Redefining Smart

In June, we hosted Thom Markham from the US to work with groups of our teaching staff. He is a psychologist, educator, author, speaker, and consultant to schools focused on PBL, 21st Century skills, innovation, and high performance cultures. Thom spoke about using positive relationships to drive learning and asked how schools can stop making young people less intelligent by  imposing too much seat time and a mid-century curriculum on them. He argued that a system that values quantity of work over quality of thinking runs the risk of cynicism and disengagement. Thom believes that students need to be freed from the constraints of a rigid, fact-filled day, and offered flexible opportunities to pursue learning. Interestingly he comments that a standards-based curriculum is at odds with the outside world as the global community reinvents information. He forsees a skills-based, collaborative inquiry-driven, learner-centred system of teaching and learning.  Information will not be king, tests scores will not rule the airwaves and standards will be reduced to minimal guidelines that acknowledge the dynamics of knowledge in a co-creative, constructed world.

“Inevitably, the world will transition to a thinking system as opposed to a content delivery system, in which fewer standards will be balanced with more opportunity for design, problem solving, creativity, and interconnected sharing of ideas.”

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