Individual Learning and Innovation Essential to Society’s Survival
Hal Whitehead is Dalhousie's pre-eminent whale researcher specializing in the study of the sperm whale. (Jennifer Modigliani)
It’s not always easy being different. But is it actually dangerous to be the same?
Dalhousie University biologist Hal Whitehead thinks so, and he’s got the data to back it up. His recent paper, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, argues that promoting individual learning and innovation over cultural conformity isn’t just valuable to a society’s success, it may be essential to its very survival.
“In any population, you should have a mixture of what we call ‘social learning,’ which is learning from others, and individual learning, which is figuring things out for yourself,” he explains. “We often fall back on social learning because it’s easier. Copying what someone else is doing or getting them to teach you is simpler than doing it yourself from scratch.
“The problem is that when everyone is learning from each other, they lose track of what’s going on in their surroundings. No one is paying attention to them.” (more…)
Lack of Good Health Care Curtails Academic Performance, Study Finds
Charles Basch, the Richard March Hoe Professor of Health Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
To close achievement gap, US must address major health risks for urban minority youth.
“Educationally relevant health disparities” are key drivers of the achievement gap, “but they are largely overlooked,” said Charles Basch, the Richard March Hoe Professor of Health Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
“Over the past several decades, a variety of strategies have been tried to help close the achievement gap – standards, accountability, NCLB, more rigorous teacher certification – and they’re all important, but they won’t have the desired effect unless students are ready and motivated to learn.”
Basch recently released a meta-study, “Healthier Students Are Better Learners,” which focuses on seven health risks that disproportionately impair the academic performance of urban minority youth.
At the College’s Cowin Conference Center on March 9, Basch presented his findings and then discussed them with respondents Matthew Yale, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan; and TC alumnus Howell Wechsler, Director of the Division of Adolescent School Health (DASH) for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The event, presented by TC’s Campaign for Educational Equity, was moderated by Jane Quinn, Assistant Executive Director for Community Schools for the Children’s Aid Society. (more…)
Small Classes Have Long-Term Benefit for All Students
Spyros Konstantopoulos, associate professor of education, says several consecutive years of small classes in early elementary school benefit students of all achievement levels. (Photo by Andy Henion)
Providing small classes for at least several consecutive grades starting in early elementary school gives students the best chance to succeed in later grades, according to groundbreaking new research from a Michigan State University scholar.
The research by Spyros Konstantopoulos, associate professor of education, is the first to examine the effects of class size over a sustained period and for all levels of students – from low- to high-achievers. The study appears in the American Journal of Education.
Konstantopoulos also is a member of a committee for the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences that will make official recommendations on class size to the states. He said the recommendations will mirror his research: that the best plan of attack is to provide small classes (13 to 17 students) for at least several years starting in kindergarten or first grade.
“For a long time states thought they could just do it in kindergarten or first grade for one year and get the benefits,” Konstantopoulos said. “I don’t believe that. I think you need at least a few years consecutively where all students, and especially low-achievers, receive the treatment, and then you see the benefits later.” (more…)
Study Finds Racial Segregation a Strong Factor in Learning Disparities
Emory University sociologist Dennis Condron.
Racial segregation in the schools is fueling the learning disparity between young black and white children, while out-of-school factors are more important to the growth of social class gaps, according to a study by Emory University sociologist Dennis Condron.
His findings were published in the October issue of the American Sociological Review.
Condron was perplexed by prior research showing that schools narrow the achievement gap among students of varying social classes while widening the gap between black and white students. To tease out possible reasons for this difference, he analyzed data from the Kindergarten Cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.
He found that between the fall and spring of first grade, black students’ reading and math skills fall almost two months behind those of white students. After controlling for other factors, the data suggested that segregation of schools was a primary driver of this early black-white learning disparity. In contrast, out-of-school factors explained the growth of social class gaps. (more…)
Students, Teachers Need To Be Transculturally Literate, Expert Says
To adequately prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s global economy, teacher education expert Mark Dressman favors “transcultural education,” which he defines as an experience that goes beyond the traditional rite-of-passage trip to western Europe. (Photo by L. Brian Stauffer)
The current generation of college students and teachers need to be as culturally fluent with people from different cultures as they are with their own, a soft skill that has become an essential part of life in the 21st century, a University of Illinois expert on teacher education says.
According to Mark Dressman, a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education at Illinois, the current group of college students will inherit a workplace where they will need to be prepared for “significant contact with the rest of the world.”
To adequately prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s global economy, Dressman favors “transcultural education,” which he defines as an experience that goes beyond the traditional rite-of-passage trip to western Europe. (more…)
Moving Toward a New Vision of Education
The goals of the study have been to draw up theoretical proposals to help to improve educational practices. (SINC)
Successfully introducing Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) into classrooms is one of the biggest challenges proposed by new educational plans. A research group from the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) has studied substituting the current way in which education is structured for a new one that takes full advantage of the potential of new technologies.
Little by little, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) have started to penetrate the educational sphere. A few years ago, the experts thought that the arrival of computers and the Internet in classrooms would have a drastic effect on the way that classes were given and received. However, “the studies carried out at compulsory education level were not able to show the transformation and improvement of learning in schools that had been promised as a result of incorporating technology into the classroom”, Asun Martínez, one of the authors involved in the UPV-EHU study, tells SINC. (more…)
Navigating a Sea of Change
by Eric McLuhan
(I was going through some old files today, pulling some background research for the first documentary film under development. I came across an article written by Eric McLuhan, Marshall McLuhan’s son and co-author. This was originally published in Visions magazine which I edited at the time (2000). The article has been offline for several years, but offers the typical McLuhan insights that always seem to turn out to be decades ahead of anyone else - something I learned while picking Eric’s brain as much as I could at the McLuhan Program, University of Toronto. Anyway, I’m posting it here as it is very relevant to changing paradigms, one key topic of the X-Journals. - B.H.)
Dr. Eric McLuhan (left)- son of Marshall McLuhan & interviewer Michael Tippett, Founder and CEO, NowPublic.
The measure of the success of a corporation used to be growth and revenue alone. Success had more money at the end and was bigger (and presumably better). However, in a period of rapid change, the emphasis shifts from growth to sustainability. The successful corporation now is the one that remains stable in a sea of change.
In business, this means that new kind of managers have to be brought on board – executives skilled in “change management.” (more…)
Learning Science Facts Doesn’t Boost Science Reasoning
A study of college freshmen in the United States and in China found that Chinese students know more science facts than their American counterparts — but both groups are nearly identical when it comes to their ability to do scientific reasoning.
Neither group is especially skilled at reasoning, however, and the study suggests that educators must go beyond teaching science facts if they hope to boost students’ reasoning ability. (more…)
Is Technology Producing a Decline in Critical Thinking and Analysis?
As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor and director of the Children’s Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.
Learners have changed as a result of their exposure to technology, says Greenfield, who analyzed more than 50 studies on learning and technology, including research on multi-tasking and the use of computers, the Internet and video games. Her research was published this month in the journal Science. (more…)
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