I enjoyed this critique of Daniel Pink’s book and will read the book. Earlier. Another blog suggested the work emanating from another book by this author, A Whole New Mind, was important to educators and thinkers. Bear in mind, Daniel Pink is not an educator and his last real job, from his website, was as a political speechwriter.
I agree Alfie Kohn, who taught school, or Carol Dweck, a psychologist focusing on motivation, and her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, are invaluable resources for educators.
I think a different understanding unschooling movement is extreme home schooling. Deb Meier acknowledged, in an interview, home schooled children are some of the best socialized children she has met. I think unschooling is an unfortunate descriptor and natural learning, experience-based learning, or independent learning might be less misleading. Instead of discarding the concept, consider questions about education and school’s purpose in the 21st Century. I think there is room for reasonable alternative models in a progressive and increasingly diverse world.
About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope, nonviolence and its anticipatory relationship with the future, as essential elements to teaching and learning.
Academic publications can be found at Ivon Gile Prefontaine on ResearchGate
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 