Diving Into How Students Learn Best
In a fortunate turn, advances in research and theory are emerging at a long-awaited moment in U.S. education: the agreement of 46 states and the District of Columbia to adopt the Common Core State Standards. The standards were developed with the recognition that global socioeconomic imperatives, combined with the dizzying pace of technological innovation, create new urgency for the development of engaging and challenging ways to educate our nation’s young people.
Clearly, getting the common-core content right and figuring out how students should demonstrate its mastery is a huge task, yet the conversation must simultaneously address how students are to develop the skills required to learn and to apply those lessons in life. The sine qua non is to adopt learning strategies that engage all students, including those who have been most underserved.
This was the starting point for nine teams that spent the past year synthesizing research on student-centered approaches to learning for Students at the Center , a project of the nonprofit Jobs for the Future where the three of us work, with funding from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. Together, their syntheses of research tell a story that is both hopeful and challenging. Some teachers and leaders are beating the odds with traditionally underserved students, the researchers found, using student-centered approaches backed by advances in brain, cognitive science, and motivation research. Still, significant gaps remain in what we know about student-centered approaches, particularly about how to spread them beyond...
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