Ringmaster: Have I got an idea! What an idea!
Timothy Q. Mouse: He never had an idea in his life.
Ringmaster: Just visualize: One elephant climbs up on top of another elephant, until all seventeen elephants have contructed an enormous pyramid of pachyderms. I step out. I blow the whistle. The trumpets are trumpeting...
Timothy Q. Mouse: Yea!
Ringmaster: And now, comes the climax!
Joe: Yeah, what is the climax?
Ringmaster: I don't know.
Timothy Q. Mouse: I knew he didn't have nothing.
Dumbo 1941
Teaching and Learning is a little like this. You spend half your day strutting around screaming “What it is to be alive …. I step out. I blow the whistle. The trumpets are trumpeting...” and then, and then you take a nudge from Timothy Q. Mouse.
Yesterday was a “Ringmaster day” – a teacher cluster day that saw the distribution of the CINZS gifted_ict issue to the teachers who wrote the articles – so very cool - and then the cluster teachers working with AU’s amazing Dr Rawlinson on identification through responsive learning environments.
Tried to play Timothy Q Mouse and challenge Bandura’s causal link between academic self concept and academic performance because all sorts of things in the “responsive learning environment” argument hinge on whether it is a valid or even reliable assumption.
The "I knew he didn't have nothing" is an essential scepticism to hold onto in eduspeak land.
BUT if Sternberg is right, if Sternberg is right and “abilities are forms of developing expertise” then I have a new framework, a new landscape for thinking through ICT.
Was an exciting and provocative day – a real Ringmaster: “Have I got an idea! What an idea!” kind of day.
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