ABSTRACT
Learning is rarely seen as an intrinsic value, a liberating act, a deliberate practice with larger societal implications. Progressive educators and thinkers such as John Dewey and Maria Montessori offered powerful insights into the nature of learning. Ironically, student learning has remained a marginal area of concern for the educational change field. In the educational change field, learning has been primarily valued for its functional value – for example, scores in standardized testing as indicators of knowledge and skills for future employability, and high-school certificates as standardized measures of college or career readiness. Discoveries on the psychology of motivation and the neuroscience of learning are making the core contradiction of schooling even more evident. Interestingly, the skillsets and mindsets required for powerful learning are starting to converge with those required for employability and for the creation of robust democracies. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
