A discussion with Bob Pianta, co-author of the new volume

“Kids on Earth: The Power and Potential of 5 Billion Minds,”

on future designs for schooling and education.

In this webinar, Bob Pianta discusses the framework and ideas that he and co-author Howard Blumenthal have presented in their new book, Kids on Earth: The Power and Potential of 5 Billion Minds, about growing up and learning in the 21st century.  The book is framed on interviews with students from countries around the world, focused on their goals for their futures and their experiences in school, and integrates those stories with the challenges of the 21^st century and contemporary research on learning, motivation, and human development.  

The webinar will be a mixture of presentation, discussion among participants and an extended question and answer session.  The aim is to stimulate thinking about common design principles that can inform a refreshed, reinvigorated approach to schooling that is engaging of the potential of today’s and tomorrow’s students.    Webinar registrants will receive an e-version of the book prior and are advised to read as much as feasible in advance of the session.  The book is written in a conversational, non-academic style and most readers report readily accessing the content in a fairly brief amount of time. 

 Background:

Children and teenagers growing up in the 21st century require education aligned with their lives. Responsibilities of citizenship, and care for the planet and one another, require modern thinking. School as a local gathering place for learning remains sound, but the current structure of public education has run its course. It requires rethinking and reworking. To facilitate that process, this book offers a conceptual basis for a significant transformation, and a practical framework based upon fresh thinking by students, teachers, parents, and other learning experts.

School now competes to be the primary source of learning; media and the internet are well-funded, ubiquitous, agile competitors. School employs a legacy model based upon dissemination, memorization and testing. Mostly, school ignores recent  cognitive science, contemporary understanding of human behavior and future studies. Frustrated, many students and teachers and parents recognize the need for change.

Contemporary realities place more pressure on public school than it was designed to bear. People growing up in the 21st century possess confidence and potential far beyond the dreams and capacity of their parents and grandparents. We are raising the healthiest, wealthiest, most connected humans in the history of the world. Their curiosity runs wide and deep. They make use of every available resource for learning because their future requires vast, diverse, modern skills and knowledge. School has not kept up with their intellectual and social development, the transformed world in which they live, or their imagination. As a result, there are serious, widespread problems with attendance, discipline, motivation, academic performance, and mental health. These problems are related to what is taught, why, and how. The best efforts, hard work, and dedication of so many students, teachers, principals, specialists, volunteers, parents, and community members could be so much more productive with an up-to-date model for learning in school.

Alternatives to school are emerging. Usually, the organizing principle is based on diversity of individual student interests and experiences. Students develop ideas, implement them as individuals and in small groups, interact with the community and the world, and develop experience and wisdom that may prove useful in the future. Alternative models are used in private schools, or charter schools, but not in most public schools.

Despite many extraordinary examples of what school could be, all over the world, there is no clear direction, no plan, no common framework for productive, locally-relevant, globally-useful learning. The book provides a scalable framework for local reinvention that captures contemporary realities.

Evidence is abundant that deep, authentic, and accelerated learning starts with students –- their experiences, goals, and ambitions -- and focuses on topics relevant to their lives… Effective teaching starts with recognizing and understanding students’ perspectives on their learning and guides students toward new and deeper knowledge and more sophisticated skills. Standards define what adults believe is important to learn and follows a model of teacher-driven instruction in large groups. Is it surprising then that nearly every single study of student motivation shows them starting to disengage around 4^th grade, a decline that shows up even earlier and more seriously for students from historically marginalized backgrounds or who have struggled to learn basic skills in prior years? Yet, every student craves learning when it is relevant -– given a challenge they care about, children and youth display high levels of motivation, engagement, and sophistication.

Primary and secondary public school students require a new framework for public education. The key idea is focus on the individual — the operating concept is Personal Education, not a mass education. A new framework must address each individual learner’s unique interests, life situation, and future pursuits in the midst of rapid global transformation.

1. Learning Is Personal. Learning is a lifelong process involving curiosity, play, gathering and evaluating knowledge, connecting ideas, adding new ones, discarding others, gaining skills, refining understanding, and building relationships based upon individual’s unique interests, life situation, and goals.
2.  Learning Is Relational. Learning arises from relationships with others. It takes shape as two or more identities interact and respond to one another. Often, these relationships are human, but they may involve animals, places, a vibe, a sense of being. These interactions support and shape interests, motivations and behaviors, and sometimes, result in sustained engagement, new learning (resulting from shared curiosity and actions), additional relationships, and groups of like-minded individuals.
3. Learning Is Active. Learning requires personal engagement in ideas that matter, discovery exploration, errors, intrinsic motivation, an environment generally free from stress and other distractions, and connection with other people with similar interests.

In this webinar, Bob will describe these ideas, the framework they generate for redesign of schooling, and the implications of these ideas for public policy, educational programming, and preparation of teachers.