As we start the New Year, I wanted to look back at a dozen of my favorite blogs over the past five years. I鈥檝e organized them by category.
Race and equity:
1. 鈥溾�� (June 20, 2014). This piece argued that the world of 鈥渄eeper learning鈥� needed more diversity, a problem which, to the credit of many in the movement, has received considerable attention over the past five years.
Learning:
2. 鈥溾�� (Jan. 4, 2018). While it is common to think that you have to learn the basics before you move to deeper learning, good teachers show that you can thread the building of basic skills through higher-order, engaging tasks.
3. 鈥溾�� (July 15, 2015). Here I argued that 鈥渄eeper鈥� learning should not preclude 鈥渂roader鈥� learning and that there are ways to balance the twin imperatives.
4. 鈥溾�� (April 27, 2015). In this post, I suggest that emphasizing students鈥� 鈥済rit鈥� is a way of avoiding the harder question of whether schools give students tasks that are worth investing in.
Schools:
5. 鈥溾�� (April 18, 2014). This blog post argues that 鈥渄eeper learning鈥� emerges at the intersection of mastery, identity, and creativity, qualities that are found in schools, classrooms, and extracurriculars of all different stripes.
6. 鈥溾�� (Jan. 6, 2015). Existing commitments can make it difficult for schools to invest in new ones, I argue; thus deep learning can require significant unlearning.
7. 鈥溾�� (Aug. 25, 2016). While producing powerful or deep learning requires a lot of things to go right, it is easy to predict when it will go wrong. This piece names 10 of those ways, with the hopes of helping us avoid foreseeable obstacles.
Systems:
8. 鈥溾�� (July 16, 2014) and 鈥溾�� (July 18, 2014). In these two posts, I suggest some blind spots in both the 鈥渞eform鈥� and 鈥渢raditional鈥� approaches to reform and offer an honest appraisal of what significant change would entail.
9. 鈥溾�� (April 2017). This is cheating a bit, because it is a paper and not a blog post, but the thinking is consistent with the others on this list. Co-authored with David Cohen, the paper argues that it is not true that reform never succeeds, and that, rather, reforms sometimes succeeded when they: 1) addressed problems teachers had rather than problems reformers wished that teachers thought they had; 2) were consistent with prevailing norms and values; 3) built a significant public constituency; and 4) provided the needed educational infrastructure to accomplish their goals. Reforms that failed to do those things systemwide could also succeed in niches, smaller protected areas where those conditions were present. Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, Montessori, and thematic charters are examples of niche reforms.
10. 鈥溾�� (Jan. 6, 2016). This post considers what it would mean to move from top-down to bottom-up design and combines the 鈥渦ser-centered鈥� focus of the design process with an emphasis on the need to build new and different kinds of systems.
11. 鈥� (Dec. 20, 2018). In this piece, I consider the apparent paradox of how we can move toward teachers and students owning an approach to powerful learning that most of them haven鈥檛 experienced. I suggest ways that districts can lead learning and use a leadership approach focused on 鈥渆mergence鈥� to resolve this seeming paradox.
International education:
12. 鈥溾�� (Jan. 8, 2016). This piece critiques the 鈥渇ollow the leader鈥� mentality that often pervades the PISA discussion and suggests systems thinking as a better alternative.
If you are interested in a longer treatment of these ideas, you might be interested in Sarah Fine鈥檚 and my book, , which comes out April 1. Thoughts on any and all of the above are always welcome.