Education Next – Jay P. Greene
“Education reform has fallen prey to one ill-conceived fad after another. Whether the trend du jour is tearing down classroom walls, adopting whole language reading, or pursuing “21st-century skills” such as creative thinking and collaborating, we eagerly latch on to reform after reform with little skepticism and before the effectiveness of a new approach has been tested by research. This historical pattern has made people understandably wary of all the recent excitement about noncognitive or character skills, like grit, emotion regulation ability, and growth mindset. This new attention to character skills has many of the markings of previous failed fads. Key school leaders are embracing the importance of character skills before we’ve even clearly defined the concepts, let alone how they could be measured. And a variety of vendors are hawking character-skill curricula and pedagogical practices before they have been validated by rigorous research. In short, school and educator practice with respect to character skills is running far ahead of knowledge.”(more)