Schools Reimagined

The pause in the traditional structure of schooling due to COVID-19 presents a unique opportunity for openness on many different levels: openness to the science of learning, openness to schoolwork centered around big ideas and authentic problems, openness to responsible assessment practices, and openness to a renewed ethic of social justice. In this book the authors make the case that now is a timely moment to reimagine schools and put the intellectual and social-emotional health of students and teachers at the center of the educational process. They offer practical classroom examples across disciplines and grade levels based on constructivist pedagogy, neuroscience research, psychological theory, and design thinking, as well as on their own experiences in observing and advancing instructional practice that fosters human development. Schools Reimagined will help administrators and teachers to structure their settings in ways that maximize the likelihood of meaningful and enduring student learning. Book Features: An approach for placing the well-being of students, teachers, and community at the center of schools.An accessible explanation of the sophisticated cognitive processes in which all people engage.Strategies and innovations that focus educators on student learning and the student agency that promotes it.Research-based approaches to schooling with specific examples of what they look like in action.Rolling summaries of the main points of each chapter throughout the text.

"The current pause in the traditional structure of schooling (due to the 2020 COVID pandemic) presents an opportunity for openness on many different levels: openness to the science of learning and what it tells us about the impact of constructivist education; openness to changes in instructional practice that align with this research: openness to new structures and ways of thinking about success; openness to greater teacher and student agency; and openness to schoolwork centered around big ideas, design theory and authentic problems to solve. The authors make the case that this is the perfect time to do this work and they exhibit how it can be accomplished. They further discuss the importance of schools making normative and structural shifts to enhance the likelihood that constructivism, a theory of learning, will be embraced, not impeded"--

"Grade reform and standards-based grading (SBG) is a hotly debated issue in education. As one high school administrator puts it, "Traditional letter grading is probably the biggest elephant in the room in regard to school reform. We start [grading] at a young age, and it becomes all about accumulating points, and it's not about the learning anymore." (Dan Kelley, principal of Smithfield High School, Rhode Island). When students can focus less on the score and more on the learning, great things happen. SBG is even more challenging in high school. In this book, the authors share their districts' successes moving to alternate assessment methods that promote learning rather than solely achievement. The proponents of grade reform highlight the arbitrary nature of grades, the undue stress experienced by some learners, and the potential interference in the process of learning. On the other hand, opponents reference the lack of accountability and a shift away from content knowledge that is perceived in many alternate assessment models. This book outlines how to remove the negative impacts of grades while still maintaining a high level of accountability. While the majority of other books in this space provide a rationale for why the shift is necessary, these authors provide the classroom teacher's perspective and concrete examples of how these approaches can be developed and applied. They provide sample assessments, student work samples, an accountability checklist, a sample of their rubrics, and a review of our collected data"--

A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere: this is the goal of the Khan Academy, a passion project that grew from an ex-engineer and hedge funder's online tutoring sessions with his niece, who was struggling with algebra, into a worldwide phenomenon. Today millions of students, parents, and teachers use the Khan Academy's free videos and software, which have expanded to encompass nearly every conceivable subject; and Academy techniques are being employed with exciting results in a growing number of classrooms around the globe. Like many innovators, Khan rethinks existing assumptions and imagines what education could be if freed from them. And his core idea-liberating teachers from lecturing and state-mandated calendars and opening up class time for truly human interaction-has become his life's passion. Schools seek his advice about connecting to students in a digital age, and people of all ages and backgrounds flock to the site to utilize this fresh approach to learning. In The One World Schoolhouse, Khan presents his radical vision for the future of education, as well as his own remarkable story, for the first time. In these pages, you will discover, among other things: How both students and teachers are being bound by a broken top-down model invented in Prussia two centuries ago Why technology will make classrooms more human and teachers more important How and why we can afford to pay educators the same as other professionals/DIV How we can bring creativity and true human interactivity back to learning/DIV Why we should be very optimistic about the future of learning. Parents and politicians routinely bemoan the state of our education system. Statistics suggest we've fallen behind the rest of the world in literacy, math, and sciences. With a shrewd reading of history, Khan explains how this crisis presented itself, and why a return to "mastery learning," abandoned in the twentieth century and ingeniously revived by tools like the Khan Academy, could offer the best opportunity to level the playing field, and to give all of our children a world-class education now. More than just a solution, The One World Schoolhouse serves as a call for free, universal, global education, and an explanation of how Khan's simple yet revolutionary thinking can help achieve this inspiring goal.

Dr. Ted Spear started his own independent school because he was impatient with what he believed to be the shortcomings of our contemporary system. He was frustrated by the structural faults in our current educational model that make it difficult-despite the best intentions of teachers and administrators-to offer students an education that is worthy of the name. He believes, for example, that our assessment system, which celebrates the "good" student and disenfranchises the "bad," decisively fails to discover and develop the unique strengths and interests of not only the disenfranchised but of all our students. The result, he says, is a colossal waste of the human spirit. Spear argues that the fundamental purpose of K-12 education is "to equip and inspire students to cultivate their humanity." His thought-provoking book is both a clarion calland a practical guidefor making schools more powerful, authentic, and worthwhile than they have ever been. Building on his experience creating and running an innovative and highly successful school, Spear describes the structural and operational changes that can make the dream of "authentic education" a reality. This is a must-read book for parents who want more powerful schools for their kids, and for educators who know something is not quite right with the current state of affairs but cannot quite put their finger on the problem. For parents, it lifts the veil on the challenges and possibilities of contemporary education and recruits them as essential allies in improving schools. For educators, it shows them the operational changes they can make that will untie their hands so they can follow their deepest intuitions about what they know to be most important about grade school education. It is a book that will change the way we think about schools.

This book features a diverse set of perspectives all focused towards questioning the role schools actually play in society and, more importantly, the role they could potentially play. Containing papers presented at the 1st International Conference on Reimagining Schooling which took place in Thessaloniki, Greece, June 2013, bringing together international and multi-disciplinary perspectives on the future of education and schools. Combines diverse specialties analyzing schools as organizations and questions the purpose of schools. The book explores the current purpose of schooling and debates what roles and values young people currently learn from schooling. It examines such issues as the impact of Neoliberalism, the pursuit of the socially just school, and imagining contemporary schools beyond their consumerist mentality. Tackling development in the growing economic and social crisis in Europe, and offering transformative analysis of the psychology and decision-making involved for innovating teaching, learning, socio-economic and policy contexts. In addition, the book shows different ways young people can be creatively involved in reimagining schooling. It also details both innovative and radical ideas that currently exist about school transformation such as building learning partnerships for all and creating synergies across formal and informal settings of learning. Raising important questions for the future of the relationship between teacher and pupil and positive and pro-active behavior. There is a growing realization that schools fail to accommodate diverse types of learning and that their purpose is not simply about education. Featuring academics and practitioners from many different disciplines, this book boldly questions the values that currently permeate school walls and suggests ways that schooling itself can be made better.

This book considers the diffusion and transfer of educational ideas through local and transcontinental networks within and across five socio-political spaces. The authors examine the social, political, and historical preconditions for the transfer of “new education” theory and practices in each period, place, and school, along with the networks of ideas and experts that supported this. The authors use historical methods to examine the schools and to pursue the story of the circulation of new ideas in education. In particular, chapters investigate how educational ideas develop within contexts, travel across boundaries, and are adapted in new contexts.

Taking risks is how humans learn. It is how humans have always learned. A person sees a problem, takes in the available information, and tries a solution. It is in that process - whether the goal is understanding a Shakespeare play, figuring out an algorithm, or writing a theory of history - that engaged learners make breakthroughs, be those breakthroughs individual, group, or societal. In this book, three experienced practitioners describe how to re-imagine teaching spaces - conventional schools - as learning spaces, spaces where risk is encouraged, celebrated, and actually taught in every area of endeavor: from how, where, or if to sit, to how to find the right pathway to learning. In bringing the stories of a central office Innovation director together with an elementary teacher and administrator and a veteran secondary teacher leader, Education Reimagined: A Space for Risk demonstrates how fundamental change is possible in any school