Selected Writing
A curated collection of my educational writing exploring critical thinking, pedagogy, learning theory, and the future of education.
I. Critical Thinking & The Thinking Problem
These pieces examine education’s fundamental challenge: teaching students not just what to think, but how to think critically.
Correcting The Deficit In Critical Thinking
An analysis of our cultural “thought crisis” and how education both causes and reflects our collective inability to think well.
Are You Teaching Content Or Teaching Thought?
Should thinking be a tool for learning content, or should content be a vehicle for learning to think?
16 Characteristics Of A Critical Thinking Classroom
What indicators suggest students are thinking critically? What does it look like when a classroom is built around inquiry?
Why Questions Are More Important Than Answers
A good question can open minds, shift paradigms, and force the transformational cognitive dissonance that creates thinkers.
How To Teach Students To Think For Themselves
Strategies for moving students from receiving instruction to becoming self-directed thinkers.
II. Learning Frameworks & Taxonomies
Original frameworks and applications of learning theory to classroom practice.
The Heick Learning Taxonomy: 6 Domains Of Cognition
A framework for thinking, teaching, and assessment that frames cognition across six categories, designed to promote “whole” thinking about otherwise discrete ideas.
Categories Of Cognitive Transfer: 14 Ways Students Can Transfer Knowledge
Transfer is about applying knowledge to new contexts. Here are 14 ways to personalize that transfer for more authentic, rigorous learning.
What Is Cognitive Load Theory? A Definition For Teachers
Why short-term memory limitations matter, and how instructional design can work with—rather than against—how the brain actually learns.
The Underlying Assumptions Of A Curriculum
Before we debate what to teach, we should examine what we assume about learning, value, and the purpose of education itself.
Humility: 7 Ideas For Learning Through Humility
A mind properly observant is also properly humble. What changes when learning begins with an awareness of what we don’t know?
III. Pedagogy & The Practice Of Teaching
Practical insights on teaching craft, classroom culture, and teacher development.
Teaching Disruptively
Teaching disruptively isn’t about defiance—it’s about creating self-directed learners who ask the right questions at the right time for reasons that matter to them.
Audience And Purpose: Who Are You Teaching And Why?
Audience and purpose are primal. They have to come first or none of it makes any sense.
What Is Diagnostic Teaching?
Moving beyond teaching to a schedule toward teaching to understanding—diagnosing what students know and don’t know in real time.
The Power Of Teaching Through Positive Assumption
What you assume about students impacts what you believe about teaching and learning. Assuming the best in a child is one of the most significant investments in their future.
Teaching Students To See Quality
If students can’t recognize quality, how can they produce it? The overlooked skill of developing aesthetic judgment.
Does Your Teaching…?
A reflective framework for examining the effects and assumptions embedded in your practice.
Becoming A Whole Teacher
The Rational Mind necessarily excludes curiosity, love, and joy because they are inherently irrational. What does it mean to teach with your whole self?
The Best Source Of Education Research Is Your Classroom
Research matters, but the gap between published findings and your students’ minds is where real teaching happens.
Creating A Culture Of “Can”
What happens when a classroom is built on the assumption that every student can rather than hoping some will?
Teachers Teaching
On the recursive nature of teaching—teachers who teach teachers who teach students who might one day teach.
IV. The Future Of Learning
Vision pieces on educational innovation, systems change, and reimagining what school could become.
On Incrementalism In Education
Why small changes often fail to produce meaningful improvement, and what might be required for genuine transformation.
How To Improve Education
A framework for thinking about educational improvement that moves beyond tweaking what exists.
The Inside-Out School: A 21st Century Learning Model
A model designed around authentic self-knowledge, diverse interdependence, and adaptive critical thinking rather than pure academic proficiency.
7 Principles Of Sustainable Learning
What would the opposite of the industrial learning model look like? An agrarian approach to education.
V. Schools & Systems
On the nature of schools, what makes them effective, and the relationship between education as a system and learning as a process.
The Characteristics Of A Good School
What should schools teach, and how do we know if we’re doing it well? A good school teaches thought, not content.
Learning Isn’t A System
Education is a system; teaching is an action; learning is a process. Confusing these creates most of our problems.
The Necessity Of Self-Criticism In Education
To think critically is to result in criticism. If education cannot examine itself honestly, why should we expect students to think critically about anything?