Actual Intelligence with Steve Pearlman

How does your brain tackle a new problem? Believe it or not, it tackles new problems by using old frameworks it created for similar problems you faced before. But if your brain is wired to use old frameworks for new problems, then isn’t that a problem? It is. And that’s why most people never think outside the box.

So, how do you get your brain to think innovatively? Divergently? And outside the box, when others don’t?

It’s easier tha...

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APA to Students: Don't Bother to Think for Yourselves Anymore. Let AI Do It.

If in the future you want a psychologist who can actually think about psychology, or a doctor who can actually think about medicine, or a teacher who can think about what their teaching, or a lawyer who can actually think about the law, th...

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Want Your Kids Off Their Phones: They Just Told Us How to Do It

In a new Harris poll conducted with The Atlantic, kids have reminded us about the importance unstructured, unsupervised play for the develo...

Is ChatGPT dumbing down your kid? It is and here’s what you can do.

A new MIT study reveals the powerful consequences of artificial intelligence on actual intelligence, and guess what? Simply (and terrifyingly) put, the use of artificial intelligence undermines your child’s actual intelligence. In short, when children don’t think for themselves, they don’t learn to think for themselves. That should surprise no one.

I’ll get to the di...

We finally have emerging research on Artificial Intelligence's consequences for actual intelligence.  If you're an educator or parent--or if you're anyone who just thinks that thinking is important--then you need to learn about this study.  It offers hard evidence that our young people are in danger of diminished thinking skills for life.

Steve interviews Louis E. Newman, author of Thinking Critically in College: The Essential Handbook for Student Success.  

What's the relationship between thinking and studentship?  How can we -- and why should we -- move students to think about disciplinarity?  Are colleges promoting the thinking of which Newman advises students?  And how can they benefit from his ideas regardless?

Is ChatGPT friend or foe?  Should the whole world, as Australia has done, relegate essay writing to inside classrooms?  Is "the academic essay dead"?  Or is ChatGPT, as some have contended, a tool for critical thinking that we should embrace as a new ally in teaching students?

As Steve discusses, ChatGPT certainly is a revelation, but no one is really talking about why, and it might not be what you expect.

Continuing their discussion of the pedagogical, institutional, and societal implications of rubrics and rubricizing, Joe, Michelle, and Steve get into rubrics and questions of ...

• privilege and the expression of structuralized racism
• the effort to dismantle public education through standardization
• how rubrics as a concept contribute to the undermining of teaching as a profession, 

and so much more.

Steve and the authors of Rubric Nation -- Michelle Tenam-Zemach and Joseph E. Flynn, Jr. -- get into it about all things rubrics and rubricization, as well as whatever it is that we are doing, good and bad, as an educational system regarding teaching, learning, democracy, assessment, studentship, dialogue, politics, critical thinking, teacher training, privilege, race, class, and our greater (and lesser?) humanity.  

Spoil...

Steve welcomes futurist Frances Valintine: Founder of MindLab--the Best Start-up in Asia Pacific as judged by Steve Wozniak and Sir Richard Branson in 2014.  Frances is a member of the New Zealand Hall of Fame for Women Entrepreneurs (2022), and named one of the top 50 EdTech Educators in the World by EdTech International (2016).  They discuss progressive teaching practices and the wide-scale implementation of change across New Zea...

Listen for an in-depth discussion of the rigamarole around academic rigor, including what might be a very surprising--though nonetheless perfectly sensible--root of its challenges. 

Student vs. faculty conceptions of rigor
G.I. infections
"Summer School"

Steve takes an in-depth look at NYU's expedited decision to fire distinguished Organic Chemistry professor, Dr. Maitland Jones, after receiving a petition from students complaining about his course.  What's really at the heart of NYU's actions?  What role did the petition play? What role should rigor play in education? And what in the world does the movie, Demolition Man, have to do with any of this?

Steve welcomes the University of Wyoming's own TK Stoudt and his students, Amy Bezzant, Maddy Davis, and James Roberts.  Hear about the triumph (and trials!) of peer assessment from an educator who's newer to implementing it, and from students who encountered it for the first time.  

• What really happens when we give Excalibur to Uryens?  
• Why should you have a campfire in your classroom?
• Should Maddie marry an NFL player...

Steve welcomes the University of Wyoming's own TK Stoudt and his students, Amy Bezzant, Maddy Davis, and James Roberts.  Hear about the triumph (and trials!) of peer assessment from an educator who's newer to implementing it, and from students who encountered it for the first time.  

• What really happens when we give Excalibur to Uryens?  
• Why should you have a campfire in your classroom?
• Should Maddie marry an NFL player...

Ken Bain, author  of  What the Best College Teachers Do and What the Best College Students Do, joins Headagogy to discuss his latest book, Super Courses: The Future of Teaching and Learning.  The discussion with Bain not only delves into examples of these courses and their relationship with problem based learning, but also into critical ideas for teaching and learning, such as why "expectation failure" is so absolutely cr...

In this concluding episode on peer assessment, Steve conveys the research on peer assessment, learning outcomes, and soft skills.  There should be no doubts about its value, especially, in the words of Walter Lippman, "It takes wisdom to understand wisdom. The music means nothing if the audience is deaf."