Articles

Toward a definition of 21st-Century Literacies
A short, useful statement about what twenty-first century readers and writers need to do. Click here

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Educational Leadership,
Summer 07,
Vol 64

Whole Teaching, Whole Schools, Whole Teachers
John P Miller

Educators must reclaim and reshape the vision of human wholeness held by our ancestors and endorsed by many spiritual traditions. How can schools return to more holistic teaching and learning? Click here to read whole article.

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A film about Australia

We Will Be Remembered For This

In 2006, a group of young people of different nationalities, backgrounds, attitudes and political views took a trip to the Baxter Detention Centre. The stories of the people they met behind the razor wire surprised, moved and challenged them.
Click here (or go to www.safecom.org.au) for information. The film includes interviews with former PM Malcolm Fraser, Julian Burnside QC, a clinical psychiatrist, a former detention officer, and many others.
A DVD is available for purchase from the website. (You can view excerpts before ordering.) 

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Educational Leadership Summer 07, Vol 64

The Neuroscience of Joyful Education
Judy Willis

Brain research tells us that when the fun stops, learning often stops too.
'Classrooms can be the safe haven where academic practices and classroom strategies provide students with emotional comfort and pleasure as well as knowledge. When teachers use strategies to reduce stress and build a positive emotional environment, students gain emotional resilience and learn more efficiently and at higher levels of cognition. Brain-imaging studies support this relationship.

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New York Times
16 Jun 07

In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind
Patricia Leigh Brown

Mindfulness training, in which stress-reducing techniques are drawn from Buddhist meditation, is helping students in many ways. Click here to read the report.

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Education Review
May 2007

Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools
Nichols, Sharon & Berliner, David (2007)

Click here to read the review by Susan Ohanian.
'High-stakes testing is wrong - intellectually, morally, and practically. Not only will it 'not work' to improve education, it is already doing demonstrable harm.'

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Educational Leadership
May 2007, Vol 64, No 8.

The Whole Child: An International Perspective
Are some countries doing a better job investing in their children than others?
This report gives an overview of child and adolescent well-being in rich countries.

Click here for the short report.
To download the full report, go to
http://www.unicef-icdc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf

See related articles.

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New York Times

Some schools phasing out student laptop programs
After a 7-year study in Liverpool, NY., there was "literally no evidence that (laptops) had any impact on student achievement."

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Kathy Moran
The Quarterly
Vol 26, No 3, 2004

Caring Comes First

Caring Comes First: a personal narrative
"No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care." Kathy Moran writes about the daily intimacy-charged contact teachers have with others. She argues that, in this time of pressure to accept standardization and hold students to strict measures, it is just as important to establish personal connections.

The uncertainty that is the beauty and the challenge of teaching

Teaching in the Time of Dogs
An account, like a parable, of a classroom incident that makes it clear that it's the students who bring "the uncertainty that is the beauty and the challenge of teaching."

Deb