Today on Getting Unstuck

Heather Clayton Staker is a researcher and author who has spent 15 years studying innovation in education. She is co-author of Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools, and the founder of Ready to Blend, an organization that helps schools design and implement student-centered environments using online and blended learning.

Heather Clayton Staker on why this conversation matters

“Schools can be a microcosm of the lovely world that we want our children to grow up to create themselves. One starting point is to shift the power structure so that children are given agency and ownership to drive their own learning. Part of the shift from a teacher-led to a student-driven mindset will come from giving students multiple learning pathways and empowering them to set their own goals and follow them.“

How you can use this podcast

Heather speaks early on in the interview about a student-centered environment vs a teacher-centered environment. In the former, we see greater student agency, a more personalized environment where students have greater say in their own learning and the pace of their learning. In the latter, we see greater passivity on the part of kids. If the school environment is a continuum of student-centered to teacher-centered, where do most of your teachers and classrooms fall? If they are more teacher-centered, what would it take to move them toward student centered?
Heather describes a micro-credentialing environment where educators would be able to self-select competencies that they want to master and then demonstrate mastery. So this would be a shift in how educators access professional development, away from the “sit and get,” one-model fits all, to more teacher-centered. What’s a competency you might be interested in working on?