Description
Book SynopsisIn this important new book, Stephanie Pace Marshall argues that by focusing on reforming the contents of schooling and not transforming the context and conditions of learning, we have created false proxies for learning and eroded the potentially vibrant intellectual life of our schools. Finishing a course and a textbook has come to mean achievement. Listening to a lecture has come to mean understanding. Getting a high score on a standardized test has come to mean proficiency. Credentialing has come to mean competence. To educate our children wisely requires that we create generative learning communities, by design. Such learning communities have their roots in meaning, not memory; engagement, not transmission; inquiry, not compliance; exploration, not acquisition; personalization, not uniformity; interdependence, not individualism; collaboration, not competition; and trust, not fear.
Trade Review"…this is a wonderful book to help guide your story as a person, a leader, a critical member of an interdependent system and to reconnect yourself with the reasons why you became an educator in the first place." (
TC Record, December 2006)
Table of ContentsPreface: The Call for a Radical New Story of Learning and Schooling xi
Gratitudes xix
About the Author xxiii
Prologue: Songlines xxv
Part One: The Journey Toward Wholeness 1
1 Firestorm or Gift? 3
The Power of Story
2 What Living Systems Teach Us 19
3 Nurturing Integral Habits of Mind 37
4 A New Learning Landscape 67
Aspen Grove by Design
Part Two: Designing the New Learning Landscape 77
5 Integrity 79
Naming and Owning Our Integral Learning Identity
6 Vibrancy 97
Generating and Using Abundant Learning Information
7 Interdependence 107
Inviting and Sustaining Collaborative
Learning Relationships
8 Coherence 117
Stimulating Creative and Self-Organizing
Learning Processes
9 Sustainability 131
Weaving and Mapping Networked Learning Patterns
10 Stability 143
Creating Flexible, Temporary, and Adaptive Learning Structures
11 A Generative Community for Integral Learning
Aspen Grove Revisited 171
Part Three: A Call for Leaders 183
12 The Right Moment 185
Answering the Call
13 Elder-Leadership 191
Changing the Current Story
14 Creating the Radical New Story of
Learning and Schooling 197
Afterword: A Letter to My Grandchildren 211
American Psychological Association Principles for Learner-Centered Education 215
Howard Gardner’s “Multiple Intelligences” 217
The Two Stories of Learning and Schooling Contrasted 219
Notes 227
Index 235
