Why teachers should reconsider their beliefs about learning
Here is an examination of what teachers believe about students and learning and how those beliefs actually affect how they do their jobs. It was written by Alfie Kohn, author of 14 books on education, parenting, and human behavior, including, most recently, The Myth of the Spoiled Child and Schooling Beyond Measure, and is adapted from the Foreword to The Teacher You Want to Be, edited by Matt Glover and Ellin Oliver Keene (Heinemann, 2015). This essay appears on Kohn’s website.
By Alfie Kohn
Creativity — in education and in general — might be defined as the capacity to look at one thing and see something else. You observe a classroom, for example, in which students get to decide whether it’s really necessary to do school assignments at home, and what you see is a respect for kids that could extend to giving them responsibility for any number of other decisions that, like homework, are usually the sole prerogative of teachers.
Or you’re introduced to an approach to teaching math that has students actively constructing meaning around fundamental concepts, and what you see is a truth about learning no less relevant to the social and moral realm: Children need to make sense of ideas like fairness or honesty (rather than being exhorted to accept prepackaged virtues) exactly as they need to make sense of ideas like equivalence or place value (rather than just being taught procedures to practice and memorize).
Or you visit Reggio Emilia schools in Italy — a remarkable program designed for young children that led the influential early-childhood educator Lilian Katz on her first trip there to remark that she thought she had died and gone to heaven — and what you see are principles just as applicable to educating older students.
To think creatively about education is to draw on an array of overlapping progressive and humanistic principles. Consider, however, not only the principles themselves — for example, how to teach in a way that is more Why teachers should reconsider their beliefs about learning - The Washington Post:
