David Perkins (6) (1942–)

How to teach big understandings and the ideas that matter most
Everyone has an opinion about education, and teachers face pressures from Common Core content standards, high-stakes testing, and countless other directions. But how do we know what today's learners will really need to know in the future? Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World is a toolkit for approaching that question with new insight. There is no one answer to the question of what's worth teaching, but with the show more tools in this book, you'll be one step closer to constructing a curriculum that prepares students for whatever situations they might face in the future.

K-12 teachers and administrators play a crucial role in building a thriving society. David Perkins, founding member and co-director of Project Zero at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, argues that curriculum is one of the most important elements of making students ready for the world of tomorrow. In Future Wise, you'll learn concepts, curriculum criteria, and techniques for prioritizing content so you can guide students toward the big understandings that matter.

Understand how learners use knowledge in life after graduation
Learn strategies for teaching critical thinking and addressing big questions
Identify top priorities when it comes to disciplines and content areas
Gain curriculum design skills that make the most of learning across the years of education
Future Wise presents a brand new framework for thinking about education. Curriculum can be one of the hardest things for teachers and administrators to change, but David Perkins shows that only by reimagining what we teach can we lead students down the road to functional knowledge. Future Wise is the practical guidebook you need to embark on this important quest.

Contents: Introduction: learning for tomorrow --
Lifeworthy learning: where knowledge goes in learners' lives --
Learning agendas: the mixed blessings of achievement, information, and expertise --
Big understandings: learning that matters in learners' lives --
Big questions: learning beyond what's settled and known --
Lifeready learning: making what's worth learning ready for life --
The seven seas of knowledge: lifeworthy learning from the disciplines --
Ways of knowing: powerful patterns of thought from the disciplines and beyond --
Buckets of knowledge: organizing content across the years of education --
Big know-how: twenty-first-century skills and beyond --
Knowledge on the way to wisdom. show less