Cognition, Thinking & Understanding

Learning Causality in a Complex World: Understandings of Consequence

What do children's interactions on the playground have to do with foreign policy? How does science understanding in middle school relate to environmental disasters in third world countries? The causal patterns that we detect and how we act upon them pervade every aspect of our lives. These skills will only become more important in the future as our world becomes more global and more interconnected. Yet we aren't very skilled at thinking about causality. Research shows that instead we rely on limiting default assumptions that can lead to poor choices in a complex world. What can we do about it? This book offers ways to become aware of these patterns and to reframe our thinking to become more effective learners and citizens of the world. Through examples and accessible explanations, it offers a causal curriculum to enable more effective learning so that we can put the power of better causal understanding to work for ourselves and the next generation, for today and tomorrow. ISBN: 978-1610488648

Kids Are the Experts! Making Learning Visible in Boston Public Schools

During the 2011-12 school year, 30 Boston Public School early childhood teachers and eight Head Start teachers took a course called Making Learning Visible: Kids are the Experts! The teachers explored how to help children recognize and communicate to others their areas of expertise through words, images, and demonstrations. This short film follows the process of making how-to books and other products in two classrooms at the Gardner Pilot Academy.

Learning that Matters: An Expanding Universe

What's worth teaching is perhaps the most central question of education. Choices about what's worth teaching made by educators, school boards, and governments fill up the schooldays of students. However, many educational leaders today feel that this fundamental question does not get enough attention. Too much effort goes toward doing the same job better and not enough toward rethinking what the job is. In this spirit, educational leaders in many independent schools and some public schools have introduced new themes, such as 21st century skills, digital technologies, interdisciplinary learning, world citizenship, global perspectives and global problems. While mastery of reading and mathematics remains a tremendously important agenda, the universe of what's deemed worth teaching by one or another advocate is expanding dramatically.

This white paper offers a broad but brief overview of trends in that expanding universe.

Documentation: Transforming our Perspectives

This 16-minute film by Melissa Rivard and Stephanie Cox Suarez for the Documentation Studio at Wheelock College features conversations with leaders from Reggio about the practice of documentation and its role in teaching and learning.

Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence...

From the back cover:

How can classrooms become places of intellectual stimulation where learning is viewed not in test scores but in the development of individuals who can think, plan, create, question, and engage independently as learners? Making Thinking Visible offers educators research-based solutions for creating just such cultures of thinking. This innovative book unravels the mysteries of thinking and its connection to understanding and engagement. It then takes readers inside diverse learning environments to show how thinking can be made visible at any grade level and across all subject areas through the use of effective questioning, listening, documentation, and facilitative structures called "Thinking routines". These routines, designed by researchers at Project Zero at Harvard, scaffold and support one's thinking. By applying these processes, thinking becomes visible as learners' ideas are expressed, discussed, and reflected upon. Making Thinking Visible includes a DVD of instructive video clips featuring Visible Thinking strategies being applied in a variety of classrooms. ISBN: 978-0470915516