Dr. Tony Wagner, co-director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group has identified what he calls a "global achievement gap," which is the leap between what even our best schools are teaching, and the must-have skills of the future: * Critical thinking and problem-solving * Collaboration across networks and leading by influence * Agility and adaptability * Initiative and entrepreneurialism * Effective oral and written communication * Accessing and analyzing information * Curiosity and imagination
"You need to lead by influence...the person who is most effective as a leader is not leading from positional authority anymore. They are leading , rather, from their ability to engage others and to ask the right questions."
“The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.”
― Albert Einstein
I've actually read Dr. Wagner's book The Global Achievement Gap. It's a really great read. He goes into a lot of detail about how we can reinvent the education profession, and I found this to be really motivating. His book is actually one of the main reasons why I am so headstrong about technology use in the classroom. He writes with an awareness of students in today's American education system as well as of how these student's will be tomorrow's workers in the American economy. Let me know if you want to borrow it
ReplyDeleteI love Dr. Wagner's word choice of "answeritis". We are often so anxious to find an answer or solve a problem that we do so without adequate investigation.
ReplyDeleteI love the answeritis word. In some teaching disciplines (such as Modeling Physics), it's less important that the student got the right answer, than they are able to explain HOW they came to their answer.
ReplyDeleteWagner's work is also foundational in the global collaboration movement such as Flat Classrooms. Another one I like is Daniel Pink's book about the skills your students will need for success in the future...a definite move away from answeritis.
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