The capacity to navigate conflict and solve problems will persist as an essential skill of the future, even if today's students will be doing jobs that haven't been invented yet. What are we doing in schools right now to ensure students have these skills? For nearly a decade, a program called Speak Truth has taught students to use their voices,…

Anxiety, one of the most common underlying causes of challenging student behavior, typically goes undiscovered and unaddressed through school-based behavior supports. Jessica Minahan and Stuart Ablon combine their expertise as a behavior analyst and a psychologist to outline how best to support students whose anxiety leads to challenging behavior.…

Educators are realizing that individuals working in isolation can't adequately address the teaching and learning problems that face us today. Collective action networks are needed. Sharing networks use collective energy to support individual action and agency, whereas execution networks typically address complex problems that require sustained…

What we're thinking about behaviorally challenging students and what we're doing to them requires a fresh look. When schools believe that parental discipline explains a child's misbehavior, educators are less likely to consider different explanations for the misbehavior and the full range of interventions that could be implemented at school. And…

Given the centrality of leadership for school success, leader morale and effectiveness in tough times can't be overemphasized. The authors' work examined how principals and superintendents deal with and are affected by a significant economic downturn. They surveyed 93 principals from one large upper-Midwest metropolitan area and 100…

Viewing challenging behavior as the result of lagging skills (kids do well if they can) rather than as poor motivation (kids do well if they want to) has significant ramifications for how adults interact with kids with behavioral challenges and try to help them. A wide range of lagging skills can set the stage for challenging behavior. Challenging…

This study emphasizes the relationship of perception to thinking and explains direct teaching of thinking. Without clarity of seeing and creativity, perception is shown to become narrow patterning. The Cognitive Research Trust program is recommended for teaching thinking skills using transferable thinking "tools." Self-images of students…

The California Mathematics Standards are cynical, mind-numbing, and shallow. Instead of balancing problem solving, concept development, and skill acquisition, the standards are full of obsolete mathematics and devoid of problem solving. Students offering only an algorithm when asked for meaning have style without substance. Blind memorization is…

Schools need more incentives to begin to produce more "thoughtfulness." As it is now they respond by "getting by" because they are only held accountable for minimal levels of achievement. Policymakers need to develop a different system of acccountability. (MD)

America 2000 presents an educational reform agenda that neglects the arts. Prevailing misconceptions of the arts are based on a massive misunderstanding of their role in human development and education. The arts contribute significantly by celebrating the value of multiple perspectives and nuances in problem solving, relating form to content, and…

Describes a Syracuse, New York, school that removed bureaucratic restraints by emphasizing ends rather than means and by centering responsibility and authority within the school building. (JF)

Sixty 15-minute television programs help students learn to reason and systematically solve problems. The goals are confident, flexible thinking; self-management; effective expression; and systematic reasoning. The cognitive skills emphasized include information collecting, classifying, and communicating effectively. A resource list is provided.…

A study of Chicago school reform revealed that principals of productive elementary schools skillfully use various strategies to promote parents' and teachers' work with children. These include resolving highly visible problems quickly, focusing on the instructional core, adopting strategic orientation, attacking incoherence, involving parents, and…

Instruction in thinking skills is possible and desirable, but educators must guard against assumptions that undermine the process. Eight fallacies that obstruct the teaching of critical thinking skills are presented. (MD)