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Cooperative Games: Discovering How Much Fun Competition ISN’T

https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/coop-games/
Created
Tue, 15/02/2022 - 00:17
Foreword to Cooperative Games 2022 Cooperative Games Discovering How Much Fun Competition Isn’t By Alfie Kohn [This essay is adapted from the Foreword to Cooperative Games in Education by Suzanne Lyons (Teachers College Press, 2022)]   The reassuring bromide that “there’s no such thing as a stupid question” can be easily refuted by spending a few minutes with a standardized ... Read More

Less and Less Curious

https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/curiosity/
Created
Fri, 27/09/2024 - 02:07
EDUCATION WEEK October 2, 2024 Less and Less Curious By Alfie Kohn When Susan Engel, a developmental psychologist and teacher-educator at Williams College, decided to spend a few months observing suburban elementary schools, she had a specific goal in mind: to study variations in rates of children’s curiosity. Which kids asked lots of questions? Which classrooms tended to encourage that? ... Read More

Why Feedback Often Doesn’t Help

https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/feedback/
Created
Mon, 19/09/2022 - 23:53
EDUCATION WEEK September 21, 2022 Why Feedback Often Doesn’t Help By Alfie Kohn [This is an expanded version of the published article, which was given a different title.] A lot of people make a living by offering advice about how teachers should give feedback to students — or how administrators should give feedback to teachers. Unfortunately, a body of compelling ... Read More

The Sneaky Conservativism of Ed Tech

https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/tech-conservatism/
Created
Sat, 23/09/2023 - 21:53
EDUCATION WEEK September 27, 2023 The Sneaky Conservatism of Ed Tech By Alfie Kohn Have you ever noticed that people in positions of power who earnestly exhort us to “think outside the box” are likely to resist any effort to change the box itself? Take the folks in Silicon Valley. Their basic mission, as technology critic Evgeny Morozov argued recently, ... Read More
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