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BIRMINGHAM LEAAfro-Caribbean and Asian Achievement Groups
WE ARE ALL LEARNERS ...
BUT WE LEARN INDIFFERENT WAYSMartineau Centre, HarborneFebruary 10th 2005THIS LISTING INCLUDES SOME SLIDES THAT WERE IN-TENDED TO BE USED, BUT WERENT. A FEW MAY NOT BEIN EXACTLY THE ORDER THEY WERE SHOWN.
2005 The 21st Century Learning Initiative
For additional reference, please see the followingtwo articles, both available on the Initiatives web-site.
Adolescence; a critical Evolutionary Adaptation
When will we ever learn?
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Te 21st Century Learning Initiative
A1
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E403
Criticizing parents doesn't improve their ca-pacity to respond positively to their children
... I believe that the real source of many par-
enting difficulties is the separation of work
and home, of public and private, which has
had the result of isolating mothers in theirhomes without string networks of adult sup-
port.
Women face the artificial choice of devoting
themselves to their working lives, or to theirbabies, when the evidence is they want both.
Sue Gerhardt
"Why Love Matters:
How affection shapes the human brain"
2004
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B25
Research from the Kellogg Foundation, con-
ducted in the State of Michigan, into the
predictors of success at the age of 18
"[This] compared the relative influence that
family, community and other factors have on
student performance. Amazingly it con-
cluded that factors outside the school are four
times more important in determining a
student's success on standardized tests than
are factors within the school,"
"The most significant predictor was thequantity and quality of dialogue in the child's
home before the age of five."
Quoted at The White House Conference
on Early Childhood Development and Learning
April 1997
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B26
S Bowler, H Gintes and M Osborne in 'The Deter-
minants of Earnings: A Behavioral Approach",
published in The Journal of Economic Literature,
vol..XXXIX pp1137-76, December 2001
* Over 50% of variance in earning capacity of indi-
viduals cannot be accounted for by educational attain-
ment, cognitive ability, experience and other recog-
nized and measured variables
* In understanding wage differences, socio-economicbackground, years of schooling and standard IQ tests
are not as significant as motivational traits of industri-
ousness, delayed gratification, punctuality, persever-
ance, leadership and adaptability
* Parental education, income and occupation remain
significant predictors of the earning capacity of chil-dren; however, the association between parental back-
ground and earnings is not explained mainly by IQ or
years of schooling
* Economic returns to schooling (higher labor market
earnings for individuals) appears to be mediated
mainly through non-cognitive ability rather than cogni-tive ability
Note also Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Literacy" and
the marshmallow test.
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B5
By the time children reach the age of formal
schooling, they have forged elaborate learn-
ing skills and their minds are prodigiously
complex repositories of knowledge. The feel-ing that a parent has, on watching a young
child grow, that "my child is brilliant, quite
possibly even a genius, is entirely valid. Each
child is extraordinary. Nature has equipped
every child with learning capabilities that far
exceed anyone's ability to describe them.
Unfortunately, the education system - based
as it is on out-dated, incorrect, over simpli-
fied, psychological principles, all to often
collides catastrophically with children's natu-ral learning skills, teaches them to mistrust
and repress those skills, and moves countless
numbers of children through 15,000 hours of
systematic training in learning not to learn.
Sylvia FarnhamSchooling
1990
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B24
Tell me, and I forget;
show me, and I remember;let me do and I understand.
Chinese Proverb
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E140
Social Capital
This was first defined in 1916 by L.J.Hanifan inWest Virginia as
"those tangible substances [that] count for most in
the daily lives of people: namely good will, fel-
lowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among
the individuals and families who make up a social
unit ... The individual is helpless socially, if left to
himself ... If he comes into contact with his neigh-
bor, and they with other neighbors, there will be
an accumulation of social capital, which may im-
mediately satisfy his social needs and which may
bear a social , potentiality sufficient to the sub-
stantial improvement of Jiving conditions in thewhole community. The community as a whole
will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts,
while the individual will find in his associations
the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the
fellowship of his neighbors."
Quoted inBowling Aloneby Robert Putnam, 2001
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E60
Every 10 minutes of commuting time cuts all
forms of civic engagement by 10%
Why social capital matters
Research has begun to show how powerfully
social capital, or its absence, affects the well-
being of individuals, organizations, and nations.
Economic studies demonstrate that social capital
makes workers more productive, firms more com-petitive, and nations more prosperous. Psycho-
logical research indicates that abundant social
capital makes individuals less prone to depression
and more inclined to help others. Epidemiological
reports show that social capital decreases the rate
of suicide, colds, heart attacks, strokes, and
cancer, and improves individuals' ability to fightor recover from illnesses once they have struck.
Sociology studies suggest that social capital re-
duces crime, juvenile delinquency, teenage preg-
nancy, child abuse, welfare dependency, and drug
abuse, and increases student test scores and
graduation rates.
From Saguara Seminars:
Civic Engagement in America, 2001
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The work of Jordan Peterson and Alan Fiske (1999)
suggests four skill sets for human transactions
- Communal Sharing (the hunter/gatherer)
- Authority Ranking (relationship of inequal
ity)
- Equality Matching (scratch my back, and
Ill scratch yours)
- Market Pricing (bartering)
...(some) evidence that those four modes are mani-
fested in maturing children in the order they are pre-
sented, in a spontaneous, uncoached manner starting
roughly with three year olds for Communal Sharing
and proceeding to eight year olds for Market Pricing.
Driven
Lawrence & Nahria
2002
E392
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Te 21st Century Learning Initiative
A12
What was your most powerful learningexperience?
How did this shape the way you think
about your own learning?
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Te 21st Century Learning Initiative
A13
Learning and schooling are notsynonymous.
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Te 21st Century Learning Initiative
A14
"Learning ... that reflective activity which
enables the learner to draw upon previous ex-perience to understand and evaluate the pres-
ent, so as to shape future action and formu-
late new knowledge."
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A21
Evolutionary Intelligence
"Human beings, together with all their likes
and dislikes, their senses and sensibilities,
did not fall ready-made from the sky; nor
were they born with minds and bodies that
bare no imprints of the history of then- spe-
cies. Many of our abilities and susceptibili-ties are specific adaptations to ancient envi-
ronmental problems, rather than separate
manifestations of a general intelligence for
all Seasons."
John D. Barrow
The Artful Universe, 1996
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A22
Our bodies and minds are not of recent
origin. They are the direct consequence ofmillions of years of surviving in Africa and
adapting to the dramatic changes this conti-
nent has seen in the course of the last five
million years. Africa has shaped not only our
physical bodies, but the societies within
which we live. The way we interact today ata social and cultural level is in many ways the
result of organisational skills developed by
our hominid ancestors in Africa over millions
of years.
Cradle of Humankind
Brett Hilton-Barber and Lee R. Berger,
South Africa, 2002
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Infants weaned on T.V. cannot con-
centrate
Commenting on the research by Dr. Dimitri
Christakis of the Childrens Hospital in Seattle
on the impact of T.V. on young children, the
Guardian stated; Children under two should
not watch television because it increases therisk of them developing attention deficit disor-
ders. Quoting the Journal of Paediatrics,
Watching too much television increased the
childs likelihood of being unable to pay atten-
tion in school. For every hour of T.V. watched
daily by children at ages 1 to 3 the risk of atten-
tion problems at age 7 increases by nearly
10%
(current estimates in the US suggest that be-
tween 4 and 12% of youngsters suffer from
ADHD. At present three-year-olds in the US
watch an average of 3.6 hours of TV a day.)
Seattle Times 5th April 2004
The Guardian 6th April 2004
E368
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E198
Upside Down and Inside Out
A possible description of the assumption we
have inherited about systems of learning,
namely, that older students should be taken
more seriously than younger students and
that the only learning that really matters is
that which is formal. This presentation will
call for these assumptions to be reversed in
the light of modern understanding about how
humans learn.
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A25
Key Issue 1
Pregnancy and the Developing Brain
"There is no period of parenthood with a
more direct and formative effect on a child's
brain, than the nine months of pregnancy
leading to the birth of a full term baby. Themother's emotions affect the foetus, and so do
her general habits and the parent's physical
environment. (Probably) half of birth defects
are due to avoidable exposure to medicinal
drugs, recreational drugs, alcohol, tobacco
smoke, and toxic agents at work and at
home."
Marian Diamond
The Magic Trees of the Mind, 1998
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A26
Key Issue I
"We have unequivocal evidence that breast-
fed children are physically stronger than non-
breast-fed children, that they have greater
verbal, quantitative, and memory abilities as
pre-schoolers and significantly higher I.Q.
scores during their school years. This is duenot simply to healthy substances in the milk,
as many assume, but also to the early mother-
child relationship that breast-feeding im-
plies."
Karl Zinsmesiter,The American Enterprise, May/June 1998
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A27
Key Issue 1
Mechanisation? Big Brother?
"Almost three hundred American employers,
including Aetna, Eastman Kodak, Cigna and
Home Depot, now offer "Lactation Support
Rooms" where female employees can nowtake regular breaks to attach electric pumps
to their breasts in order to collect milk in
bottles for their infants in day care. Some
companies, aside from the 'pumping rooms',
have "lactation consultants" to help mothers
solve breast-feeding problems."
Original quotation in There's No Place Like Work
by Brian Robertson, and re-quoted in Nasty, Brutish
and Short, an article by Richard Lowry inNational
Review, May 2001
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Why Love Matters: How Affection
shapes a babys brain
Our earliest experiences are not simply laid
down as memories or influences, they are trans-
lated into precise physiological patters of re-sponse in the brain that then set the neurologi-
cal rules for how we deal with our feelings and
those of other people for the rest of our lives.
Its not nature or nurture, but both. How we are
treated as babies and toddlers determines the
way in which what were born with turns intowhat we are.
Sue Gerhardt 2004
E365
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E397
"Work is not just about getting paid. Indeed,
much work in our culture is not paid at all,
for exmple, raising children, cooking meals
... helping a neighbour who has undergone a
trauma ... The very word 'job' fits the Newto-
nian parts mentality. In a mechanical view of
the universe, a job is all one can hope for.'Job' denotes a discreet task, and one that is
not very joyful. Dr Johnson defined 'job' as:
'petty, piddling work; a piece of chance
work"
"In contrast, work is about a 'role' we play in
the unfolding drama of the universe. (The
word 'rolle' in old French comes from the roll
of parchment an actor reads from)."
Matthew Fox"The Reinvention of Work" 1995
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A41
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A37
Key Issue 1
Adolescence
Adolescence is currently seen as a "problem"
in Western Society; that excess of hormones
leaves the rapidly maturing child unaware of
its new physical strength, and confused as tohow to direct it. While modern parents and
teachers find adolescence disruptive, earlier
cultures directed this energy in ways that de-
veloped those skills on which the community
was dependent for its ongoing survival. In
doing so it also ensured that young peoplelearned, and practiced, what was seen as ap-
propriate social behavior.
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The New Adolescent
We need a new developmental perspective
on adolescence. AS puberty (a physical state)
occurs ever earlier, its no longer in synchroni-
sation with brain development (emotional and
intellectual states). Between childhood and
adolescence there is a stage of development
that Sigmund Freud called the latency
period, when boys and girls turned their backs
on each other and formed special attachments
with same-sex peers. It was a time when they
gathered physical and psychological strength to
explore the world, becoming confident learners
and confident socially ... marshalling their
forces to be able to go into puberty.
E389
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What we are seeing is a short-circuiting of the
latency period, when youngsters used to de-
velop a sense of who they were, and how they
fitted into the world. Today some younger
people merely dip their toes into the latency
period before a combination of peer pressure,
and unrelenting marketing machine and their
own physiology lures them into the kaleido-
scope of adolescence ... combined with time-
poor parents, lack of ritual and tradition, spiri-
tual anorexia, mixed media messages, higher
material expectations, academic requirements,
this makes the adolescents of 2004 arguably the
most vulnerable generation Australia has ever
seen.
The Age, 30.4.04
E389b
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A39
Two of the findings inBecoming Adult: How Teenagers
Prepare for the World of Work (Csikszentmihalyi, and
Schenider 2000) are highly pertinent to Cognitive Ap-
prenticeship:
- Students who get the most out of school -
and have the highest future expectations - are
those who find school more "playlike" than
"worklike".
- Clear vocational goals and good work expe-
riences do not guarantee a smooth transition
to adult work. What do are engaging activities
- with intense involvement regardless of con-
tent. These are essential for building the opti-
mism and resilience crucial to satisfying work
lives.
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Rich Learning Environments;
(i) The Home
"In all societies since the beginning of
time, adolescents have learned to become
adults by observing, imitating and inter-
acting with grown ups round them. The
self is shaped and honed by feedback
from men and women who already know
who they are and can help the young
person find out who he or she is going to
be. It is startling that ... in a sample of
2,700 reports ... the average adolescent ...spend(s) approximately five minutes a
day interacting exclusively with their fa-
thers."
Csikszentmihalyi, 1984
E370
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Crazy by Design
We have suspected that there is something
going on in the brain of the adolescent, ap-
parently involuntarily, that is forcing apart
the child/parent relationship. What neurolo-
gists are discovering challenges the conven-
tional belief held until only a year or so ago,
that brain formation is largely completed by
the age of twelve. Adolescence is a period of
profound structural change, in fact the
changes taking place in the brain during ado-
lescence are so profound, they may rivalearly childhood as a critical period of devel-
opment, wrote Barbara Strauch in 2003.
The teenage brain, far from being read-
made, undergoes a period of surprisingly
complex and crucial development. The ado-
lescent brain, she suggests, is crazy bydesign.
E411
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Adolescence; a critical EvolutionaryAdaptation.
In accepting that the impact of the neurologi-
cal changes in the teenage brain makes them
crazy by design it can be seen that adoles-
cence is actually a critical evolutionary adap-
tation that is essential to our species sur-
vival. It is an internal mechanism that pre-
vents children from becoming mere clones of
their parents. Adolescence is probably a
deep-seated biological adaptation that makes
it essential for the young to go off, either towar, to hunt, to explore, to colonize, or to
make love - in other words, to prove them-
selves, so as to start a life of their own. As
such it is adolescence which forces individu-
als in every generation to think beyond their
own self-imposed limitations, and to exceedtheir parents aspirations.
E412
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Adolescence and Apprenticeshipforms of learning
Thomas Hine writing in 1999 on the rise and
fall of the American teenager noted, the
principle reason high schools now enrol
nearly all teenagers is that we cant imagine
what else to do with them. That is a shock-
ing conclusion by a man who spent years
studying the issue. Modern society, by being
so concerned for the well being of adults tries
desperately to ignore the adolescents need to
explore and do things for themselves, bygiving them ever more to do in school. It is as
if modern society is trying to outlaw adoles-
cence by over schooling children. That is not
education. There is a frightening manmade
hole in the desirable experience for adoles-
cence - there are simply not enough opportu-nities for them to learn from doing things for
themselves in a modern society.
E413
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E205
Upside Down and Inside Out
A possible description of the assumption we
have inherited about systems of learning,
namely, that older students should be taken
more seriously than younger students and
that the only learning that really matters is
that which is formal. This presentation will
call for these assumptions to be reversed in
the light of modern understanding about how
humans learn.
-
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A42
INTELLECTUAL WEANING
("Do it yourself")
SUBSIDIARITY:
It is wrong for a superior body to retain the
right to make decisions than an inferior body
is already able to make for itself.
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S38
"We have not inherited this world from our
parents. We have been loaned it by our chil-
dren."
"We are prophets of a future not our own."
"There aren't any great people out there any
more - there's only us."
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S30
"This is what we are about. We plant seeds
that one day will grow. We water seeds al-
ready planted, knowing that they hold future
promise. We lay foundations that will need
further development. We provide yeast that
produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
"We cannot do everything, and there is asense of liberation in realising that. This en-
ables us to do something, and enables us to
do it very well It may be incomplete, but it is
a beginning, a step along the way, an oppor-
tunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the
rest. We may never see the end result, but thatis the
difference between the master builder, and
the worker.
"We are workers, not master builders, minis-
ters, not Messiahs. We are prophets of afuture not our own".
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The Attraction of Hard Work
"Why should meeting high challenges with
high skills be something we enjoy doing for its
own sake, even without extrinsic rewards? The
reason does not seem to be that we are brain-
washed as children or socialised into enjoying
difficult things. It is more likely that we were
born with a preference for acting at our fullest
potential. Perhaps enjoying mastery and confi-
dence is evolutionarily adaptive, just as it is
adaptive to find pleasure in food and sex. In the
development of the human nervous system a
connection must have been established be-
tween hard work and a sense of pleasure even
when the work was not strictly necessary. It is
this connection that makes creativity and prog-
ress possible."
Becoming Adult; How Teenagers Prepare for the
World of WorkCsikszentmihalyi and Schneider, 2000
E371
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E207
You can take man out of the Stone Age but
you can't take the Stone Age out of man
Harvard Business Review
It is not the strongest of the species that sur-
vives, or the most intelligent. It is the one
most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin
Psychology will be based on a new founda-
tion, that of the necessary acquirement of
each mental power and capacity by gradua-
tion. Light will be thrown on the origins of
man and his history.
Charles Darwin
Evolution in Mind.
Henry Plotkin 1997
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For further information:
web www.21learn.org
email [email protected]
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