Powerful Learning

This book describes conditions that promote learning in school, providing examples of real schools to illustrate how those conditions apply to students in the classroom. The conditions are as follows: (1) people learn what is personally meaningful to them, (2) people learn when they accept challenging but achievable goals, (3) learning is developmental, (4) individuals learn differently, (5) people construct new knowledge by building on their current knowledge, (6) much learning occurs through social interaction, (7) people need feedback to learn, (8) successful learning involves use of strategies (which themselves are learned), (9) a positive emotional climate strengthens learning, and (10) learning is influenced by the total environment. Schools as learning organizations should: (1) have incentive structures that encourage adaptive behavior; (2) have challenging but achievable shared goals; (3) have members who can accurately identify the organization's stages of development; (4) gather, process, and act upon information in ways best suited to their purposes; (5) have an institutional knowledge base and processes for creating new ideas; (6) exchange information frequently with relevant external sources; (7) get feedback on products and services; (8) continuously refine their basic processes; (9) have a supportive organizational culture; and (10) be open systems, sensitive to the external environment. (Contains 62 references.) (SM)