Education Bookcast

This should be a controversial episode! I cover this book in the interests of looking at the cognitive science it refers to. However, this is also the sort of book that tries to undermine, or even overthrow, what might be interpreted as a failing ideology among many educators. It is therefore not possible for me to talk about it without at least paying some heed to a long-standing debate in education circles: progressivism versus traditionalism. Progressivism is hard to pin down exactly, because it's used as a catch-all term for many ideas in education. Some people who would call themselves educational progressives would have completely different ideas from other self-described progressives. Ideas huddled under the progressive umbrella include character education; "whole-child" learning/development; using more "authentic" assessments (i.e. not paper-and-pencil tests); experiential learning; and discovery learning, to name but a few. You have to say though, they did a good PR job naming their ideas "progressiv