I CAN REMEMBER, as a child, seeing a skylight for the first time. The ability to see clouds and blue sky through the roof gave me a thrilling sense of delight. It meant the ceiling did not have the last word. It meant endless possibilities, imagination, vision, dreams. Today, as an educator, I have several skylights in my home that continue to remind me of a world in which there are no limits, only possibilities. That is what this book is about.
As teachers we operate in a world of limits. There are time lines, deadlines, tests that have ceilings, students who have limitations. We desperately need to find the skylights. What exactly are these windows in the roof in relation to our noble profession? I will try to build the case that skylights relate to thinking, learning, assessment, and intelligence.
We underrate our brains and our intelligence. Formal education has become such a complicated and overregulated activity that learning is widely regarded as something difficult that the brain would rather not do. Is it possible that the brain yearns to learn and that good teaching can actually improve the way the brain functions? This is the idea that the skylight represents. This opening in the ceiling implies a lifting of restrictions, unimagined possibilities, a transcending of the predictable. So what do I mean by intelligence?
Intelligence may be best described as an abstract concept, such as beauty or honesty, rather than one that is concrete. The attributes beauty and honesty are measurable, but with greater or lesser objectivity, depending on who is doing the evaluating. And it is certainly agreed that these attributes can change over time. So it is with intelligence.
Intelligence, I would argue, is not a concrete thing, like a house or an egg crate composed of rooms or cells. Nor is it a trait of an individual—such as blue eyes—that cannot be changed. Intelligence is better viewed as a state that is fully able to be changed under the right conditions (Feuerstein, 2007).
A more complete and compelling definition of intelligence for our purposes as educators is this (Feuerstein, 2002):
Intelligence is more correctly defined as the continuous changing state of a person best reflected in the way that individual is able to use previous experiences to adapt to new situations.
The concept is in fact summed up by the words the ability to learn from what has been learned. This propensity for flexibility and dynamic unpredictability is within every learner. This assurance that each individual has the propensity for change becomes the real joy of teaching. In fact, believing in these new possibilities can help us adjust what might be an outdated concept in our own thinking—that intellectual potential is static, unchanging. Let’s begin to unwrap some new concepts.
As teachers we operate in a world of limits. There are time lines, deadlines, tests that have ceilings, students who have limitations. We desperately need to find the skylights. What exactly are these windows in the roof in relation to our noble profession? I will try to build the case that skylights relate to thinking, learning, assessment, and intelligence.
We underrate our brains and our intelligence. Formal education has become such a complicated and overregulated activity that learning is widely regarded as something difficult that the brain would rather not do. Is it possible that the brain yearns to learn and that good teaching can actually improve the way the brain functions? This is the idea that the skylight represents. This opening in the ceiling implies a lifting of restrictions, unimagined possibilities, a transcending of the predictable. So what do I mean by intelligence?
Intelligence may be best described as an abstract concept, such as beauty or honesty, rather than one that is concrete. The attributes beauty and honesty are measurable, but with greater or lesser objectivity, depending on who is doing the evaluating. And it is certainly agreed that these attributes can change over time. So it is with intelligence.
Intelligence, I would argue, is not a concrete thing, like a house or an egg crate composed of rooms or cells. Nor is it a trait of an individual—such as blue eyes—that cannot be changed. Intelligence is better viewed as a state that is fully able to be changed under the right conditions (Feuerstein, 2007).
A more complete and compelling definition of intelligence for our purposes as educators is this (Feuerstein, 2002):
Intelligence is more correctly defined as the continuous changing state of a person best reflected in the way that individual is able to use previous experiences to adapt to new situations.
The concept is in fact summed up by the words the ability to learn from what has been learned. This propensity for flexibility and dynamic unpredictability is within every learner. This assurance that each individual has the propensity for change becomes the real joy of teaching. In fact, believing in these new possibilities can help us adjust what might be an outdated concept in our own thinking—that intellectual potential is static, unchanging. Let’s begin to unwrap some new concepts.
