Improvisation in Teaching « Creativity & Innovation - Keith Sawyer

The New York Times article “Building a Better Teacher”* describes two different studies of exceptional teachers and what they do that makes them great. One study is by Deborah Ball, Dean of the School of Education at Michigan State University, who created Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT). The second is by Doug Lemov, an educational consultant and author of Lemov’s Taxonomy. What makes excellent teachers is a paradoxical combination: Both MKT and Lemov’s Taxonomy identify a repertoire of standard practices that teachers engage in constantly. But at the same time, both Ball and Lemov have observed that expert teachers improvise constantly. After describing how Deborah Ball, in a math class she was teaching, spent ten minutes entertaining a student’s incorrect idea about odd and even numbers–ultimately, to guide the class to an important fact that was not on the day’s lesson plan–the NYT article notes “Dropping a lesson plan and fruitfully improvising requires a certain kind of knowledge.”

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Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time! by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

This lengthy and yet highly important article in my view forms the basis of a really important discussion that is now occuring globally. Here Tapschott and Williams offer a cogent and compelling plan for re-inventing universities for 21st Century. Read this article and forward it to every single person you know is involved in education. "Encyclopedias, newspapers, and record labels have a lot in common. They all are in the business of producing content. They recruit, manage, and compensate capable producers. Their products are composed of atoms — books, papers, CDs, DVDs — and are costly to create and distribute. Their products are proprietary, and they take legal action against those who infringe their intellectual property. Because they create unique value, their customers pay them, and they have revenue. Their business is possible because of scarcity: quality news, information, knowledge, learning, art.

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Executive Education is Dead As We Know It, Where to from Here?

This is no idle statement. Read the opening statement from the Harvard Business Centenary Global Business Summit "Business Education in 21st Century. ...On the whole, MBA programs are in decline. Their value is being questioned, and they are seen as overly emphasizing analytics rather than skill development and experiences. Deans, executives, and recruiters identified four main areas where current MBA programs are falling short: leadership; globalization; communication/presentation skills; and problem identification in ambiguous environments... It came as a shock to The Creative Leadership Forum to see our own research so strongly validated on the failure of business school education to provide practical business skills by the most famous business school brand globally. And the trend is not just in America. Since the global financial crisis in November 2008, Australia's leading business schools have had dramatic drops in attendance of up to 70%

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Business Education in 21st Century - A Summary from Harvard

Below is the preamble to an 80 minute live video presentation made at the Harvard's Centenary Global Business Summit on bsuiness education in 21st Century. In addition, you can download an executive summary of the lecture here. Overview On the whole, MBA programs are in decline. Their value is being questioned, and they are seen as overly emphasizing analytics rather than skill development and experiences. Deans, executives, and recruiters identified four main areas where current MBA programs are falling short: leadership; globalization; communication/presentation skills; and problem identification in ambiguous environments. In response, MBA programs are innovating and experimenting to change the MBA experience, and to help business education regain its relevance and value. They are changing their curricula and are attempting to make the learning experience more interactive, engaging, global, and experiential.

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Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age: A New Model for the Workplace

Randy Nelson, Dean of Pixar University, describes a new model for learning and working in what he calls the Collaborative Age at the Apple Education Leadership Summit