Willingham: Should teachers be so important?
My guest today is cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” By Daniel Willingham Teacher quality is the most important in-school factor that influences kids’ schooling. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. There are characteristics of a child (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity), characteristics of a family (e.g., income, education level), characteristics of a school (e.g., leadership quality, funding, teacher quality), and characteristics of a neighborhood (e.g., average income, crime rate) and any of these characteristics might be associated with how much a child learns. Within the group of school characteristics, the teacher is the most important, at least among the characteristics that we’ve thought to measure.
Top 10 teen books chosen -- by teens
Here are the top 10 books that thousands of teenagers picked as their favorites for 2010, released today as part of Teen Read Week. The celebration of reading by teenagers this week is an annual initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association that was started in 1998. Libraries around the world celebrate the week with events and programs aimed at encouraging teens to please for pleasure. Teens’ Top Ten is a list created by kids ages 12 to 18, who nominate and then vote on their favorite books of the previous year. More than 8,000 kids voted this year on the following.
