Teaching Change

Educators who want their graduates ready for an unpredictable world may get further by placing relationships, resilience, and reflection at the center of teaching. Changing someone's mind is harder than most instructors assume. People process information through their emotions and the communities they belong to, so they often set aside evidence that conflicts with what they already believe, and a lecture full of facts seldom changes that on its own.

The author argues that education must be redesigned to reflect how human thinking, behavior, bias, and change actually work. Drawing on recent research, he suggests shifting attention away from the teacher and the subject matter and toward the student and the learning process. He examines student psychology, the history and hidden assumptions of teaching, anxiety, and bias, and proposes a new set of three Rs: relationships, resilience, and reflection. The book also offers explicit learning designs intended to build the habit of thinking for oneself.

He makes the case for a liberal education, which he describes as liberating, and insists it needs rethinking if it is to produce lifelong learners and citizens who can think in divergent and independent ways. Its argument is broad and ambitious, and it draws on biology, economics, education, and neuroscience. Alongside this research, it offers hundreds of practical suggestions for individual teachers.