Disrupting class, epilogue

Christensen made several other observations worth noting:

Future (and current!) teachers will need to know how to work with different types of learners; this should be a key component of their professional training. Continuing to train teachers to perform in a world of teacher-led content delivery - being taught to the dominant style of learner … trains teachers for the past.

Current educational research rarely produces results that are actionable; that is, “under this set of circumstances, these actions will produce the best results”. He encourages graduate students to focus their research on discovering the styles of teaching that work best with different types of learners.

And finally: Recent research indicates that nearly all the variation in the cognitive ability of students entering kindergarten can be explained by the amount of “extra talking” that parents did with their children in the first three years of life. (“Extra talking” is conversation beyond “Don’t touch that!”.) Think of the potential impact on society if every high school student learned that one additional piece of information.

He concludes that the billions of dollars that we’re investing in early childhood education may be misplaced. Instead, the author suggests that high school might be the best place to “teach the methods of early cognitive development to tomorrow’s parents.” (Let’s be honest: the next generation isn’t learning “parenting skills” anywhere else.)