Search Results: education and schooling

Peter Gray’s 6 Conditions for Self-Directed Learning: Education and Schooling #15

What do kids need to thrive and learn all they need for adult life? Let’s ask Peter Gray! In this two-minute animated summary of a lecture on the value of play, educational researcher Peter Gray gives six fundamentals for self-directed learning. He’s a Research Professor of Psychology at Boston College, specialising in evolutionary perspectives on […]

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Education and Schooling #14: How to Teach an Introvert

Remember Susan Cain? You may have seen her fabulous TED talk that I posted a while ago, based on her book, Quiet: the Power of Introverts. The guru on introverts in an extraverted world, she gives ten tips for parenting introverts on her website, and now she’s got some ideas for how teachers can nurture introverts in […]

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Education and Schooling #13: Oh, those National Standards… [Guest]

A warm welcome to Rochelle Gribble, here with an insightful analysis of the recently-introduced, highly controversial ‘National Standards‘ that New Zealand primary schools are now required to report on twice a year. Rochelle is a once-was, sometimes-is, may-be-again secondary teacher. She has a Masters degree in Education and sometimes even gets to use it! However, […]

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Education and Schooling #11: Unschooling, Schooling and Socialisation

If you had a six-year-old child, and institutional schooling had never existed, how would you go about preparing them for adult life? In the next few posts on unschooling, I want to tease out a few different issues and discuss them separately. Today it’s the different social experiences schooled and unschooled (or homeschooled) kids have. […]

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Education and Schooling #10: Special

It is a legal right in New Zealand for all children to have free education that meets their needs. This includes the right to ‘special education’ for people under 21 years old who need extra support, or something different from the usual classroom teaching. The vision statement of the Ministry of Education, in relation to […]

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Education and Schooling #9: The Finland Plan [Guest]

I once read a report describing the quality of education in a variety of countries which concluded that the best curriculum in the world is the one used in New Zealand. I spat my tea. Poppycock. The one used in New Zealand is simply the best in New Zealand. It cannot be compared with the […]

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Education and Schooling #7: Malala’s Perspective

I’ve been reminded this week why the ‘un’ in unschooling is not the same as ‘anti.’ First this challenge from Buffalo Mama, who is unschooling/homeschooling her son after traumatic school experiences: “Unschooling,” maybe, can be seen as an attempt to open up the pressure valve and let some of that build up out of everything […]

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Education and Schooling #6: This is Unschooling

I’ve become obsessed with reading about unschooling. If I could wave a wand to make any kind of educational approach feasible for my family, at the moment unschooling is at the top of the wish-list. At first I thought unschooling was the latest, hippest word for homeschooling, but no, it’s its own thing: learning without school […]

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