Terry Heick Archives

The Underlying Assumptions Of A Curriculum

One underlying assumption of a curriculum is that it’s comprised of knowledge and skills that are both knowable and worth knowing.

The purpose of curriculum is to provide a mutual language to organize and communicate knowledge–and students inherit its implications.

A good question can open minds, shift paradigms, and force the uncomfortable but transformational cognitive dissonance that can help create thinkers.

The shift toward a fluid, formless, socialized nature of information, thought, and belief is a not a small one.

In an increasingly digital world, the things a student needs to know are indeed changing–sometimes drastically.

What is the relationship between quality and effect? It’s partly causal but that’s not exactly it. But there is clearly interdependence.

Some readers may think they dislike the process of reading but everyone loves ideas–and reading is a wonderful strategy to find them.

Critical thinking is certainly a ‘skill’ but when possessed as a mindset–a playful and humble willingness–it shifts from a labor to an art.

Teaching / November 10, 2020 / Terry Heick

Good teaching is addicting–a kind of magic. It’s also unsustainable by the standards we’ve created for schools and teachers.

This is first about how the process of becoming wrong—the sweeping of the arms out in front of you as you search—helps you become right.

Learning / October 13, 2020 / Terry Heick

What scale in learning should someone operate on to ensure that they are aware and in control of their effects on the things around them?

Improvement in teaching can be reduced to a matter of prioritization, practice, reflection and refinement.