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Matt Scales — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:23:00 GMT

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COPPER Updates

Matt Scales — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:00:00 GMT

The CASTL Campus Program Leadership Clusters participated together from 2003 to 2006; COPPER was one of the 12 cluster groups. In 2006 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching began the Institutional Leadership Program to build on the work of the Leadership clusters to further develop and sustain the scholarship of teaching and learning on college campuses. The Institutional Leadership Program will run from 2006 to 2009. More details are available at: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/programs/sub.asp?key=21

Several members of the original COPPER group (Middlesex Community College, Northern Essex Community College, Pine Manor College, and Salem State College) will continue as one of the 12 Leadership themes in the Institutional Leadership Program and will be joined by two new members: Glendale Community College (CA), and Minnesota State University Mankato. We plan to continue using communities of practice to pool our educational resources to support the scholarship of teaching and learning.

The COPPER blog will assume new roles in the next few months as we begin unfolding different projects. Stay tuned!

Donna Duffy
Middlesex Community College

COPPER Snapshot

Matt Scales — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 17:08:15 GMT

Below is the link to the COPPER Snapshot produced with the KEEP Toolkit developed by the Knowledge Media Lab of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching:

COPPER Snapshot

Future of the COPPER Blog

Matt Scales — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:20:01 GMT

The first round of Carnegie cluster work has come to an end this summer. For many member colleges, a second three year period of SoTL cluster work will begin this coming fall. Many of the COPPER cluster colleges have been accepted into the second round, and several of us will continue to work together. We will also be welcoming new schools to our community.

At this point, aspects of the upcoming cluster structure, goals, and online tools used by the new community are still to be determined. Much of this work will take place during the fall semester. What role this site will play, if any, in the emerging cluster will be decided during this process. It may be that a new blog, wiki, or a combination of online tools will be created to both serve the communication needs of our community of colleges and also serve as a link to others interested in our work.

For now, this site and it’s over 200 pages of ideas, resources and conversations will remain available. You can continue to visit and make use of the blog, as well as add comments. Occasional entries, particularly related to existing themes, may be added from time to time. However, the practice of providing updates and new entries to the site on a regular basis over the last two plus years will be put on hold for the time being.

Many thanks to all those that have contributed their entries and comments to the COPPER Blog during its lifetime, or have taken the time to visit the site and view what we have to offer. We hope the time spent with us has been worthwhile. As Blog editor, the process has been a unique challenge and opportunity.

Don

Barbara Cambridge's Keynote Summary

Matt Scales — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:07:53 GMT

Thanks to Donna Duffy for providing the following summary of Barbara Cambridge's Keynote address at the co-sponsored Carnegie COPPER Cluster and New England Faculty Development Consortium summer SoTL conference, June 2, 2006.

We’re Teaching But are Students Learning?

A Colloquium on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Main Points from Keynote by Barbara Cambridge
President, International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning:

Cambridge invited conferees to consider four ways in which the scholarship of teaching and learning can affect the common good.

• Engaging students at any academic level in a changing society

• Enriching our disciplines by expanding the questions we ask

• Defining and accounting for higher education through increased knowledge about student learning

• Anticipating positively future non-human partners in knowledge making

Student engagement in a changing society

Student engagement has been positively linked to student learning; therefore, creating conditions that draw students into their own learning is essential. Two current conditions that affect engagement are the No Child Left Behind Act and increasing numbers of English Language Learners. With effects of NCLB including overuse of a single assessment instrument, the driving out of subjects other than reading and mathematics, and the narrowing of teacher choice, innovative practices and structures are necessary. The Internationals High Schools in NYC offer innovative structures and practices to counter NCLB and to affirm ELL students. The high schools include two-year institutes, community service requirements, and teaching of language and content by all teachers. Now school and college scholars need to study how the structural changes and novel practices affect learning outcomes.

Through research on its electronic portfolio project with incoming students, LaGuardia Community College has realized greater retention and more satisfaction among its first-year students who come from the largest number of ethnic backgrounds at any institution in the United States. In their eportfolios these students affirm their home cultures and their new college culture. Further scholarly work will delve into particular pedagogical and assessment practices that support this diverse academic community, affirming the wide variety of cultural roles they inhabit and helping them understand the influence of those roles on their learning.

Enrichment of disciplines through expanding ranges of questions asked

Asking questions about the how as well as the what of learning in a discipline enriches the knowledge base of the discipline. Curt Bennett and Jacqueline Dewar’s work in mathematics demonstrates the value of asking new questions about how students understand a good mathematical problem. Using multiple inquiry methods and a “proof-aloud” protocol for probing students’ thinking, Bennett and Dewar generated a mathematical knowledge expertise grid to trace developmentally learning in mathematics.

In addition to new questions about novice and developmental learning in a discipline, asking unexpected questions but using more traditional disciplinary-based methods to answer the questions also enriches disciplines. The book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything challenges individuals to ask unusual questions in order to understand the world in new ways. Questions that complicate our disciplines and demand alternative lenses enrich and expand our disciplines in a healthy way.

Accountability in higher education through increased knowledge about student learning

Defining and describing student learning outcomes for prospective students and their families, for legislators, for accreditors, and for other stakeholders of higher education benefits all these education stakeholders. The call for data is reasonable because higher education needs to be more transparent about its outcomes to counter calls like those of some Spelling Commission members for a single national test for college graduation.

Because not all student learning can be represented by quantitative data, however, we need to think of ways for quantitative and qualitative data to interact. An example of this possibility can be seen at Bowling Green University, whose summer 2005 study, controlled for background factors, indicated that students who used eportfolios had significantly higher grade point averages, credit hours earned, and retention rates than a matched set of students without electronic portfolios. Using results of research about reflection by campuses in the National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research, faculty at Bowling Green can now do scholarly work on the ways in which increased experience with reflection can account for increased engagement and learning presumably yielding higher grades. Putting such information in forms understandable to various audiences unites quantitative data and results of the scholarship of teaching and learning in productive ways.

Anticipation of non-human partners in knowledge making

Joel Garreau’s book Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds. Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human argues that by 2029 “Of the total computing power of the human race—all human brains plus all the technology that the species has created—more than 99 percent will be nonhuman.” Although we will be able to buy long-term memory and reasoning, “learning still requires time-consuming human experience and study. This is how humans spend most of their day. . . The largest profession is education” (102).

In Garreau’s scenarios about the future, human beings are still very central in the world. But, they are central because they can learn and can generate knowledge. In other words, knowing how human beings learn becomes even more central than it is today. Knowing how human beings learn in all realms of their existence is what keeps the human race going. Doing the scholarship of teaching and learning, then, is foundational to human’s very existence.

We want to do scholarship of teaching and learning that supports student learning in our classrooms and on our campuses now, but we also need to consider the conditions of our society now and in the future that mandate a broader view, a view that situates the scholarship of teaching and learning as central to addressing societal problems and to assuring a future that nourishes human being, their non-human partners, and the society of which they all will be a part.

Cast Your Pod to the Wind

Matt Scales — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 04:18:53 GMT

The following links are resources for the Massachusetts Colleges Online conference presentation Cast Your Pod to the Wind, June 13, 2006 at Middlesex Community College:

Horizon report: http://www.nmc.org/horizon/ (Emerging educational technologies)

Podomatic: http://www.podomatic.com/ (Easily create and post podcasts)

ActiveWorlds: http://www.activeworlds.com/edu/index.asp (virtual 3D worlds)

Muzzy Lane Software: http://www.muzzylane.com/ (educational gaming software)

Serious Game Summit: http://www.seriousgamessummit.com/ (conference on educational use of games)

Games, Learning & Society: http://www.glsconference.org/default.htm (conference on educational gaming)

Educational Arcade: http://www.educationarcade.org/ (MIT -University of Wisconsin joint project on educational gaming)

Best of Web 2.0 Software: http://web2.wsj2.com/the_best_web_20_software_of_2005.htm (review of Web 2.0 software)

The Scholarship of Engagement

Matt Scales — Tue, 30 May 2006 18:21:24 GMT

The following excerpt is from the Tomorrow's Professor listserv post on the Scholarship of Engagement from May 23. The article can be viewed and comments made on the new "Tomorrow's Professor Blog" sponsored by MIT.

"In sum, the scholarship or engagement, therefore, is a set of activities. At its core are four dimensions of scholarship-discovery, integration, application, and teaching. It becomes the scholarship of engagement through its active and interactive connection with people and places outside of the university in the activities of scholarship, setting goals, selecting means and methods, applying means and methods, reflecting on results, and dissemination of the results."

To read the post in its entirety click here

Open Forum

Matt Scales — Tue, 23 May 2006 12:00:00 GMT

There may be times when you have a question, comment, request, or thought that you wish to share with our group that does not appear to fit neatly under the theme of one of our current entries. For that reason, the "Open Forum" topic will be republished on a regular basis to function as a convenient location for those messages. Just use the "comments" option below to respond.

Sandra Seagal & David Horne on "Educational Question of the Year"

Matt Scales — Fri, 12 May 2006 11:08:00 GMT

"It is our belief that to be effective citizens of a global society, individuals need to have in the first place as deep an understanding of themselves and their specific ways of functioning as possible."

A brief context for the following remarks in response to the question: “What knowledge or skills will students need to be effective citizens of our world in the future?

Through 26 years of investigation involving more than 80,000 people from more than 25 cultures, we have discovered that hard-wired into everyone from birth onwards is a very specific pattern of mental-emotional-physical interplay which determines how each individual naturally “experiences experience,” thinks, learns, plans, communicates, relates to others, experiences stress and maintains well-being, as a whole system of functioning. Your specific pattern also determines your particular path of development. We have found that five such specific human systems (we term them “personality dynamics”) seem to predominate (numerically speaking) in the world, and that they exist regardless of age, race, culture and gender. In other words, these distinct “ways of being,” with their very different inherent processes, gifts and needs are present in every family, every classroom, every organization, wherever people come together, anywhere in the world.

We should add that that the mental, emotional and physical capacities that we identify are expanded along a continuum of development, ranging from the personal to the transpersonal. i.e. mental functioning can be expressed as simply thinking, or as formulating high vision; emotional functioning as simply having feelings, or as expressing deep compassion; physical functioning as doing anything, or as undertaking actions that express vision and compassion in service to humanity.

We term this new body of knowledge concerning human functioning and distinctions in human functioning: “Human Dynamics.” Programs based upon it are in use internationally, primarily in the fields of organizational development, teacher training, parenting, health care, and cross-cultural bridge building.

It is our belief that to be effective citizens of a global society, individuals need to have in the first place as deep an understanding of themselves and their specific ways of functioning as possible. By “functioning” we mean awareness of their individual inherent processes and needs with regard to such aspects of themselves as the ways in which they naturally learn, undertake tasks, communicate, relate to stress and, most importantly, develop - personally, interpersonally and transpersonally. Since these processes are inherently different for different people, effective citizens also need to be able to understand others and their particular processes and needs, in order to be able to make positive connections with others and foster harmonious and productive relationships. Especially in the context of a global society, the development of such awarenesses and skills constitutes at least as important an educational objective as the acquisition of knowledge in an academic discipline or skills in a profession or craft.

Moreover, in times of rapid change and increasing complexity, the most reliable and sustaining asset one can have is a strong sense of self, not in the sense of blind self-confidence, but in having a deep understanding of the “instrument” one has to use in life. It is also reassuring to know that one has insights that help make sense of others’ behavior, and tools and practices available to help maintain the health and well-being of the instrument and achieve one’s personal, interpersonal and transpersonal potential.

A related issue that we suggest needs to be recognized and addressed is: “How does the technological revolution impact the human system?”

Human Dynamics has identified 3 frequencies (or 3 principles) as the elemental threads from which the complexity of human functioning is woven. We have identified these frequencies as being related respectively to mental, emotional, and physical functions.

• The mental functioning in people is on a high, fast frequency.
• The emotional functioning is in a middle range.
• The physical functioning of people is, by comparison, on a much slower frequency.

From our experience the fast mental function is probably the most able to accommodate the speed at which new information is being offered and change is taking place. The emotional function will have varied responses- from frustration to elation, and everything in between. However, the physical function is likely to be in great trouble because it operates, as we have mentioned, at a slower rate.

If the physical body is stressed, the mental and emotional systems will also become stressed. The end results can range from less then optimal functioning as a whole system, to complete breakdown. Since the speed and complexity of outer events and incoming information are unlikely to change, we as educators need to provide training that builds inner capacities to handle them. We need to provide balancing practices that become part of the everyday educational curriculum.

For example, each day can begin quietly with a meditative exercise, relaxation, self-reflection or listening to peaceful music. This quiet activity can be repeated at other natural break times, such as after lunch or at the end of the day. Incorporating such practices has now become common in Swedish schools, where over 20,000 teachers have now received Human Dynamics training. Some schools in Singapore, where we are now conducting training, are now introducing similar practices into their classrooms. Such practices not only contribute to the overall development and inner stability of students, they also increase the individual’s availability and capacity for learning. At one exceptional school in China, which we recently visited, the students are given a ten minute break outdoors every forty minutes, during which they engage in some form of organized physical activity. This may not promote inner reflection, but it does provide relief and exercise for the body, re-vitalizes the brain and allows a space in which new learning can be assimilated.

In short, we believe that educational practice should be based on informed recognition and accommodation of the diversity of human functioning, and have as its goal facilitation of the development of each individual as a whole being- mentally, emotionally, physically; personally, inter-personally and transpersonally.

Sandra Seagal is founder and president of Human Dynamics International and executive director of the Human Dynamics foundation. David Horne is a partner in Human Dynamics International and co-director of Human Dynamics Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to educational and scientific research. They are co-authors of Human Dynamics: A New Framework for Understanding People and Realizing the Potential in Our Organizations (Pegasus Communications, 1997)

June SoTL Conference

Matt Scales — Thu, 04 May 2006 18:57:39 GMT

We’re Teaching But Are Students Learning?
A Colloquium on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

A reminder that the Middlesex Community College Carnegie COPPER Cluster and the New England Faculty Development Consortium will be co-sponsoring a joint conference on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning to be held in Lowell, Massachusetts on June 2, 2006. Barbara Cambridge, President of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning will be the featured keynote speaker.

General registration for the conference is still ongoing. For further information, you can follow the NEFDC link to the “Spring Conference”.

http://www.nefdc.org/events.htm

Note: Information on the NEFDC fall conference "Improving Student Learning through Assessment and Evaluation" is also available on the above linked site.

Math & Quantitative Skills Feedback Request

Matt Scales — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:04:54 GMT

Professor Jim Sullivan (Developmental Math and SoTL Scholar) from Northern Essex Community College would like to hear from faculty in any discipline about the following:

Please list the math/quantitative abilities you would like your students to have upon entering the courses you teach.

It would be helpful to write the name of the course and then a bullet list of the abilities, perhaps even an example if you have the time.

Responses can be sent directly to Jim at jsullivan@necc.mass.edu

Quotes of the Week 7: On Diversity

Matt Scales — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:48:46 GMT

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place."
- Margaret Mead

"But diversity could just as well represent an opportunity as a problem. Difference is the wellspring of innovation. People who see the world differently have fresh ideas and see new possibilities."
- Peter Senge

"In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival."
- Rene Dubos

"For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us."
- Donald Williams

“We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.”
- Maya Angelou

" If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity."
- John F. Kennedy

In Praise of Slowness - Links and Resources

Matt Scales — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 16:34:40 GMT

“I am a possibilist. I believe that humanity is master of its own fate... Before we can change direction, we have to question many of the assumptions underlying our current philosophy. Assumptions like bigger is better; you can't stop progress; no speed is too fast; globalization is good. Then we have to replace them with some different assumptions: small is beautiful; roots and traditions are worth preserving; variety is the spice of life; the only work worth doing is meaningful work; biodiversity is the necessary pre-condition for human survival.”
- Robert Bateman

The following list of links and resources have been compiled for the Professional Day session "In Praise of Slowness: Finding a Balance between Work and Life while Teaching in a Lower Gear" to be presented at Middlesex Community College on April 7, 2006. Participants in the session, as well as visitors to the blog are welcome to make use of these resources and to use the comments link following this entry to discuss any of the issues raised. The presentation and the posted resources are an outgrowth of the ongoing COPPER blog theme of "doing too much."

Links:

Teaching in a lower gear:
http://www.nea.org/teachexperience/ifc051101.html

Maurice Holt's initial article that is credited with starting the "slow teaching movement" http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0212hol.htm

Another article by Holt which I think gets to the heart of this movement more directly than the previous one:
http://www.lean-service.co.uk/6-28.asp

Copper Blog discussion of the topic Doing too Much:
http://middlesex.blogs.com/copper/2004/10/best_of_the_blo.html

Copper Blog entries on the topic of Doing too Much:
http://middlesex.blogs.com/copper/doing_too_much/index.html

Readings (The resources below have received a number of positive reviews and are related to the theme of life balance, but I cannot personally vouch for them with the exception of the first title). More titles may be added as they come to our attention in the future:

In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honore (HarperCollins, 2004)

American Mania: When More is not Enough by Peter Whybrow (W.W. Norton & Co., 2005)

Creative Time Management for the New Millennium by Jan Yager (Hannacroix Creek Books, 1999)

Downshifting by John Drake (Berett-Koehler, 2000)

Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America by John de Graaf, Editor (Berett-Koehler, 2003)

Take Back Your Time: How to Regain Control of Work, Information and Technology by Jan Jasper (St. Martins, 1999)

The Overworked American by Juliet Schor (HarperCollins, 1991)

Joel Fuhrman on "Educational Question of the Year"

Matt Scales — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:56:36 GMT

"We graduate from high school, college, even graduate and professional schools and we never learn about the most important knowledge we need to be in control of our health destiny."
-Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

In an earlier response to our "Educational Question of the Year," Roger Shank cited knowledge of "basic medicine and health issues" as important information that should be provided to students as a part of their education. Joel Fuhrman takes this suggestion further in his response to our question by detailing the health crisis we face in this country fueled by the lack of sound nutritional knowledge and practice. He challenges parents as well as our educational system to provide students with the nutritional knowledge necessary to live healthy, productive lives.

Disease-Proof Your Family

While genetics play a role in the expression of many diseases, and we all have genetic weaknesses and predispositions, for the vast majority of diseases that occur in the modern world, nutrition, exercise and environment play a much larger role than genetics. For example, those living in rural China prior to 1980, have less than two percent heart disease risk and less than two percent risk of developing *** cancer, but when they move to America their children have the same dismal risks as other Americans. About fifty percent of Americans die of heart attacks and strokes and about 18 percent of women die of *** cancer. When we abuse our bodies many different problems arise and what happens to you then may be influenced by your genetics.

Heart disease is a recent phenomenon in the history of mankind. By 1916 it was already hypothesized by the well-known French scientist, C.D. de Langen that overeating and a diet rich in animal-fats appeared to be a factor in the populations of those European countries experiencing a rise in heart attacks. We cannot consider heart disease to be primarily genetic, because it did not occur much before the last hundred years and pockets of populations inhabiting the world today have no heart disease. By the 1950’s scientific investigations were able to explain population differences in heart disease rates by differences in the consumption of saturated fat (the most important determinant of serum cholesterol) and the inverse association with consumption of fresh produce. The less saturated fat and the more fresh produce consumed the less heart disease that occurs.

Over the last 50 years, this causal relationship between diet and heart disease has been observed and documented by thousands of scientific studies. The reality is that heart disease, the leading cause of death in the modern world, as well as the other leading causes of death, (various cancers and strokes) are created by our modern diet. Very few people have genetics so favorable that they can eat anything without concern.

You cannot escape from the biological law of cause and effect. Food choices, especially food choices early in life are the primary cause of disease and premature death. Health predictably results from healthy living. Inferior childhood nutrition has led to a nation with high levels of chronic illnesses, and out of control health care costs.

Americans eat about 40 percent of calories from animal products, such as meat, eggs and dairy.

Animal products contain no antioxidants, bioflavonoids, carotenoids, folate, vitamin C, vitamin K or those thousands of phytochemicals that are essential for cellular normalcy and prevent DNA damage.

Americans eat about 50 percent of calories from processed foods such as oil, sugar, and white flour products.

Processed foods contain almost no antioxidants, bioflavonoids, carotenoids, folate, vitamin C, vitamin K or those thousands of phytochemicals that are essential for cellular normalcy and prevent DNA damage.

To make matters worse, most of the animal products eaten by children such as butter, cheese and milk are exceptionally high in saturated fat. Saturated fat consumption correlates with cancer incidence worldwide. It also raises cholesterol and causes heart disease.

Keep in mind that it is the type of fat, not the amount of fat, that is linked to higher heart attack rates and cancer. Both epidemiologic studies and clinical trials have implicated saturated fats and trans fats as the villains for humans. They promote both heart attack and cancer.

The nutrition committee of the American Heart Association has declared, there is overwhelming evidence that reduction in saturated fat, dietary cholesterol and weight offer the most effective dietary strategies for reducing total cholesterol, LDL levels and cardiovascular risk. There is no biological requirement for saturated fat.

In fact, populations with diets with little or no saturated fat have little or no heart disease. The development of heart disease begins in childhood. Not only do unhealthy childhood diets high in saturated fat and low in the protective micronutrients found in unprocessed plant foods accelerate heart disease, but they promote the aging process, and create a cellular environment favorable for the development of cancer.

To add insult to injury, much of the processed foods children eat are rich in trans fat, a man-made fat that is also linked to cancer and heart disease. We could not have designed a cancer-causing environment more effectively if we scientifically planned it. We feed our children a diet high in saturated fat, add lots of processed foods with those dangerous (man-made) trans fats, and combine it with an insufficient intake of unrefined plant foods to guarantee sufficient phytochemical deprivation and presto, we have created a nation rich in autoimmune illnesses, allergies, obesity, diabetes and finally heart disease and cancer.

As I reported extensively at diseaseproof.com and in my book Disease-Proof Your Child (St. Martin’s 2005), there is much confusion about the role diet plays in preventing cancer. The reason why some studies performed on adults were not conclusive is that the changes made are not substantial enough and the populations investigated are past the age where dietary improvements can cause dramatic benefits. Childhood diets are the chief cause of adult cancers, not adult diets. When we are growing the cells are more sensitive to the damaging effects of poor nutrition.

We graduate from high school, college, even graduate and professional schools and we never learn about the most important knowledge we need to be in control of our health destiny. We live in a society that believes that we protect our health with access to medical care and drugs; it doesn’t work. We can win the war on cancer and heart disease, not with more money put into medical interventions and drugs, but by unleashing the big artillery found in our kitchens; berries, green vegetables, beans and seeds to name a few. The science is important and motivating because we are eating ourselves into a tremendous amount of needless and tragic diseases in this country and our cancer rates have increased unrelentingly each year for the last seventy years. But aside from all the convincing scientific data, It is just as important to show people how they can deal with their picky eaters, get their family to like the healthful foods at the family table and make healthy eating great tasting and fun. My experience has been that after gaining the knowledge, people can transition their family over to a disease-preventive lifestyle and enjoy the change.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is a family physician and author of Eat To Live and the newly released, Disease-Proof Your Child. (St Martin’s Press 2005). Further information is available at drfuhrman.com

Robert Evans on "Educational Question of the Year"

Matt Scales — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 15:39:56 GMT

Rob Evans initially declined our invitation to respond the "Educational Question of the Year" for the reasons stated below. However, in doing so, his reply contained a fair amount of food for thought, and with his kind permission that email response is reproduced below. Although his writing and consulting has primarily focused on the K-12 arena, many of his ideas are of interest to those of us in higher education. I found his book "The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation" to be a thought-provoking read.

Thanks for your inquiry, Don. I'm afraid I have no expertise to offer about what students will need in the future. I thought they could count votes in Florida 6 years ago. I thought major companies, when profitable, would not lay off people or abandon their pension plans. Moreover, I have to honestly say that I'm not drawn to the question, for two reasons. First, over my professional lifetime, the "experts" who have answered this kind of question, dating back to the Rand guys from the 60s (Kahn and company), have been consistently wrong. Second, it is one thing to speculate about what students will need in the future, and quite another to imagine that schools can manage whatever this would be, given when they are up against. In this regard, I would refer you to my recent book, "Family Matters: How Schools Can Cope with The Crisis in Childrearing," or to some of my recent articles on this topic (available at my web page—see below).

Best wishes,

Rob Evans

Robert Evans, Director of The Human Relations Service is a clinical and organizational psychologist, author and school consultant. Links to several of his articles on education can be found at http://robevans.org