators and leaders to let go of their assumptions about traditional schooling’s effectiveness and explore emerging, digitally rich methods. To better engage modern learners, educators need to hone new strategies before time runs out.

Readers will:

THE END OF SCHOOL AS WE KNOW IT

In our highly connected world, educators must re-examine how well school

• Explore modern learner exemplars • Discover what deeper learning means in a digitally rich curriculum • Evaluate the limitations of research on improving traditional schooling rather than discovering alternative schooling approaches • Study the elements necessary to build a change platform that can cultivate a modern learning environment • Consider alternative and emerging models of school that emphasize what modern learners need to know

solution-tree.com

BRUCE DIXON

Solutions Series: Solutions for Modern Learning engages K–12 educators in a powerful conversation about learning and schooling in the connected world. In a short, reader-friendly format, these books challenge traditional thinking about education and help to develop the modern contexts teachers and leaders need to effectively support digital learners.

Bruce Dixon


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