Synopses & Reviews
Use the concept of productive learning to reframe school reform!
In this critical appraisal of educational reform, distinguished educator and psychologist Seymour Sarason and accomplished physicist Stanislaw Glazek emphasize that real reform will not take root and sustain itself until educators center reform efforts on creating and promoting productive learning contexts.
Unlike typical educational reform critiques that highlight challenges and fall short of offering solutions, the authors take a unique analytical approach, challenging readers to participate in a productive learning context based on the development of Einstein's E = mc2. Through this learning experience, they skillfully demonstrate that it is not the high-level concepts themselves that inhibit productive learning but the lack of meaningful interpersonal relationships between teachers and students across all curriculum areas.
Using the stories of breakthrough educators, the authors provide several glimpses of productive learning in action. These stories illustrate how rethinking teaching and learning must embrace the importance of:
- Meaningful interpersonal relationships between teachers and students
- Encouraging and nurturing student curiosities and perspectives
- Allowing students to bring their own knowledge and experience to the learning process
Finally, the authors use the notion of creating productive learning contexts--as illustrated and experienced in this book--as the focus for school reform, offering an innovative way to reframe the way we think about educating our students and allowing them to bring all that they are to the learning process.
Synopsis
Luminary educator and school reform scholar, Seymour B. Sarason, and science curriculum reformer and physicist, Stanislaw D. Glazek, take a close look at school change emphasizing that until educators center reform efforts on creating and promoting productive learning contexts, reform will not take root and sustain itself. Unique from typical school reform books that can highlight challenges and fall short of offering solutions, Sarason and Glazek take a unique analytical approach and challenge readers to participate in a productive learning context embedded in the book.
Using the true stories of breakthrough educators like Glenn Holland and Jaime Escalante, the authors first provide several glimpses of productive learning in action. They illustrate how educators and students have been trained to think that students cannot bring their own knowledge, experience, and attitudes to learning difficult subject matter and then excel leaps and bounds beyond expectations. The authors then intentionally challenge readers to learn a difficult subject--Einstein's E=mc2--noting that most of us have been trained to think only genius scholars can come close to understanding this work. They encourage us to abandon the notion that we cannot excel and bring all that we are to learning.
Finally, the authors use the notion of creating productive learning contexts, as illustrated and experienced in the book, as a focus for school reform and offer a way to reframe the way we think about educating educators and the students they guide in the learning process.
Synopsis
This unique resource promotes the creation of productive learning contexts, which allow students to bring all that they are to the learning process, as essential to successful educational reform.