Eight Cultural Forces to Transform our Schools ((3 Credits))

Catalog description

In this course, teachers will learn how to create “cultures of thinking”: places where a group’s collective as well as individual thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted every day. They will learn the eight cultural forces that educators must master to transform our schools from the old standard of education to the new model requiring global thinkers, problem solvers, and independent learners. The teachers will learn the eight forces of language, time environment, opportunities, routines, modeling, interactions, and expectations. They will learn the latest research behind each cultural force, techniques to utilize the force in an educational setting, and strategies to change their classroom and school environments. They will also learn and develop the three core ideas based on the cultures: schools must be about developing students’ thinking dispositions, the need to make students’ thinking visible, and the crucial role of classroom culture in supporting and shaping learning. The course will also contain strategies to move toward transformation in teacher’s schools and classroom. They will explore how to collaborate in a positive way with peers, how to build a vision across a school district and how to create opportunities for this transformation.