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21st Century Learning and Workforce Readiness
Dan Wagner quote here.
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Is it too early to think about "workforce readiness" at the kindergarten level? Daniel Pink has some really interesting things to say about the new paradigm surrounding motivation based on current research. It turns out that everything we thought we knew about motivation and the three main drives of human behavior (food, sex and survival) are short... by one. Intrinsic motivation, learning for the joy of it, is the "fourth drive", as he describes it in his appropriately titled book, DRiVE.
John Medina, author of Brain Rules, said something similar, as well, when he wrote his chapter on human exploration. "We are powerful and natural explorers," he tells us. Medina, a molecular biologist, describes in detail the neuroscience behind human motivation and learning in 11 chapters, but in the 12th chapter of Brain Rules, he goes "off the reservation" and speaks about his young son Noah and his natural curiosity. What is it about humans that makes us so hungry for knowledge and exploration, and why is it that the formal educational system has not been able to harness all that innate drive and curiosity? Click on the Voicethread below to learn more about John Medina and his 12 Brain Rules and their implications for the educational setting.
John Medina, author of Brain Rules, said something similar, as well, when he wrote his chapter on human exploration. "We are powerful and natural explorers," he tells us. Medina, a molecular biologist, describes in detail the neuroscience behind human motivation and learning in 11 chapters, but in the 12th chapter of Brain Rules, he goes "off the reservation" and speaks about his young son Noah and his natural curiosity. What is it about humans that makes us so hungry for knowledge and exploration, and why is it that the formal educational system has not been able to harness all that innate drive and curiosity? Click on the Voicethread below to learn more about John Medina and his 12 Brain Rules and their implications for the educational setting.
Why is it that we all just shrug and think it is business as usual when we see graphs like the one below, presented at the New Tech Network 2014 National Conference in New Orleans (NTAC2014). Why are we okay with this? When are we going to get angry about this? Students begin their educational careers with curiosity and enthusiasm, and then they have it systematically beaten out of them to the point that only 44% of students in high school feel anything that comes close to what they had when they started school. This is outrageous! According to Katie Couric and the CBS report below, "A high school student drops out every 26 seconds; that's about 6,000 dropouts per year". (Also see CSBA Fact Sheet) We hear facts like these and yet we just keep doing business the same old way. It's time to get angry. It's time to demand a change.