What does the so-called “marshmallow” test really say about kids learning to delay gratification? What does research say about the teenage brain? How can reporters better describe the ways educators can teach children how to accept criticism and learn from mistakes, and why that matters?
Hear from notable researchers including Carol Dweck, Linda Darling-Hammond and Tyrone Howard on the latest research and education policy around motivation, and how it’s influencing efforts to boost both short-term academic achievement and the long-term well being of students.
The research is replete with insights on how to encourage deeper thinking, collaboration and risk-taking among students, particularly those who have struggled academically. Now, schools are implementing those ideas in innovative ways that raise provocative questions, including: Are grades in the initial weeks of a class an impediment to learning? Do group projects that last several months challenge students to learn more than a string of tests and quizzes? Can students who set their own terms for what to learn — with buy-in from educators — come out better prepared to collaborate, tackle complex tasks, and compete in the fast-changing workforce?
Join EWA Nov. 11 – 12 at Stanford University for an interactive and informative seminar to explore those questions and more. You’ll hear from scholars at the forefront of the field and their reasons for optimism and worry. You’ll learn from students and educators while visiting classrooms that are petri dishes for new approaches to fostering motivation, grit, and deeper learning. We’ll go beyond the jargon to get at the heart of a movement with plenty of fans and detractors. And you’ll leave with a wealth of new contacts, resources, and story ideas to pursue.
Why Motivation and Deeper Learning Matter
New Lens on Learning: The Hidden Value of Motivation, Grit and Engagement
How do you create a good student? How do schools find ways for children to take criticism well, respond to feedback, and learn from mistakes? How does a child’s motivation and sense of self factor into a culture of learning? While schools are finding answers to these questions, there is no shortcut to creating classroom practices — and embracing a “growth mindset” is no panacea. So how can schools adapt the concepts that research shows go a long way toward improving student learning?
How to Motivate Students — or Not
New Lens on Learning: The Hidden Value of Motivation, Grit and Engagement
Carol Dweck, a distinguished professor and the scholar most associated with the now-widespread concept of “growth mindset,” talks about new studies on the impact the idea has had in education. How should a student learn from failure? If you tell students that the brain can be trained, will they feel encouraged to put in additional effort? And is feeling motivated even enough — what interventions are necessary when a student tries her best but isn’t comprehending the material?
Can School Reform Produce Deeper Learning?
New Lens on Learning: The Hidden Value of Motivation, Grit and Engagement
With virtually everything online and a click away, what does it mean to be knowledgeable? Economists predict that many jobs — even those requiring a college degree — will soon be automated.
Get Schooled: Unlocking the Secrets of the Adolescent Brain
New Lens on Learning: The Hidden Value of Motivation, Grit and Engagement
Over the past decade research in neuroscience has provided an explosion of new knowledge and insights about the adolescent brain, shedding light on our understanding of teens’ complex neural state. Importantly, the field has focused on the development of neural circuits that underpin social, emotional, and motivational learning and how these systems change at the onset of puberty. These changes create not only vulnerabilities but also opportunities for learning.
Interventions in the Classroom: What Works, What Doesn’t — A Demonstration
New Lens on Learning: The Hidden Value of Motivation, Grit and Engagement
What does it take to get a kid to care about school? A wave of research is producing quick interventions that motivate students to learn, with hundreds of schools adopting curricular tools designed to boost students’ growth mindsets. How do young learners respond to these efforts to reshape their views about themselves in the context of school? How can educators employ these tricks while teaching core subjects like math or English?
Student Culture and Learning: What’s the Connection?
New Lens on Learning: The Hidden Value of Motivation, Grit and Engagement
How do the social backgrounds of students influence their time at school? Can teaching that’s culturally relevant for the nation’s growing number of non-white students address the achievement gap? Tyrone Howard, who leads the Black Male Institute, will guide a discussion on these questions.
Rethinking the Adolescent Brain
For years, common experience and studies have prescribed that humans learn best in their earliest years of life – when the brain is developing at its fastest. Recently, though, research has suggested that the period of optimal learning extends well into adolescence.
Can Kicking Down Conventions Close the Achievement Gap?
At High Tech High School in San Diego, there are no bells that signal the start of class periods. There are no seven-period days, no mock standardized assessments and no lectures.
Deeper Learning, Smarter Testing
Since 2003, more information is produced every two days than the total sum of information produced between that year and the dawn of time, the CEO of Google said in 2010. Easily web-accessible facts, names and articles have grown exponentially, so much so that some say students can’t be taught like they were in the past, when rote memorization was the gold standard for learning and information wasn’t at almost everyone’s fingertips.
Growing Minds, Changing Math Classes
As the tune of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” plays out over the music video, the lyrics are a bit different:
“We will make mistakes…our method’s gonna break…not a piece of cake…we’re gonna shake it off, shake it off…”
It was in this video Stanford University Professor and author Jo Boaler says she was compelled to do something she didn’t want to do. “They made me rap,” she said. When her undergraduate students challenged whether she had a growth mindset about her rhyme skills, Boaler said to herself, “Oh my gosh. I’m gonna have to rap.”
When Grit Isn’t Enough
The first time I heard a preschooler explaining a classmate’s disruptive behavior, I was surprised at how adult her four-year-old voice sounded.
Her classmate “doesn’t know how to sit still and listen,” she said to me, while I sat at the snack table with them. He couldn’t learn because he couldn’t follow directions, she explained, as if she had recently completed a behavioral assessment on him.
Carol Dweck Explains ‘Growth Mindsets’
One of the most popular ideas in education today is also one that is often misunderstood. While Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset” has a emerged as a meme for motivation less than a decade after the publication of her book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” the Stanford psychology professor is worried about its misapplication.
To Improve Learning, More Researchers Say Students Should Feel Like They Belong in the Classroom
About a third of the students who started college in 2009 have since dropped out, joining the millions of young adults who never entered college in the first place.
Several years into a massive push by both the federal government and states to increase postsecondary graduation rates, education policymakers across the country are asking what else they can do to get more students to and through college.
Agenda: The Hidden Value of Motivation
New Lens on Learning: The Hidden Value of Motivation, Grit and Engagement
Wednesday, November 11
Breakfast
8:00–9:00 a.m.
Welcoming Remarks
9:00–9:30 a.m.
Keeping Great Principals
EWA Radio: Episode 44
In a year-long series for the Christian Science Monitor and The Hechinger Report, veteran education reporter and best-selling author Peg Tyre follows Krystal Hardy, a brand-new principal at a New Orleans charter school.
Spotlighting “Solutions” on the Education Beat
EWA Radio: Episode 43
“Solutions Journalism” aims to draw attention to credible responses to social problems. A brand-new resource can help education reporters take that approach with their own work on the beat.
Boosting Higher Ed Success for Low-Income Students
EWA Radio: Episode 42
Why do so few students from low-income families earn college degrees, even when they were academic standouts as high schoolers? And what can be done to help these students make a smoother transition to higher education?
Kavitha Cardoza tackles these questions in “Lower Income, Higher Ed”, a new documentary for WAMU Radio in Washington, D.C.
Teaching ‘Grit’: How Students, Schools Can Benefit
Over at EWA Radio, we explored the debate over how so-called noncognitive factors like “grit” influence student achievement, and how schools are rethinking approaches to classroom instruction as a result. (You can find the full episode here.) I thought this was a good opportunity to revisit a recent guest post by Daveen Rae Kurutz of the Beaver County Times, looking at our “deep dive” session into these issues at EWA’s recent National Seminar:
Grit? Motivation? Report Takes Stab at Defining Terms
Education writing is famous for its alphabet soup of acronyms and obscure terms, but it could just as well be faulted for trafficking buzzwords in search of clear definitions.
Ideas like grit, motivation, fitting in and learning from one’s mistakes, often summarized as noncognitive factors, are just some of the concepts floated more frequently these days. A new paper released this week seeks to provide clarity to this fast-growing discipline within the world of how students learn.
What Grit and Perseverance Could Look Like in the Classroom
EWA Radio: Episode 31
Nestled within the new-agey sounding concept of “noncognitive factors” are fairly concrete examples of what parents and educators should and shouldn’t do to prepare students for the rigors of college and careers. Gleaned from research into brain development and human behavior, a toolkit is emerging on how to make the best of the scholarship focused on qualities like grit, persistence and learning from mistakes.