Adapt or Decline?

Another article arguing that only the elite 20% of universities will be able to continue operating pretty much as they already are and that the rest of us will need to “adapt or decline.”

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/03/26/kamenetz

This is a pretty good summary of a lot of the concerns and ideas I've been hearing at conferences and from various higher education outlets over the last few years.

Review of "Drive"

Another enjoyable read, and for someone who hasn't looked much at "intrinsic" vs. "extrinsic" motivation in the past, the basic ideas were interesting and helpful. Of course, they also fit well with my religious beliefs (that we're created in the image of our Creator to be creative beings, so we're naturally more motivated by trying to create things than by just earning money). But as with much of this "social science for the masses" kind of writing, Pink tries to make too many pieces fit into this one particular box. When I discussed this book with some experts, therefore, they pretty much trashed large sections of the book. For me, however, it was helpful, especially in trying to think through such things as merit pay, providing autonomy to employees, and how to set up a compensation system. In short, it was worth my time. You can get the really condensed version in Pink's TEDS lecture, so I would encourage people to start there.

Review of "Superfreakonomics"

Maybe I've read too many of these kinds of books or maybe this one didn't have as much "edge" as some of the other "social science for laymen" monographs, but for all practical purposes, "Superfreakonomics" went down the hatch without much impact on the system. It's a month after I finished the book, for example, and all that I really recall is that I enjoyed the experience and that the main methodology appeared to be "randomized experiments." There were a few tidbits that stayed with me (like walking drunk being more dangerous per mile than driving drunk), but I'd have to dig it up again to see if there was anything else that I learned that might be worth hanging onto down the road.

More on Making Teachers Better

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?pagewanted=1&emc=eta1

Another article that emphasizes the ability of the teacher as the crucial element in improving education. A few quotes.

"When Doug Lemov conducted his own search for those magical ingredients, he noticed something about most successful teachers that he hadn’t expected to find: what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in disguise."

"Lemov's odyssey produced a 357-page treatise known among its hundreds of underground fans as Lemov’s Taxonomy. (The official title, attached to a book version being released in April, is “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.”)"

"Mathematicians need to understand a problem only for themselves; math teachers need both to know the math and to know how 30 different minds might understand (or misunderstand) it. Then they need to take each mind from not getting it to mastery. And they need to do this in 45 minutes or less. This was neither pure content knowledge nor what educators call pedagogical knowledge, a set of facts independent of subject matter, like Lemov’s techniques. It was a different animal altogether. Ball named it Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching, or M.K.T. . . . At the heart of M.K.T., she thought, was an ability to step outside of your own head. “Teaching depends on what other people think,” Ball told me, “not what you think.”

"Indeed, while Ball has proved that teachers with M.K.T. help students learn more, she has not yet been able to find the best way to teach it. And while Lemov has faith in his taxonomy because he chose his champions based on their students’ test scores, this is far from scientific proof. The best evidence Lemov has now is anecdotal."