Reshaping the Paradigms of Teaching and Learning: What Happens Today is Education's Future

Historically, we have been engaged with a model of education reform since the latter part of the last century. We now have a cycle that’s become a system with “pockets of promise” and isolated experiments. It appears that everyone is an education reformer and every district, charter and region has their own particular experiment, giving the appearance of widespread innovation. We’ve grown comfortable with this “interruption” that tolerates, or celebrates, the experiments as long as they don't seriously disrupt our entrenched classroom approach to teaching and learning. Reshaping the Paradigms of Teaching and Learning is a call to move beyond experimentation and transform the understanding of our entire system of education. The author defines the distinctions between the teaching system of the last century and the need for learning systems and how this is possible for today's learner. Understanding the difference, and understanding the need, is our first step toward a broad transformation. That understanding begins with the thought but demands the action. Disruption, and each learner, awaits that transformation.