Writing in plain language and a conversational style for educators, students, and others, authors Jal Mehta (Harvard Graduate School of Education) and Sarah Fine (education studies, University of California-San Diego) report on their six-year study of 30 schools across the country, many serving primarily high-poverty, working-class, and minority students. Employing ethnographic methods to immerse themselves in schools, they observed classes and interviewed 300 teachers, students, administrators, and parents, seeking inspiration for school reform and student engagement based on learning by doing. They offer lessons learned from three exemplary high schools: a project-based school, a “school that delivers a rigorous curriculum to high-poverty students of color, and school that teaches the International Baccalaureate program for all students. They also describe programs, courses, and teachers at other schools, including charter schools, smaller schools, thematic schools, and traditional comprehensive schools, seeking to understand why these schools demonstrated gaps between aspirations and reality. An appendix gives detailed info on the schools and the research methods. Mehta is the author of The Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling. Fine is affiliated with High Tech High Graduate School of Education. Annotation ©2019 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
“The best book on high school dynamics I have ever read.”—Jay Mathews, Washington Post
An award-winning professor and an accomplished educator take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America’s most innovative classrooms to show what is working—and what isn’t—in our schools.
What would it take to transform industrial-era schools into modern organizations capable of supporting deep learning for all? Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine’s quest to answer this question took them inside some of America’s most innovative schools and classrooms—places where educators are rethinking both what and how students should learn.
The story they tell is alternately discouraging and hopeful. Drawing on hundreds of hours of observations and interviews at thirty different schools, Mehta and Fine reveal that deeper learning is more often the exception than the rule. And yet they find pockets of powerful learning at almost every school, often in electives and extracurriculars as well as in a few mold-breaking academic courses. These spaces achieve depth, the authors argue, because they emphasize purpose and choice, cultivate community, and draw on powerful traditions of apprenticeship. These outliers suggest that it is difficult but possible for schools and classrooms to achieve the integrations that support deep learning: rigor with joy, precision with play, mastery with identity and creativity.
This boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be. The first panoramic study of American public high schools since the 1980s, In Search of Deeper Learning lays out a new vision for American education—one that will set the agenda for schools of the future.
An award-winning professor and an accomplished educator, Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America’s most innovative classrooms to show what is working—and what isn’t. In a world where test scores have been king, this boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be at its best.
Lisainfo e-raamatute kohta