Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

Darwin was right.

Learning comprises many different types of abilities and actions. Our teaching and assessment should reflect that reality.

The “blank slate” has been discredited for decades, but many educators continue to assume students arrive in classrooms with no relevant experiences and that students need only pay sufficient attention to learn the information teachers tell them.

"Scientists, being as a rule more or less human beings, passionately stick up for their ideas, their pet theories. It's up to someone else to show you are wrong.".--Niles Eldredge

You know that solar system thing with sun, planets, and all? That is a theory. Funny how few people dismiss it as “just a theory.”

“We need to teach our children what science is and how it works.” -Niles Eldridge

Just because you say it and believe it, I am under no obligation to assume it’s true.

Conspiracies are sometimes the explanation, but randomness explains many more events.

Curiosity works far better than learning outcomes.

While we might be able to calculate the percent of points students earn on an assignment, it is difficult to conclude that we know confidently that a student who scores 90% really knows 1% more of the total than the student who scored 89%.

Paraphrasing Jaron Lanier: Technology begins with human hands, but human speech plans what the hands will do.

Perhaps the most ridiculous myth that we (and this is a collective we that comprises educators, curriculum experts, employers, politicians, and book authors) believe is that we know what our students will need to know in the future.

When I was an undergraduate student, I believed one could be taught how to teach.

Learning is promoted when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems. Even if the "outcomes" are not defined prior.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire

Criticism of your methods and results and interpretations of results. If you can't handle these, then please do not call yourself data-driven.

Field trips, well-stocked libraries, and time to read and explore unfamiliar topics are all strategies for enhancing and extending our students' foundational knowledge.

The "gold standard" of science may be randomized double-blind experiments, but just because ethics preclude you from doing it do not mean what you are doing is not science. Of course, jut because you are does not mean you are doing science.

"Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" is particularly true in education.

In political processes, participants are not bound to evidence and reason in the same manner as scientists and scholars; so, any decision can be justified. Keep that in mind when you hear folks talk about their "data."