Childhood Trauma: Impediments to Learning

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

The Learning in Afterschool & Summer project is dedicated to ensuring that afterschool and summer youth programs are strong places of learning. To this end, we are promoting five important principles of learning that should be evident in all youth programs. 

However, it is also important that practitioners understand not only what promotes learning but the environmental factors that impede learning. These factors are related to complex trauma - children who have experienced physical or sexual abuse, abandonment, domestic and neighborhood violence, and/or having a parent or close family member incarcerated. 

"In the brains of traumatized youth, neural pathways associated with fear and survival responses are strongly developed, leaving some children in a state of hyperarousal that causes them to overreact to incidents other children would find nonthreatening, the research shows. Consumed by fear, they find it difficult to achieve a state of calmness that would allow them to process verbal instructions and learn, according to the Child Welfare Information Gateway of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris

And many children are experiencing chronic stress, according to data. In 2012,

California child welfare agencies received 487,000 reports of child abuse and neglect. Nationally, an estimated 1 in 4 children has witnessed a violent act and 1 in 10 has seen one family member assault another, according to the federal National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence, sponsored by the Office of Juvenile Justice Prevention and Delinquency Prevention and the Centers for Disease Control." (1)

According to Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, Pediatrician at the Bayview Child Health Center in San Francisco, children who had four or more categories of adverse childhood experiences, “their odds of having learning or behavior problems in school were 32 times as high as kids who had no adverse childhood experiences”. (2)

We will explore some of these learning impediments in upcoming blog posts by citing important literature and featuring interviews with field experts. 

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(1) School Promoting 'Trauma-Informed' Teaching to Reach Troubled Students; Adams, Jane Meredith; December 2, 2013; http://edsource.org/today/2013/schools-focus-on-trauma-informed-to-reach-troubled-students#.Up-6QmRDvJ4

(2) The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study — the largest, most important public health study you never heard of — began in an obesity clinic; Stevens, Jane Ellen; October 3, 2013; http://acestoohigh.com/2012/10/03/the-adverse-childhood-experiences-study-the-largest-most-important-public-health-study-you-never-heard-of-began-in-an-obesity-clinic/

More Resources on the Role of "Grit" in Learning

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

Over the past year, we have dedicated several blog posts and portions of our last two How Kids Learn conferences to explore the importance of "grit" and persistence in young people's learning. According to research, grit is a strong indicator of GPA and graduation rates. And as we have noted in our exploration of grit, it is something that can be cultivated and taught. Part of this is developing in young people a "growth mindset", which Stanford Professor, Carol Dweck, claims is highly correlated with success. Below are some valuable resources that will help our readers continue their learning about grit and how to teach it. 

Carol Dweck, Author, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success 

True Grit: The Best Measure of Success and How to Teach It: A blog post from Edutopia, January 9, 2014. This post lists several other resources about "grit".

TED Video: Angela Lee Duckworth: The key to success? Grit: In this TED Talk, Ms. Duckworth discusses her experience regarding the role of grit in learning.  

Angela Lee Duckworth - TED Talk

Grit Scale: This survey, developed by Angela Duckworth and Chris Peterson, attempts to measure a person's "grit" and ability to persevere when challenged.

Resilience and Grit - Resource Roundup: This listing was assembled and published by Edutopia. It is a "curated collection of blogs, articles, interviews, and videos with information for parents and educators about the associated concepts of resilience and grit."

A Federal Study on Grit: An Interview with Researcher, Nikki Shechtman (Part 2)

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

Nikki Shechtman is a researcher at SRI International. She recently led a study for the Department of Education on the influence of grit, tenacity, and perseverance on learning. In addition to presenting at the How Kids Learn III conference, Nikki was interviewed for this blog. In part 1, we asked for a clear definition of terms, why study grit, and asked Nikki for a brief overview of her study. In part 2, we asked how these traits can be taught, the value of informal learning within afterschool and summer programs, examples of useful practices, and the role of mindfulness. 

Q: There are some who say these things are important, but they are inherent traits that can’t be taught. How do you respond to this?

A: I think that is not only inaccurate, but it’s also a potentially damaging perspective. There is overwhelming evidence that how persistent an individual is will depend to a great extent on the circumstances. We found research to suggest that important factors in the environment can have a huge influence on whether or not a student will persist in the face of challenges and setbacks—whether the goals are important to them, how much support they have from others around them, and whether they have the appropriate tools and skills to deal with challenges. For example, it happens all the time that the same student will persistent in one class but not another because of the way teachers make a topic interesting or connected to real life.

Nikki Shechtman

There are also many skills and psychological resources that contribute to grit, tenacity, and perseverance that can be learned and cultivated. For example, how students learn to deal with failures and what skills they have for monitoring progress and changing course when necessary, these can strongly influence how they’ll fair when the going gets tough. One of the most important research areas is around the “growth mindset,” the belief that intelligence grows with effort. There is wonderful research by Carol Dweck at Stanford University, and others, to show that not only does having a growth mindset make students more likely to persist when work gets difficult, but it’s also a mindset that can be learned.

It’s potentially damaging to look at grit, tenacity, and perseverance as inherent traits that can’t be taught. If teachers or parents believe that children are not persisting because they are just inherently lacking grit, there’s little motivation to try to understand what’s going on with the student and what changes, big or small, to the learning environment or particularly new skills might promote a different way for the student to interact with the environment. Even worse, if the child herself starts believing she just doesn’t have grit in general, it can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Who wants to try to persevere in the face of challenge when they think they just aren’t capable of doing so? That’s not a good position to put a human being in.

Q: Do you think informal learning settings like afterschool and summer programs are well-suited to promote these traits? If so, why?

A: Absolutely. In Chapter 2, we lay out a model for the kinds of factors in a learning environment that can promote grit, tenacity, and perseverance. Two factors that our research suggested were important were that students have opportunities to take on worthwhile long-term goals and that they have a rigorous and supportive place to pursue them. Many informal learning settings do exactly this—whether the goal is to do something like a complex programming project, make a film, get into college, or a wide variety of others. These settings can also provide the means to help students actually accomplish these goals—through materials supports such as technologies or workspaces, human supports such as peer-based communities or adult mentors, and time to work through difficult tasks. When students have the opportunities to take on and accomplish big goals, not only do they get the satisfaction of the achievement, they also take with them the knowledge that they can do it.

A major theme that came up in our research was that informal setting can support these factors in ways that might be limited in formal settings that have more constraints (e.g., accountability and limited resources to give students individualized attention).

Q: Can you give us an example of practices that encourage the development of grit, tenacity, and/or perseverance that is relevant to afterschool workers?

A: We made some specific recommendations for practitioners based on the research. And just to be clear, we consider these promising but not proven; evidence of impact at scale is still limited. These recommendations are:

a. Educators should provide students with opportunities to take on worthwhile long-term or higher-order goals that are optimally challenging (i.e., not too easy, not too difficult) and/or aligned with the students’ own interests or values.

b. Educators should provide students with a rigorous and supportive context for pursuing these goals. They should have high expectations for students and provide encouragement and resources. They should promote collaboration and social support among students.

c. To the extent possible, educators should provide the tangible resources—materials, human support, and time—necessary to overcome challenges and accomplish their goals.

Educators can also support students in developing the psychological resources that can promote grit, tenacity, and perseverance. We found three broad categories:

a. Academic mindsets. These are how students frame themselves as learners, their learning environment, and their relationships to the learning environment. They include beliefs, attitudes, dispositions, values, and ways of perceiving oneself. There are important examples of short-term interventions that are being developed to “teach” and cultivate the most productive mindsets. Educators should first make sure that they themselves have productive mindsets, and they can learn to apply good strategies to foster them in their students.

b. Effortful control. Students are constantly faced with tasks that are important for long-term goals but that in the short term do not feel desirable or intrinsically motivating. Successful students marshal willpower and regulate their attention during such tasks and in the face of distractions. Although this can seem austere or no fun, research shows that students stronger in these skills are happier and better able to handle stress. Educators can look to examples of research and practice for how to foster these. Mindfulness practices are one example (see the question below).

c. Strategies and tactics. Students are also more likely to persevere when they can draw on specific strategies and tactics to deal with challenges and setbacks. They need actionable skills for taking responsibility and initiative and for being productive under conditions of uncertainty—for example, defining tasks, planning, monitoring, changing course of action, and dealing with specific obstacles. Educators can intentionally teach these skills as part of the work they do with students.

By the way, we also recommend that practitioners be mindful of potential risks or costs for students of pushing them in ways inappropriate for their needs. For example, persevering in the face of challenges or setbacks to accomplish goals that are extrinsically motivated, unimportant to the student, or in some way inappropriate for the student can potentially have detrimental impacts on students’ long-term retention in school, conceptual learning, and psychological well-being.

Q: Your study mentions mindfulness practice as useful. Can you say more?

A: Interesting that you should ask, because it only got one sentence in the brief but it’s actually an area of particular interest to me. In fact, I worked on a project a few years ago in which we taught mindfulness to students in an afterschool academic program.

Here’s my take. Mindfulness is a practice of learning to pay attention in the present moment nonjudgmentally. Why would you want to do that? Well, there is a huge body of research showing that people who cultivate mindfulness through practices such as meditation and yoga are better able to pay attention in the face of distraction (i.e., effortful control), are happier, are less prone to depression and anxiety, have a stronger immune system, get along with people better, and cope with serious life stresses more easily. Mindfulness helps people take difficulties in stride, to step back and problem-solve without getting as stressed out, to pause and think before engaging in conflict, and to approach challenges with curiosity instead of defeat. You can imagine the potential of these types of benefits for promoting grit, tenacity, and perseverance in the face of all kinds of challenges and setbacks!

What’s also important is that these skills are completely learnable by almost everyone, as far as I can see in the research. There are research-based programs coming out of many prestigious universities, like Stanford and Harvard, that teach these life-changing skills in a very short period of time. There are also several organizations around the country going into schools and teaching them to children at all ages and settings. Many are taking very seriously the potential of mindfulness to help develop resiliency for underserved students.

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Nikki Shechtman, Ph.D. is Senior Educational Researcher at SRI International, Center for Technology in Learning. Nikki explores research-based, theory-driven approaches to understanding and improving engagement, teaching, and learning in mathematics—particularly for the most disadvantaged students. Her work has focused on productive dispositions for teaching and learning, mathematical argumentation, use of dynamic representational technology, and introducing productive playfulness into serious classrooms. Among several other projects, Nikki led a team to lead a Department of Education study entitled “Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance—Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century”. Her work has been published in journals in educational research, learning sciences, mathematics education, educational technology design, psychology, human-computer interaction, and play studies.

A Federal Study on Grit: An Interview with Researcher, Nikki Shechtman (Part 1)

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

Nikki Shechtman is a researcher at SRI International. She recently led a study for the Department of Education on the influence of grit, tenacity, and perseverance on learning. In addition to presenting at the How Kids Learn III conference, Nikki was interviewed for this blog. In part 1, we asked for a clear definition of terms, why study grit, and asked Nikki for a brief overview of her study. Practitioners should also view The 7 Habits of Happy Kids. 

In part 2, we asked how these traits can be taught, the value of informal learning within afterschool and summer programs, examples of useful practices, and the role of mindfulness. 

Q: First, can you give us a rough definition of grit, tenacity, and perseverance? And describe if and how they are different from one another. 

A: When we first started out to do our research for the Grit Brief, the first challenge we ran into was that there were so many different terms that are similar or overlapping in meaning. Researchers have actually come up with a term for this phenomenon—it’s called the “Jingle/Jangle” Problem. “Jingle” is when the same term is used to refer to different concepts, and “jangle” is when different terms are used for the same concept. And it’s actually deeper than just words, because each term comes from a particular community of practice and speaks to their needs and culture. Many terms have long traditions of research or practice behind them. Are we talking about grit, tenacity, persistence, perseverance? Or other very closely related terms like conscientiousness, engagement, agency, and resilience?

Nikki Shechtman

What we decided to do was synthesize what we saw as key facets of these terms together to develop our own working definition of “grit” that we would use throughout the brief:

Perseverance to accomplish long-term or higher-order goals in the face of challenges and setbacks, engaging students’ psychological resources, such as their academic mindsets, effortful control, and strategies and tactics.

For folks who are interested, in Chapter 2 of the brief we have a table of all these different terms and how people have defined them. It’s very interesting to look at them next to each other to see what’s similar and different. I think what they all have in common is the notion of carrying on to success in the face of challenge.


Q: Why is it important to study grit, tenacity, and perseverance?

A: This has become an important and popular focus in education. All over the country, educational, research, professional, technical, and policy communities are recognizing that children and adolescents simply must have stronger preparation for the challenges of 21st century life. Learning about the content of the disciplines is necessary, but it’s not sufficient for success in school and life. Children need skills to deal with the difficulties and challenges they face as students and will face as adults, and they need support to take on and achieve big and meaningful goals in their academic and professional lives. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this has arisen so prominently in the public discourse at a time of intense economic volatility and rapidly changing workforce needs. I also think the opportunities afforded by new and emerging technologies are opening new doors of possibility for this.

A critical need in our country, of course, is to support underserved student populations. Students dealing with conditions of poverty are especially in need of support—they can face acute challenges of stress, limited social support, lack of critical resources, and psychological disempowerment and disenfranchisement. Educators can play an important role in closing unacceptable achievement gaps and helping these students get on a positive track and hold the course to succeed at school and beyond.

But kids across the socioeconomic spectrum need to develop mature ways of dealing with challenges. All kids need to learn conceptually complex material that takes time and attention, they need to learn to persist through academic assignments that are important but not necessarily intrinsically interesting to them, and they need to be able to manage competing demands across coursework from multiple classes and extracurricular activities. Students need to learn skills for the 21st-century workplace that require complex knowledge work and collaboration. Lots of students will be preparing for STEM careers that require complicated training pathways over many years and mastery of extensive and difficult disciplinary material. And, of course, nobody is exempt from life’s random and unexpected challenges and setbacks—from illness to financial trouble to interpersonal conflict—that often need to be dealt with at the same time.

It’s an exciting and promising time. There’s growing recognition that educators can play an important role in promoting these factors for students. There’s already been a tremendous amount of research in this area. A broad range of programs in different educational settings have been implementing a variety of approaches to promoting these factors. Many foundations and federal agencies are investing resources in figuring out the best ways to do this. Also, there are many new technologies that are providing opportunities to significantly advance our capability to address these issues—there is great potential in technologies, for example, that are adaptive to student needs, help students manage their lives better, and provide access to a wealth of material and human resources over the internet. Having these resources can help students get past typical “stuck” points and move toward much bigger goals.


Q: Could you summarize your report? 

A: Here’s a quick overview of what we cover. For a summary of the major findings in each, I’d recommend reading the Executive Summary—it’s pretty short!

Chapter 1. This introductory chapter provides the broad context for what’s going on in the field right now and discusses the research methods used to develop the brief.

Chapter 2. This chapter addresses questions around theory: What are grit, tenacity, and perseverance? What are the key components of these competencies? What psychological and contextual factors support and promote them?

Chapter 3. This chapter addresses questions around measurement: How are these factors measured currently? How can they be measured in the future? How can technology provide new tools and strategies?

Chapter 4. This chapter addresses questions around existing approaches: What types of programs, approaches, and technologies have been developed to promote these factors for a wide variety of learners?

Chapter 5. This culminating chapter addresses the needs of practitioners, researchers, and policymakers: What are key conclusions and recommendations for practice, research, and policy?
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Nikki Shechtman, Ph.D. is Senior Educational Researcher at SRI International, Center for Technology in Learning. Nikki explores research-based, theory-driven approaches to understanding and improving engagement, teaching, and learning in mathematics—particularly for the most disadvantaged students. Her work has focused on productive dispositions for teaching and learning, mathematical argumentation, use of dynamic representational technology, and introducing productive playfulness into serious classrooms. Among several other projects, Nikki led a team to lead a Department of Education study entitled “Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance—Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century”. Her work has been published in journals in educational research, learning sciences, mathematics education, educational technology design, psychology, human-computer interaction, and play studies.

Exploring Creativity

Sam Piha

By Sam Piha

In her recent blog entitled "Creativity is the Secret Sauce in STEM" published by Edutopia, Ainissa Ramirez wrote, "Creativity is the secret sauce to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). It is a STEM virtue. While most scientists and engineers might be reluctant to admit that, and to accept the concept of STEAM (where A is for Art), I’ve witnessed that the best of the best are the most creative. 

So how do we make our children more creative? 

Ainissa Ramirez

Researchers have found that play is important for productive thought.Playing with ideas also increases learning. We must encourage playing with concepts to nurture creativity in students." 

To explore this notion of creativity, I interviewed several people in the arts, including Judith Leinen, a young adult sculptor from Germany and Sheri Simons, an art professor at Chico State University. Below are some of their responses to my questions.

How would you define creativity for yourself?

Sheri: Curiosity. Looking and listening, paying attention, willingness to risk.

Judith: There's one thing I can often see in creative processes. It's a paradox interplay between knowledge and forgetting knowledge. Every decision is made in a system with laws of nature and general principles or even with the knowledge of common ways to do something or to solve a problem. A creative way of working would often ignore or overcome these contexts but with the knowledge about all of these rules in mind. Maybe a definition for creativity could be "a flexible mind".

How important is creativity in your life?

Judith Leinen

Judith: I think creativity is important for everybody's personal life and also for every society itself. To me, its the key to development and also to critical thinking. To me it's much more than a floating skill in a context of art but a general ability and a part of thinking in general. I would consider creativity as a very important thing in my life.

When you were young, how was creativity supported?

Judith: I think the biggest influence in my life was my father and my grandmother, who lived in the same house. My grandmother always challenged, questioned and tried out a fact or a rule before she accepted it. She did this with small things, for example, instructions in any recipe. “No we'll do this different and take cream instead of milk....” I think this had an effect on me. It made me act in a similar way and led me to experiment in my daily life. As I grew up I had nearly no access to contemporary culture like exhibitions or theatre. But I always wanted to build something. My parents would provide me with tools and craft supplies, would always involve me in hands-on projects around the house, and also encouraged me and my siblings to invent self made gifts.

In public school, I had art as a subject from the age of 6 to 18. Looking back,  I think this was a giant support for creativity and also an intense influence on all the other subjects. 

As an art instructor, how have creative endeavors benefitted your students? 

Sheri Simons

Sheri: By allowing them to practice divergent thinking, not settling for the first thirty ideas that slide off of the top of the brain easily; and accepting trial and error as a methodology.


Do you find that creative endeavors are easy, fun, or hard and challenging?  

Sheri: Both, neither and all. In sculpture we say, “Everything works on paper”… meaning you have to take the idea into the world. Easier said than done. There are many searches involved in that activity: materials, ideas, gravity, and reality. So even more than the fun or easy or hard or challenging, there’s the simple satisfaction of TRYING things out, which means you interface between the thoughts in your mind and the real world. The learning quotient is somewhere between what you think and what you do.

How did engaging in creativity when you were young shape your adult life?

Judith: I think it shaped my approach to a lot of small daily life decisions, figuring out daily decisions and logical problems. But also in a more general way, it shaped my skills and access to my environment. It provided a pool of personal experiences. I was able to collect these experiences that included simple insights about the world and my engagement with it. I was always encouraged to act in a creative way.  

Is there a reason why we should keep the arts as part of the educational experience? 

Sheri: Dubuffet said, “Art is to disturb”. To make waves might mean beauty amid the ugly. It may redefine both terms. It calls for constant awakening. If we stop teaching visual thinking, how long might it take before we become art somnambulists? Lazy in our eyes, clumsy fingers, lost in our problem solving abilities, and ultimately prone to submissive living?

Do you think the typical child in schools is given enough support and access to creative expression?

Judith: I don't think so. From my point of view, creative activities in public schools are often not as appreciated as they should be. My experience is that the arts are usually the first subjects to be cut in tight financial times. Creative expression should be supported as it can lead to successful results in scientific subjects or even help to formulate one's own opinion in social, philosophical or linguistic subjects. A specialty of public schools is that their curriculum is accessible in a very democratic way and to all children independent of their economic background. But if creative education at school is replaced by other programs, it will only be accessible by privileged children. Thus, public education would not comply with its responsibilities.  

Do you have any thoughts you would care to share on the link between creativity and learning?

Judith: I think creativity is fundamental for any kind of learning and thinking. Learning is more than just acquiring knowledge - it includes a way of thinking. It includes the ability to use this knowledge in our daily lives, making connections between different fields of information, linking facts in a logical way, and in transferring our knowledge from one context to another. Without the ability to use cognition with creativity, most of the learned content would just be empty information. The practice of tackling projects that require creative thinking has a large influence on our ability to find solutions and solve problems. It allows us to apply theoretical knowledge to practical life. 

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Judith Leinen was born in 1985 in a village close to the German- Belgian Border.  After her Abitur degree she studied fine arts, mathematics and pedagogics in Mainz, Germany. Since 2007 she has participated continuously in solo- and group-exhibitions. With the art-group Upper Bleistein, she realized several art projects, interactive sculptures and space- related installations  revolving around issues like public space, imagination and reality, parallel worlds, participation and communication. In 2010 a catalog documenting the work of Upper Bleistein was published by Gonzo-Verlag. Her first public commission was installed in summer 2013 at a school in Mainz, Germany. Judith Leinen worked freelancing as a pedagogic for different organizations and directed Media projects with youth. Judith Leinen is currently enrolled in a postgraduate program at California State University Chico as a guest scholar. 

Sheri Simons is interested in sculpture as an instrument, broadly defined as something that aids in or causes an action or a reaction. Working in wood, sound, and movement for the last eleven years has led to solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the U.S., Canada and South America.  

She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The California Arts Council and The Michigan Council for the Arts. Public arts commissions in California, Ohio, and Washington have provided the opportunity to think large, incorporate pedestrians in art, and experiment with varied media. Her commissions include public installations for three libraries, a juvenile court, and an administration building for the Water Board. In addition to maintaining a studio practice, Sheri is a professor in the sculpture area of the Department of Art and Art History at California State University, Chico. 

School’s Starting: Are Students Ready? The Benefits of Summer Learning for Kids’ Physical and Academic Fitness

By Guest Bloggers Patrice Chamberlain, Director of the California Summer Meal Coalition & Jennifer Peck, Summer Matters Campaign Co-Chair   

Patrice Chamberlain

It’s almost time to head back to school– but are students ready? One telling sign of a student’s physical health and academic readiness for the year ahead is whether they had access to a high quality summer learning program.

It is well documented that a lack of summer learning opportunities leads to “summer learning loss” – the loss of skills and knowledge that causes teachers to spend valuable fall classroom time re-teaching students who need catching up. 

According to the National Summer Learning Association, the cost of re-teaching material that students forget due to summer learning loss is four to six weeks of school time, or $1,500 per student. 

Jennifer Peck

It's not just academics that suffer when students miss out on summer learning, but their physical health may suffer as well. Low-income and rural communities often have fewer supermarkets and retail outlets offering healthy food; they may also lack safe places to play. For many children living in those neighborhoods, school’s summer closure means disrupted access to a consistent source of healthy food and fewer opportunities for physical activity. Without that access, children may become sedentary and eat junk food or skip meals. 

A UC Irvine study found that low-income children are more likely to fall into these unhealthy habits due to a lack of opportunity to participate in organized activities. Without access to summer learning activities, students may gain weight two to three times faster during the summer than during the school year. 

As part of a nationwide effort to prevent summer learning loss, a growing number of school districts are recognizing the need to make providing equal access to high-quality summer learning programs a priority because they offer an unparalleled opportunity for children to learn while having fun, with nutritious meals and health and wellness education blended into engaging projects and activities.

In addition to the summer learning activities taking place in schools, there are also community-based organizations across California that are partnering in new and innovative ways – and opening their doors to students and their families – to make sure summer matters. 

In Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego, for example, local libraries have joined the efforts to keep kids healthy by jointly launching Summer Lunch at the Library programs to combat summer learning loss and summer hunger – offering summer reading programs along with free, healthy lunches through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s summer nutrition programs.

Summertime is an untapped resource; when students are free from homework and other stresses associated with the school year, they are free to learn and participate in new ways. In addition, summer programs can help promote healthy eating and active living by incorporating physical activity and nutrition education. Introducing students to summer’s agricultural abundance through summer programs is a great way to increase consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables (not to mention it helps California farmers too). 

Although the onset of the school year will soon leave summer as a distant memory, we must continue to advocate for a coordinated and year-round approach to student health and learning that includes summer—it’s an investment in our students’ future. Parents, government agencies, community organizations, businesses, and school districts all play a role in setting students up for success. They are, after all, our future leaders and workforce that will help sustain our communities. 

A Framework for Thinking and Learning

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

Below, we have reposted an interview conducted by Marc Tucker with Kai-ming Cheng, Professor and Chair of Education and Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China. You can find the original post here. (This is an edited version of the full interview, which can be found here.) In this interview, Professor Cheng talks about the changing workplace and the needed change in how we educate children. His framework for thinking and learning is very much aligned with the Learning in Afterschool & Summer learning principles. 

Marc Tucker

Marc Tucker: In your essay, Learning and society in a post-industrial era, you describe the way the nature of work is changing in advanced industrial societies and how that is affecting the kinds of skills people now need.  How and when did that research begin? 

Kai-ming Cheng: I started my study of the workplace about 12 or 13 years ago by looking at the way work was organized at investment banks like Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong.  I found that the investment bankers work in small task forces and teams, just a few people — a one-stop shop.  In other organizations, these task forces are often called a deal team, an account team, a project team and so on.  These teams function semi-autonomously, with great freedom to respond to the quickly changing environment in which they work.  The team members bring different skills, knowledge and experience to the work and are expected to draw on one another constantly to get the work of the team done. 

Kai-ming Cheng

This is very different from the typical pyramidal structure in the traditional industrial company where you usually find a whole army of front line workers all of whom look upward in the pyramid, looking for close direction from their superiors.   In that structure, the expertise is above each worker in the pyramid, each worker operates only in a narrow sphere and the autonomy of each worker is very limited. 

The client is no longer expected to move around and be served by different department of the organization, nor is each department expected to face all clients.  Instead, the client is assigned a team whose job it is to meet that client's unique needs, needs that are constantly changing.  Those needs are often very complex and demand a holistic service by integrating all kinds of expertise on the part of the firm. This is happening more and more and in many workplace situations. 

MST: Tell us how this impacts the work that people do and what they have to know to do it.

KMC: In the pyramidal situation, typically the front line worker only needs to know how to follow instructions and what the procedures, rules or regulations are.  The workers don't have to design, run risks or face the clients directly, most of the time. They are protected by bureaucracy.  They are not liable for their mistakes as long as they follow procedures.  They are not at risk of facing any moral dilemmas or personality conflicts with clients.  But now, in small groups, even the frontline workers have to interact with clients, they have to solve problems and design, they have to run risks. 

MST: How are the changes in the workplace leading to the types of skills workers must have today?

KMC: Everybody has to share the same responsibilities such as brainstorming,

thinking of what to do next, working with others on a team, being creative all the time regardless of where you are and you have to constantly face ethical challenges and moral dilemmas, and you have to think outside the box, you have to run risks, you have to face changing networks and changing markets, and no one is doing the same thing all the time, you have to adapt to change on a daily basis. 

MST: Your paper presents a picture of an increasing distance between what educators are doing and what people actually need to function well in this world.  

KMC: Let me first give you the other story about the changes now taking place. Today, individuals may not do what they learn.  In [the past, people were] bound to organizations and occupations, in much the same way their predecessors were bound to the land and nature.  But now, that is all coming unglued.  Individuals are increasingly less bound to either organizations or occupations, but now they fall into insecurity and uncertainty.  More and more people in Hong Kong are freelancing and serving several companies at one time, or working in home offices.  A ballet dancer I know performs, teaches, designs for other people, invests in real estate, and joined an NGO to work on rural China.  So what kind of occupation is she really in?  More and more people will be working outside organizations and more and more people will have to create their own work. 

MST: What are the signs that the education system is still organized to produce people for a world that is actually disappearing before our eyes? 

KMC: The education system is trying to turn human beings into human resources according to the labor market pyramid, which unfortunately no longer exists.  We have to turn a system that has been organized to sort students out and instead organize it to make sure that virtually all students are very well educated.  Because of that, educators who are trained in the 20th century are perhaps not the best candidates for reformers.  They only know education as assisting a few instead of everybody.  This is the challenge.  If we think different people should be allowed to learn differently, how do we do it?

MST: You evidently believe that if we are going to enable people to cope with changes, we should focus less on the structure of the system and the resources it requires, and more on learning and the kinds of learning experiences people deserve.  Why is this true?  What does it mean to you? 

KMC: The system we have is based on credentials. What we do not focus on is what is actually learned at each stage of the structure, which brings about implications for life.  We need to move away from the focus on credentials.  It is certainly true that workers will have to have real expertise that is deep.  But that will no longer be enough.  There is no guarantee that what you have already learned will enable you to do well in the future.  At Morgan Stanley, they seldom appoint people in investment banking with financial, economic or accounting backgrounds.  Even the accounting companies like KPMG, are hiring people other than accountants.  Employers are looking at how well the candidates for their jobs will be able to cope with a very uncertain future, how fast they will be able to learn and what they will need to know. 

MST: You have developed a framework for thinking about learning.  Would you share it? 

KMC: I looked into the science of learning and realized there are five points that may summarize what learning is: 

• Learning is meaning-making, that is, making sense of the world around us;
• Learning is about construction of knowledge, rather than transmission of knowledge;
• Learning is about experience, hence "learning by doing"—real life experience is the best learning;
• Learning is about understanding and using knowledge—you can't claim understanding before you can successfully apply it in practice; and
• People learn in groups.

I use these as guidelines to understand the education system.  It really matters whether we are giving students the kinds of learning experiences they deserve, whether the pedagogy is helping the student to be an active learner, and whether the assessments are helping students understand, experience and apply the knowledge, or whether we are simply testing how much students have stored in their brains.  I use these guidelines to determine which reforms are moving in the right direction and which ones are not. 

MST: What would schooling look like if it answered to that description?  What would a classroom look like? 

KMC: Central to this question is whether or not they are having real-life experiences.  If you put learning in context and make experiences central in the learning process, things would be very different, and students would learn not only more, but much more efficiently.

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Marc S. Tucker (born 1939) is the president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy. He is an internationally recognized expert on education reform and a leader in benchmarking the policies and practices of the countries with the best education systems in the world.

Kai-ming Cheng is Professor and Chair of Education and Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China. As a member of China's State Advisory Committee on Curriculum Reform and of the Hong Kong Education Commission, Kai-ming has been instrumental in the education reforms taking place in Hong Kong and mainland China.  He is a member of the Center on Intentional Education Benchmarking (CIEB) advisory board.