The Brain, Education, and the Competitive Edge

Everyone agrees that improving education is vital, but people disagree on what to do. Business, parents, politicians, the media and educators all voice strong and conflicting opinions. The public needs to have the issues clarified, and to see a path that will work. There ARE ways to raise standards, but most current education reform is moving in precisely the wrong direction. The key to higher test results is to teach so that students can show what they know through real-world performance. Read this book to discover what does and does not work at every grade level, and learn what actions you can take. Features: · Sheds light on the competing points of view. · Explains how traditional teaching, testing and schooling developed. · Describes a more powerful approach to education that engages student brains much more effectively. · Shows how great schools and ordinary people from around the world use this "guided experience" approach. · Explains why public education resists change, no matter what research proves.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Education in the Eye of the Storm Chapter 2 The Standard Model- Back to the Future? Chapter 3 The Natural Learning That the Standard Model Ignores Chapter 4 Experience-Based Learning Generates Dynamic, Performance Knowledge Chapter 5 Real-World Examples of Powerful, Experience-Driven Learning Chapter 6 What Great Schooling Looks Like Chapter 7 How "The System" Limits Growth Chapter 8 The Competitive Edge

About the Author :
Geoffrey Caine, LL.M. is Director of Caine Learning LLC and an adjunct faculty member at University of Redlands Whitehead Center for Lifelong Learning. Renate Caine, Ph.D. is a Director of Caine Learning and Professor Emerita, California State University, San Bernadino. The Caines are co-authors of the best-selling book,Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain, along with four other books.

Review :
This book should be required reading for educational policy makers including school board members, parents, legislators, as well as educators. Delightfully congruent with constructivist learning theory and current brain research, Geoffrey and Renate Caine provide rich examples of sound learning processes and effective schooling....The Caines seek to bring us together, to examine our mental models and look logically and compassionately at ways we can enrich schooling, and the culture itself. ...an honest account of how the push for standardization weakens education, demoralizes students and educators, and prevents effective learning from occuring. It demands a profound rethinking of the larger themes in education, which parents and teachers will find rewarding and empowering. The best book yet from a pair of authors who excel in showing how research knowledge on human learning can transform schools. If a book can be both visionary and practical, this is it. A brilliant and sobering analysis of today's wrong-headed 'reforms'-but a clear description of a very different and far more effective approach to education. The Brain, Education, and the Competitive Edge provides a valuable framework for avoiding the negative effects of standardization as we build high-performing learning communities.