Learning Research
If there is one piece of research all teachers should take notice of, it is the huge study by John Hattie on the impact of over 800 educational approaches on student achievement. If you really want to know what impacts student learning, this is a must.
Do you have a Fixed or a Growth Mindset? According to Dweck, your mindset has a big impact on success. This is true for both students and teachers. Dweck’s research points to the fact that intelligence is not fixed, and that it can be developed. Your mindset has a huge impact on this. Decades of research shows that a growth mindset leads to increased motivation and achievement.
Dweck talks about the ‘power of yet’. Instead of ‘I cannot do this’, I cannot do this YET!
Here is a great video with Carol Dweck: The Power of YET
This is an article on Growth Mindset from EdWeek: Growth Mindset
Another article from Forbes Magazine: Growth vs Fixed Mindset
In his book, Drive, Dan Pink talks about what actually motivates us to be successful. In Drive, Pink reveals the three elements of true motivation for students and teachers alike:
Autonomy - the desire to direct our own lives
Mastery - the urge to get better and better at something that matters
Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
Here is a link to Dan Pink’s TED Talk on The Puzzle of Motivation
Metacognition
Metacognition is simply the process of thinking about thinking. By teaching students to think about how they think, we give them strategies to think about how they learn best. Metacognition is the basis for Visible Thinking, Thinking Routines and Harvard Project Zero. All of these focus on strategies to think about our learning.
Perhaps the most important reason for developing metacognition is that it can improve the application of knowledge, skills, and character qualities in realms beyond the immediate context in which they were learned. This can result in the transfer of competencies across disciplines—important for students preparing for real-life situations
Charles Fadel
Here are helpful articles on: The Role of Metacognition in Learning
Metacognition, the gift that keeps giving.
Here is a short video Explaining Metacognition
Harvard Project Zero (HPZ)
Started over 50 years ago at The Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Project Zero (HPZ) has probably had the greatest influence on educational thinking and practice . If you are not familiar with HPZ, you really should be.
Making Thinking Visible, Visible Thinking Routines and even theories around Multiple Intelligences can all be traced back to HPZ. Indeed, many of our teachers already use Visible Thinking Routines in their classroom.
Click here for Harvard Project Zero resource site
Click here for a video explaining the work of Harvard Project Zero
Click here for HPZ site on Visible Thinking
Click here for lots of ideas for Visible Thinking Routines
To delve deeper, Ron Ritchart’s book , Making Thinking Visible, is a must
Empower
At ISB, we believe that students need to own their learning. They need to move away from compliance past engagement and onto empowerment. A good resource for learning about this is John Spencer and AJ Juliani's book Empower.
Here is a link to John Spencer's blog here.
Here is a link to the book on Amazon here.