Archive for the ‘Education Books’ Category
Tuesday, August 9th, 2016

The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity by George Couros gives great encouragement and advice to teachers seeking to improve continuously in the face of budget restrictions, policies that don’t make sense, and curricula that are way too static for a constantly changing world. This would be a great book to give to every teacher in your school.
Introduction
- George begins with praise for his father who was always learning and exposing his children to the latest technology from the VCR to Facebook. As an illiterate Greek immigrant, he started as a dish washer and ended up as a restaurant owner. While his father had to embrace countless changes, George regrets that many educators are more likely to resist change rather than embrace it. As a result, we have 21st-century schools with 20th-century learning. If teachers don’t understand that the world is changing and that they need to change with it, the world may decide that it doesn’t need them anymore. If it’s just about knowledge, students can find and digest that themselves.
- There is a need for innovation in education. Inspiration is also needed and it is one of today’s students’ chief needs. It can spark curiosity that will prompt students to learn on their own. Unfortunately, most students leave school less curious. Successful students leave school being good at school and the world isn’t school. One day they are raising their hand to go to the restroom and the next day they are on their own in a world that requires critical thinking and collaboration.
Part I: Innovation in Education – 1. What Innovation is and Isn’t
- George sites the failure of Blockbuster Video Rental as an example of how an organization can fail if they don’t change fast enough. If, according to the common saying, “We need to prepare kids for jobs that don’t exist,” innovation in education is essential. George even created a job title: Division Principal of Innovative Teaching and Learning. No teacher has ever had a former student return to say a standardized test changed his of her life for the better.
- George defines innovation as a way of thinking that creates something new and better. It can be something totally new (invention), or a change to something that already exists (iteration). It’s important to avoid thinking that any use of technology is innovative. Student essays done on a computer are probably not innovative, while a student blog may well be. Technology is a tool, not a learning outcome or a leadership outcome. As John Maxwell once said, “Change is inevitable, growth is optional.” It’s vital that education not become the new Blockbuster.
2. The Innovator’s Mindset
- We start with an inspiring story of how a student overcame a stutter by adopting the innovator’s mindset. He goes on to discuss the highlights of Carol Dewck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. See my summary here. George points out that the world only cares about and pays for what you can do with what you know, and it doesn’t care how you learned it. Every educator, therefore, needs to have an innovator’s mindset. To promote this, George made a budget line titled ‘innovation’ and it was up to teachers to apply for the money. This is like a school setting up its own grant system. He also lets teachers know about the popular mantra that says: failure is an important part of the process.
- Letting teachers know they have the freedom to fail will also promote resiliency and grit. The only way to innovate is to try things and see if they work or not. This must be done as you adjust to each learner. In order to innovate, you need to focus on asking questions. This will drive the process. Teachers also need to ask would they want to be a learner in their own classrooms? Lessons need to connect to students’ lives and they need to learn from each other. You also need to collect feedback continuously.
3. Characteristics of the Innovator’s Mindset.
- Silvia Duckworth’s illustration at the top lays out the eight characteristics. They are: 1) Empathetic – This is all about thinking about the classroom environment and lessons from the students’ point of view. 2) Problem Finding: This is one step beyond simply giving students problems to solve. This will help students to become self-starters. 3) Risk Takers: There needs to be a balance between drawing on one’s experience and trying something new. 4) Networked: Every idea is a network of ideas. When students come to school we continually tell them to share. Educators need to take this advice. 5) Observant: Inspiration is everywhere and often in unexpected places. You just have to keep your eyes open. Educators also need to look beyond their field for ideas and inspiration. 6) Creators: Anyone can consume information. The move from teacher-centric instruction to learner-centric creation is vital. 7) Resilient: Expect pushback from students, colleagues, and supervisors as you try new things. This is a skill that all of us need to develop. 8) Reflective: What worked? What didn’t? What would I change? What do I do next? It’s important to question your efforts, progress, and processes.
Posted in Book Summaries, Education Books, Leadership Books | Comments Off on The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity by George Couros
Tuesday, December 30th, 2014
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson tells the stories of the people most responsible for getting us to where we are in terms of technology. Each chapter focuses on a different innovation that made today’s world possible. It starts in the mid 1800’s when computers were just ideas and takes us to the present time. Click at the bottom of any page to get this very cool history book.
Walter Isaacson
- Walter is the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been the chairman of CNN, and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American LIfe; and Kissinger: A Biography. He is also the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, DC.
Introduction
- The computer and the Internet are among the most important inventions of our era, but few people know who created them. These and other key inventions of the digital age were done collaboratively by many fascinating people who are featured in this book. The focus is on their characteristics and how they collaborated. When it comes to inventions, we tend to focus on individual genius rather than the teamwork that is almost always required. Walter also looks at the social and cultural forces that provided the atmosphere for key innovations. He notes happily that much creativity that gave us the digital age came from those who were able to connect the arts and sciences. It seems that the human-machine symbiosis that grew out of the connection between the personal computer and the Internet was largely given to us by people who stood at the intersection of the humanities and technology.
Posted in Book Summaries, Education Books | Comments Off on The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
Monday, April 13th, 2020
The Knowledge GAP: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System and How to Fix It by Natalie Wexler confronts the difference between content-rich and skills-based ELA curricula and makes a strong case for the former. She argues that students need a strong knowledge base in their long-term memories in order to comprehend complex text and to think critically. They also need systematic phonics instruction to learn how to decode words as they gain knowledge beyond their personal sphere. She sees a shift away from a focus on skills and leveled readers slowly taking place.
Part One – The Way We Teach Now: All You Need Is Skills – 1. The Water They’ve Been Swimming In
- The main point here is that all over the country, the focus in elementary schools is on teaching reading skills using texts that shun any meaningful history or science content. Math is also given a lot of attention as it is the other subject that shows up on federally mandated tests and test prep takes up a significant amount of time in most schools. Meanwhile, the achievement gap, which is really a test-gap, has not budged in twenty-five years. History and science are shunned in the early grades as they are widely considered to be not developmentally appropriate.
2. A Problem Hiding in Plain Sight
- An experiment from 1987 demonstrates the importance of prior knowledge when it comes to comprehension. It involved presenting students with texts that involved the play by play of a baseball game. It showed that bad readers who knew a lot about baseball outperformed good readers who didn’t. The idea is that real knowledge from social studies and science should be embedded in all reading lessons. This implies that the gaps we see on tests are more likely to be knowledge gaps than skills gaps.
- History is a series of stories and kids love stories. The same is true for science topics. It’s ironic that abstract concepts like captions and symbols are considered appropriate for six-year-olds while information from history, science, and the arts are not. Teaching disconnected comprehension skills boosts neither comprehension nor reading scores. They are analogous to empty calories.
Next Natalie explains why poor kids don’t generally do as well in school. At home, they are exposed to less conversation and less complex vocabulary. They also engage in less turn-taking conversation and debate with parents. Parents read more to them and introduce them to more knowledge about the real world. This knowledge gap only widens over time as students who start out with more learn more. By using texts light in knowledge to teach skills, schools are the problem handing in plain sight. You can’t think critically if you don’t have a knowledge base to think with. Students also need to write about what they are learning.
3. Everything Was Surprising and Novel
- The focus here is on the work of Daniel Willingham. The two basic components of reading are decoding and comprehension. They are treated as one subject, but factors leading to success in each are fundamentally different. Instruction in phonics can teach decoding. As for comprehension, it depends on how much vocabulary and background knowledge the student has. It can be achieved naturally if you have enough information. Relying on teaching strategies to teach comprehension can explain the disastrous results we have seen. Teaching content is teaching reading. Reading tests are really knowledge tests in disguise as they draw on it to assess comprehension.
- Much of the problem can be laid at the feet of the schools of education. They spend little or no time on practicalities like classroom management. They seem to think that the more removed they are from ordinary concerns the more prestige they will garner. They aren’t big on exposing students to the findings of science. Most are also responsible for teaching that you should use strategies and skills for teaching comprehension and not using them much to teach decoding.
- Another reason some avoid testing content is that anything can be easily looked up on the Internet. What they miss is if you have to spend an inordinate amount of time looking things up, you will interrupt the flow of understanding that comprehension depends on. Retrieving information from long-term memory serves to reinforce it. You also might look up the wrong meaning of a word with multiple definitions.
4. The Reading Wars
- Here we get some history regarding Rudolph Flesch’s 1950’s studies and his conclusion that the systematic teaching of phonics was necessary to help students learn how to decode text. His book Why Johnny Can’t Read was a big sensation. This was the beginning of the Reading Wars. On the other side was the “whole language” movement. This turned somewhat political as teaching whole words was considered progressive and was largely adopted by the left who didn’t trust academics has they had never taught in an elementary classroom. Unfortunately, the Reading Wars aren’t over, they have only gone underground.
- What Flesch and his opponents missed was that unless you build knowledge and vocabulary, the ability to decode or recognize whole words wouldn’t count for much. Large adoptions of whole language programs largely failed. A phonics-based program called Reading First showed promise, but congress defunded it in 2008. It also treated reading as a self-contained subject, which leads to a decrease in subjects that could build knowledge and vocabulary. It’s also hard to change the beliefs of teachers when you don’t explain the underlying ideas.
Posted in Book Summaries, Education Books, Leadership Books | Comments Off on The Knowledge GAP: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System and How to Fix It by Natalie Wexler
Sunday, March 10th, 2013
The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills by Daniel Coyle (© 2012, Bantam Books: New York, NY) is a bit over 100 pages and offers specific tips for developing talent. Daniel relies on abundant research to help you copy the techniques used by the top performers in many fields. In addition to growing your own talents, this book will help parents, educators, and coaches increase the success rate of their students. Every home should have a copy, so click the icon at the bottom of any page to get yours.
Posted in Book Summaries, Business Books, Education Books, Leadership Books | Comments Off on The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle
Friday, March 18th, 2011
This book by Frans Johansson looks at breakthrough insights at the intersection of Ideas, concepts, and cultures. He recommends that you expose yourself to a range of cultures, learn differently, reverse your assumptions, and take on multiple perspectives. The tips on brainstorming research are worth the price alone. Johansson is a writer and consultant who lives in New York City.
Cultures Are Different
- How different cultures view a grasshopper? USA – pest, China – pet, N. Thailand – appetizer
- How different cultures view the color yellow? USA – cowardice, Malaysia – royalty, Venezuela – lucky underwear
Why Study Multiple Cultures
- Exposure to multiple cultures gives you more ways to look at an issue. Cultures can be ethnic, class, professional, or organizational in addition to geographic. This promotes open, divergent or even rebellious thinking. One is more likely to question rules, traditions, and boundaries. Languages codify concepts differently. Fluency in another language can promote varied perspectives during the creative process.
Learning Lots on Your Own
- Broad education and self-education are two keys to learning differently. Most fundamental innovations are achieved by people who are either very young or very new to the field. Learning fields on your own increases the chance of approaching them from different perspectives. Darwin: “all that I have learned of any value was self-taught.”
Prepare Your Mind
- Louis Pasteur found a forgotten culture of chicken cholera bacteria. When chickens were injected with it they got sick but recovered. These same chickens when injected with a fresh culture survived. Pasteur realized that the chickens had been immunized and that his old culture served as a vaccine.
Tags: Frans Johansson, Innovation, Medici Effect
Posted in Book Summaries, Business Books, Education Books, Leadership Books | Comments Off on The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation
Wednesday, September 7th, 2016
I’m still on the road, so today you get a shortened summary of The Myths of Standardized Tests: Why They Don’t Tell You What You Think They Do by Phillip Harris, Bruce M. Smith, and Joan Harris. If you agree with me that the current state tests imposed by the federal government are harmful to students and teachers, you will find ammunition here to help me fight this battle. If you want the longer summary, click here.
Scores Correlate With Wealth
- The tests rely on items closely linked to socioeconomic status and inherited aptitudes to spread out the scores. As such they tend to measure what students bring to school, rather than what they are taught once they get there.
Just Pass or Just Fail?
- Any student can go from proficient on one version to needing remediation on another. Items are chosen to spread out the scores of the test takers. Time limits spread out scores even more. As students can only sit and focus for so long, the tests can only deal with a small fraction of the domain. Some topics have to be skipped. Timed tests also produce test anxiety.
Who Wants to be Judged by a Snapshot?
- Tests depend on the idea that a small portion of a student’s behavior fairly represents the whole range of possible behavior. To draw valid inferences from a test, it must cover more than a small part of the content domain.
What They Don’t Measure
- They don’t measure goals schools pursue like creativity, critical thinking, motivation, persistence, empathy, leadership, courage, compassion, honesty, and curiosity. Students with high scores may be shallow thinkers. Important items that all students should know are left out at the expense of items that half of the students will miss. There are too many standards to use criterion-referenced tests.
Fuzzy Math
- Test scores are not clean, crisp numbers but fuzzy ranges that extend above and below the score, and 5% of the time the true score isn’t even in the fuzzy range
Are They Really Objective?
- A look at how the tests are made reveals a good deal of subjective human judgement from the people who write, edit, and assemble the test items. Setting the standards also requires judgement that occurs in a political and social context. Achievement levels are, first and foremost, policy statements.
Carrots and Sticks by Mostly Sticks
- There is excessive reliance on rewards and punishments. Research shows how rewards dampen interest in, and enthusiasm for, the activity that is rewarded.
Teachers Cheat
- “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures, and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor.
The Narrowing Effect
- High-stakes tests have narrowed and dumbed down curricula and eliminated time spent on untested subjects by about a third, including recess. Tests also drive instruction towards items with one clear, right answer at the expense of open-ended problem solving.
True Predictors
- Nonacademic accomplishments are better predictors for future accomplishments than grades or test scores. Grades are much better predictors than tests since they often consider more qualities than test scores. The best predictors of future accomplishment are similar accomplishments.
The Back of the Bus
- We expect everyone to learn the same things, to the same level, at the same time? What is the point when everyone is unique? Our obsessive focus on academic achievement measured by tests has pushed other goals to the back of the bus.
Posted in Book Summaries, Education Books | Comments Off on The Myths of Standardized Testing – Short Summary
Saturday, February 26th, 2011
The Myths of Standardized Tests: Why They Don’t Tell You What You Think They Do by Phillip Harris, Bruce M. Smith, and Joan Harris (with a little help from ten of their friends) is a MUST read for anyone fighting the current testing system.
Phillip Harris
- Phillip is executive director of the Association for Educational Communications & Technology. He was a faculty member of the faculty of Indiana University for twenty-two years in Psychology and Education.
- Bruce M. Smith was a member of the editorial staff of the Phi Delta Kappan for 27 years and he retired as editor-in-chief in 2008.
- Joan Harris has taught grades one through three for 25 plus years. In 1997 she was recognized by the National Association for the Education of Young Children as the outstanding teacher of the year.
-
The Myths They Debunk
- High test scores at a school means it has high achievement. Test scores provide objective achievement information. Rewards and punishments based on tests motivate. Improved test scores imply improved learning. All valuable content is tested. Standardized test scores are the best form of assessment. If you move to a district with high scores you will do better.
It’s An Emergency
- The authors believe that our schools are under attack by the tests that continue to seep into our schools. They sap the energy and enthusiasm of educators and drain the life from children’s learning. Some of the motivation is commercial and some is caused by “the tyranny of good intentions.” In this book they hope to persuade you of their case and arm you with some basic understanding of standardized tests and the mythical assumptions that underlie them that are used to make policy and drive practice. The lives of our children and our future is at stake. Our schools do have problems, but they won’t be fixed by another truckload of test scores.
Tags: Bruce Smith, Joan Harris, NCLB, Obama Blueprint, Phillip Harris, Standardized Testing
Posted in Book Summaries, Education Books | Comments Off on The Myths of Standardized Tests: Why They Don’t Tell You What You Think They Do
Monday, February 5th, 2018
The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip and Dan Heath makes the case that we all experience moments that make a huge difference in our lives and that there are things we can do to make them happen. You need to be aware of moments in your life and look for ways to make them happen again for yourself and those you serve. This is a must-read for any leader.
1. Defining Moments
- We all have defining moments in our lives. This book has two goals. One is to examine defining moments and identify the traits they have in common. Two is to show how to create defining moments by making use of these traits. When we reflect on an experience, we do not average our feelings over time. Rather, we focus on the high and low spots, the peaks, and the pits, along with the beginnings and ends.
- One or more of the following elements are involved. 1. Elevation: Something happens to elevate the experience from those surrounding it. 2. Insight: Here is where you suddenly realize something about yourself or the world that makes a difference. 3. Pride: This is when you accomplish something special. 4. Connections: Defining messages are social. Special moments become more special when you share them with others.
2. Thinking in Moments
- There are three kinds of situations that stand out as moments in our lives. They are transitions, milestones, and pits. The goal is to mark transitions, commemorate milestones, and fill the pits. Here the Heath’s tell some stories of how employers can make transitions like the first day on the job special, how banks can help commemorate savings and mortgage milestones, and how service providers can fill pits as soon as they show up. At the end of this section and each section in the book they include a clinic, which demonstrates how the book’s ideas can be put to use.
Posted in Book Summaries, Business Books, Education Books, Leadership Books | Comments Off on The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip and Dan Heath
Saturday, April 23rd, 2022
The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink deals with the power we can draw from dealing with our regrets in a thoughtful manner. Regrets deal with things you can control so you need to take action when possible to make things better and move on from things that can’t be fixed. Research shows that people who do this are healthier and happer. Thanks, Dan for this vital life lesson.
Part One. Regret Reclaimed – 1. The Life-Thwarting Nonsense of No Regrets
- Fron popular songs to literature to advice columns we hear over and over again about how successful people supposedly have no regrets. In this book, Pink shows not only that this is wrong-headed thinking, but when properly used, analysis of your regrets can serve to improve your life. We all have a portfolio of emotions and most of us try to have a bias in our lives for positive ones. That makes sense, but we also need to deal with negative emotions to help us avoid harm, be it physical or emotional. The purpose of this book is to show you how to use regret’s many strengths to make better decisions, perform better at work, and bring greater meaning to your life. Pink draws on his analysis of two massive surveys to accomplish this goal.
2. Why Regret is Human
- Regret is the unpleasant feeling associated with some action or inaction a person has taken which has led to a state of affairs that the person wishes were different. It is more understood as a process than a thing. As we mature, our brains naturally develop to experience regret. It is associated with the orbitofrontal cortex. People with lesions in this area typically do not experience regret. The same is true for people with Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease. Reget is the most common negative emotion as things you regret are your own fault. They are things where you had control and constantly involve some comparison.
3. At Least’s and If Only’s
- These are two types of counterfactuals. When you think at least, you are thinking about how things could have been worse. When you think if only, you are thinking that an outcome could have been better if you had done something different. Most people engage in if only thinking much more than at least thinking. If only thinking degrades our feelings now, but it can improve our lives later. This is one way regret can help us do better tomorrow.
4. Why Regret Makes Us Better
- If you actively regret something you are not likely to do it again. A central finding is that regret can deepen persistence, which almost always elevates performance. Even thinking about other people’s regrets may confer a performance boost. Regret, however, does not always elevate performance. Lingering on regret for too long can have the opposite effect. Setbacks can supply fuel for future performance. Making mistakes and learning from them via regret is a path to growth.
- When it comes to things you regret it is key that you not wallow in them or dodge them altogether. Doing so will just make things worse. These feelings should result in thinking that results in future action that makes things better or avoids further pain. Think of this action as an evaluation that can be instructive. In short, if you make a mistake you need to ask yourself “what can I learn from it.” (Doug: This is a guiding principle for me.)
Posted in Book Summaries, Business Books, Education Books, Leadership Books | Comments Off on The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink
Wednesday, September 19th, 2012
The Principal as Instructional Leader: A Practical Handbook, 3rd ed. (©2013, Eye On Education: Larchmont, NY) by Sally J. Zepeda offers savvy advice, practical tools, and examples from real schools to help both new and experienced principals and their assistants improve teacher effectiveness and boost student achievement. The focus is on improving observations, assessing school culture and climate, addressing marginal teaching, and supporting adult learning. Practicing principals and principals-in-training should read this book. Be sure to click the icon at the bottom of any page to purchase.
Tags: Sally Zepeda
Posted in Book Summaries, Education Books | Comments Off on The Principal as Instructional Leader: A Practical Handbook by Sally Zepeda