Resource Library

Cooperation and Service at Heart of Community School

5/29/2013

A high school in New Hampshire, USA, has developed a curriculum that revolves around working with the local community, as students carry out 150 hours of community service a year.

The service includes stacking wood or clearing leaves, and taking part in projects with local conservation and historical societies, such as protecting wildlife habitats and mapping early graves.

Read more

Learning About Learning Boosts Student Motivation and Success

5/14/2013

For over 30 years, Carol Dweck has studied students’ motivation in order to find out what makes motivated students tick and she says: “Here is the most important thing I have learned: The most motivated and resilient students are not the ones who think they have a lot of fixed or innate intelligence. Instead, the most motivated and resilient students are the ones who believe that their abilities can be developed through their effort and learning”.

Read more

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

12/27/2008

A leading expert in motivation and personality psychology, Carol Dweck has discovered in more than twenty years of research that our mindset is not a minor personality quirk: it creates our whole mental world. It explains how we become optimistic or pessimistic. It shapes our goals, our attitude toward work and relationships, and how we raise our kids, ultimately predicting whether or not we will fulfill our potential. Dweck has found that everyone has one of two basic mindsets.

Read more

The bottom line is ...

1/18/2008

The bottom line is, do you want to have a child who can take tests well or do you want to have a well-educated child?

Gail Jones, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina

A preoccupation with achievement is ...

1/18/2008

A preoccupation with achievement is not only different from, but often detrimental to, a focus on learning.

Alfie Kohn, The Schools Our Children Deserve (1999)

The more schools emphasize grades ...

1/18/2008

The more schools emphasize grades and other indicators of performance, the more likely students are to cheat, even if they know it’s wrong.

Anderman et al (1978)

When the curriculum was engaging ...

1/18/2008

When the curriculum was engaging – in this case, involving hands-on, interactive learning activities at the junior high school level – students who weren’t graded at all did just as well on a proficiency exam as those who were.

Moeller and Reschke (1993)

Just because you do well on a test ...

1/18/2008

Just because you do well on a test doesn’t mean you are a good person.

Saskatoon Student