Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Box? What box? Breaking the mind-forged manacles.

Probably the only two responses to constant change are to ignore it (shrink back, retrench, go off the grid, become irrelevant, turn inwards, stay put, get run over, and so on) or keep on keeping on with the learning life. But what happens if the mantra of: Keep moving, just try it, have a go, fail-fail-fail and then succeed and…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The fire within

“To succeed…it’s the fire within that must be lit.” Purpose, mastery, autonomy (mission not money as motivation.) Watch the video and then think of the implications for school. What do we reward students for doing?

Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Good news for wool gatherers

A wandering mind heads toward insight WSJ article  reports on findings that suggest: …our brain may be most actively engaged when our mind is wandering and we’ve actually lost track of our thoughts, a new brain-scanning study suggests. “Solving a problem with insight is fundamentally different from solving a problem analytically,” … “There really are different brain mechanisms involved.” So…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Slow Food, Slow School: John Cleese and the Promise of the Tortoise Brain

There’s a slow food movement so why not a slow mind movement? Some years ago Guy Claxton wrote Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less. It made a compelling argument that the mind works best when we trust the unconscious – our “undermind” tortoise mind. The hare brain is the deliberative, logical, conscious thinking we all…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Cathedral of Complexity

The Complex Workings of the Human Brain Medical and cognitive sciences, new technologies, and pedagogic research are helping us appreciate how the brain works. The human brain is the most complex living organism on Earth. Coveney and Highfield (1995) call it the “Cathedral of Complexity.” Although it weighs only about three pounds, it contains billions of cells (neurons). The total length…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Connect Joy to Neuroscience

In their zeal to raise test scores, too many policymakers wrongly assume that students who are laughing, interacting in groups, or being creative with art, music, or dance are not doing real academic work. The result is that some teachers feel pressure to preside over more sedate classrooms with students on the same page in the same book, sitting in…

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