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Explores the nature and role of wisdom in education. Modern scholarship has struggled to come to terms with the meaning of wisdom and its significance in the field of education. This book examines the importance of pursuing wisdom in schools by turning to ancient and medieval sources for clarification concerning the nature of wisdom. Sean Steel argues that our current emphasis on the development of rigorous critical-analytic thinking skills, on assessment, and on accountability in education has negatively impacted the ability of schools to foster an environment in which both students and teachers might pursue wisdom. Although in recent times efforts have been made to incorporate the pursuit of wisdom into schools through Philosophy for Children (P4C) and contemplative education programming, such initiatives have missed their mark. Steel therefore recommends not more accountability in education for the purpose of ensuring global competitiveness, but rather the institutional promotion of periods of leisure or schole in the school day. Drawing upon his own experiences as a teacher who has tried to encourage students to search for wisdom, the author discusses some of the challenges and pitfalls of wisdom seeking. He also offers examples of various wisdom-seeking activities that might bear fruit in the classroom.
In this innovative and cogent presentation of her concept of sustainable happiness, Catherine O’Brien outlines how the leading recommendations for transforming education can be integrated within a vision of well-being for all. Solution-focused, the book demonstrates how aspects of this vision are already being realized, and the potential for accelerating education transitions that enable people and ecosystems to flourish. Each chapter assists educators to understand how to apply the lessons learned, both personally and professionally. The aim is to support educators to experience themselves as change-makers with growing confidence to implement new teaching strategies and inspire their students to become change-makers as well—engaged in deep learning that develops character, connections with life, and invigorating collaborations that revitalize the very purpose of education.
Both practical and inspiring, this book is designed to empower educators and school leaders to make clear and simple adjustments to their practice for a lasting impact on the happiness and well- being of staff and children and ultimately on academic standards. It includes practical tips and activities to help teachers generate a lasting atmosphere of positivity and happiness in the classroom plus clear strategies to help leaders to embed the Spread the Happiness approach throughout their school and across the curriculum. This book includes detailed case studies, a five-week programme of taster challenges and a section on measuring outcomes and sharing success. The Spread the Happiness approach invites teachers to undertake a 27-day challenge, which encourages problem solving and challenges them to make their immediate workplace happier. It identifies the strengths of adults and children and sets realistic goals to achieve as an individual, as a team and even as a community. This powerful resource will be of great interest to all teachers and school leaders, as well as trainee teachers and students on leadership or early educational courses.
This book provides an introduction to the theory of positive psychology and a practical guide on how to implement the theory in (primarily secondary) schools.
Want to be a lifelong learner? Think small. Forget spending 10,000 hours in the pursuit of perfecting just one thing. The true path to success and achievement lies in the pursuit of perfecting lots and lots of small things--for a big payoff. Combining positive psychology, neuroscience, self-help and more, this delightfully illuminating book encourages us to circumvent all the reasons we "can't" learn and grow (we're too busy, it's too complicated, we're not experts, we didn't start when we were young) -- by tackling small, satisfying skills. Wish you were a seasoned chef? Learn to make a perfect omelette. Dream of being a racecar driver? Perfect a handbrake turn. Wish you could draw? Make Zen circles your first challenge. These small, doable tasks offer a big payoff -- and motivate us to keep learning and growing, with payoffs that include a boost in optimism, confidence, memory, cognitive skills, and more. Filled with surprising insights and even a compendium of micromastery skills to try yourself, this engaging and inspiring guide reminds us of the simple joy of learning -- and opens the door to limitless, lifelong achievement, one small step at a time. Micromasteries presented in the book (with illustrations) include: Learn How to Climb a Rope, Surf Standing Up, Talk for Fifteen Minutes about Any Subject, Bake Artisan Bread, Juggle Four Balls, Learn to Read Japanese in Three Hours, and more.
Start with Joy: Designing Literacy Learning for Student Happiness links what we know from the science of happiness with what we know about effective literacy instruction. By examining characters in the books they read, children develop empathy for others and come to understand that we all struggle and we all love. When given a choice about what to write, children express hopes, fears, and reactions to life's experiences. Literacy learning is full of opportunities for students to learn tools to live a happy life. Inside, you'll find: Seven Pillars: The author offers seven pillars that will make classrooms more joyful, engaging, and purposeful--Connection, Choice, Challenge, Play, Story, Discovery, and Movement. Ten Invitations: These ten lessons may be presented at any time of year in the context of any unit and include children's literature suggestions as well as recommended teacher talk to meet children's specific needs. Teaching Tools: Tools and resources that will help students tell their stories and make literacy learning something all students celebrate and cherish. This book honors the adventure that learning is meant to be. By infusing school days with happiness, teachers can support children as they become stronger readers, writers, and thinkers, while also helping them learn that strength comes from challenge, and joy comes from leading a purposeful life.
Happiness "is neither a privilege of the few, nor a fleeting state of mind: it is hidden behind a door that every person can open once they have found it, at the end of an arduous journey of self-discovery." The two Nobel Prize-winning writers Rabindranath Tagore and Hermann Hesse are arguably very different: one comes to us from the core of Indian culture, the other from the very heart of Old Europe; the former is an eternal wanderer, the latter a determined armchair traveller. Still, there are extraordinary affinities between their works, and they both understood that the path to happiness is paved with small acts and simple notions. Flavia Arzeni’s book offers us an oasis of stability and calm in which we can find the answers to our fundamental concerns about life and happiness.
Happiness and Wisdom contributes to ongoing debates about the nature of Augustine's early development, and argues that Augustine's vision of the soul's ascent through the liberal arts is an attractive and basically coherent view of learning, which, while not wholly novel, surpasses both classical and earlier patristic renderings of the aims of education.
This volume is a major new contribution to Joel Spring reportage and analysis of the intersection of global forces and education—offers a new paradigm for global school systems. Education for global economic competition is the prevailing goal of most national school systems. Spring argues that recent international studies by economists, social psychologists, and others on the social factors that support subjective well-being and longevity should serve as a call to arms to change education policy; the current industrial-consumer paradigm is not supportive of either happiness or long life.Building his argument through an original documentation, synthesis, and critique of prevailing global economic goals for schools and research on social conditions that support happiness and long life, Spring: *develops guidelines for a global core curriculum, methods of instruction, and school organizations; *translates these guidelines into a new paradigm for global school systems based on progressive, human rights, and environmental educational traditions; *contrasts differing ways of seeing and knowing among indigenous, Western, and Confucian-based societies, concluding that global teaching and learning involve a particular form of holistic knowing and seeing; and*proposes a prototype for a global school—an eco-school that functions to protect the biosphere and human rights and to support the happiness and well-being of the school staff, students, and immediate community—and for a global core curriculum based on holistic models for lessons and instruction. The book concludes with Spring’s retelling of Plato’s parable of the cave—in which educators break the chains that bind them to the industrial-consumer paradigm and rethink their commitment to humanity’s welfare.
