The 21st Century Learning Initiative
Promoting a Vision, Knowledge, Experience and a Network
What price 'Intelligence'?
Response to Tony Little's book 'An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education'
This short monograph was written by Neil Richards, a Trustee of the 21st Century Learning Initiative in response to the publication of Tony Little’s book, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education.
Battling for the Soul of Education
Moving beyond school reform to educational transformation:
The findings and recommendations of 3 decades of synthesis
Download from battlingforthesoulofeducation.org
Inquisitiveness
Thesis 12 – The Need To Know
Children’s search for meaning starts young. Children who are already anxious to make sense of issues that matter to them in their own private lives, who come to formal schooling keen and enthusiastic to use whatever it can offer them to help meet their personal objectives. It is not the other way round. The greatest […]
Thesis 6 – Burning with Curiosity
[Please scroll down to listen to an audio version of this thesis] It is inquisitiveness that best defines what we humans are all about. We ask endless questions, the answers to which often beg still further questions. From the darting, curious, eyes of a baby only a few weeks old, to the growing child’s persistent […]
Thesis 4 – Ancestral Influences
[Please scroll down to listen to an audio version of this thesis] We humans with our likes and dislikes, our senses and our sensibilities, didn’t fall ready-made from the sky; nor were we born with minds and bodies that bear no imprint of the history of our species. The way we interact today at a […]
Thesis 2 – The Excitement of Learning
[Please scroll down to listen to an audio version of this thesis] Learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. It is through learning that we continuously recreate ourselves and become able to do things we were never able to do before. Learning enables us to perceive the world afresh and […]
Are Flat and Level the same thing?
Taking a child seriously That’s not a difficult question, at least for an adult. But when asked by a bright, inquisitive six-year-old girl trying ‘to help’ as I was building a large shed in the garden it wasn’t necessarily that easy to answer. How do you get a six-year-old to understand the theory of gravity, […]
The Challenge of Synthesis; Making sense of Research Across the Biological and Social Sciences
Wesley College Institute (Melbourne) Advisory Committee 27th May 2006 Presentation by John Abbott, President The 21st Century Learning Initiative (U.K. and International) Currently in a Partnership with Wesley College to explore new thinking and directions for schooling during the Adolescent years The Challenge of Synthesis; Making sense of Research Across the biological and […]
Overschooled and Undereducated: Getting the Balance Right
Good evening. It is both an honour and a pleasure to be invited to give this lecture. I do so with some trepidation. I know I am easily carried away with my enthusiasm! Some years ago my wife and I were on a Sunday afternoon walk with our three sons. Our youngest, Tom, who was […]
In Defense of Genius
Annual Lecture to the Arts Council of England, 8 February 1996 Dean Clough is the ideal starting point for my lecture. Its success is the reason I was invited to join the Arts Council as a member in 1991 and then to Chair the newly formed Regional Arts Board for Yorkshire and Humberside. Dean Clough […]
The Chaodic Organization: Out of Control and Into Order
It is almost impossible these days to read a business article or participate in a seminar without stumbling over such popularities as “learning organizations,” “empowerment,” or “re-engineering.” It is equally common to encounter in the scientific community the study of complex adaptive systems, commonly referred to as “complexity.” I find it cumbersome to either think or write about fundamental principles underlying both physical systems and human institutions in the terms unique to either business or science.
Learning Makes Sense
Our first publication, see enthusiastic review from the Sunday Telegraph
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