Learning Math Is More Than Just Learning Content
Many people working to improve our educational system appear to be looking backward. They fix on measures of success that were deemed worthy in the past, and they strive to have our schools perform still better in meeting these measures.
The world, however, is changing. And many of these past indicators of achievement are becoming less important for today’s students. Tony Wagner is one of my favorite authors currently writing about needed changes. Paraphrasing from a 2010 IAE Newsletter :
Tony Wagner is a professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education and co-director of the Change Leadership Group. In his work, he distinguishes between students gaining competencies (knowledge) in various disciplines and students developing habits of mind. Wagner stresses seven survival skills he feels need to be major drivers in a modern education.
- Critical thinking and problem solving.
- Collaboration across networks and leading by influence.
- Agility and adaptability.
- Initiative and entrepreneurism.
- Effective oral and written communication.
- Accessing and analyzing information.
- Curiosity and imagination.
Notice that none of these are discipline-specific. Wagner argues that each discipline-specific area of instruction should be a vehicle for helping students to develop these interdisciplinary habits of mind.
My recent IAE Blog details each of Wagner’s seven ideas. Regarding survival skills 1 and 2, for example:
Solving problems and accomplishing tasks often involves a group and leaders collaborating to influence others to work together toward a common goal. Nowadays, this routinely involves electronic communications and use of (collaborating with) computers. The idea of collaborating with an artificially intelligent machine adds a new dimension to problem solving.
David Moursund is an MLC founder and current MLC board member, Professor Emeritus of the University of Oregon’s College of Education, founder of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and founder of the nonprofit company Information Age Education.
Click here to access the free Information Age Education materials.