Actual Intelligence with Steve Pearlman

Steve interviews Louis E. Newman, author of Thinking Critically in College: The Essential Handbook for Student Success.  

What's the relationship between thinking and studentship?  How can we -- and why should we -- move students to think about disciplinarity?  Are colleges promoting the thinking of which Newman advises students?  And how can they benefit from his ideas regardless?

Is ChatGPT friend or foe?  Should the whole world, as Australia has done, relegate essay writing to inside classrooms?  Is "the academic essay dead"?  Or is ChatGPT, as some have contended, a tool for critical thinking that we should embrace as a new ally in teaching students?

As Steve discusses, ChatGPT certainly is a revelation, but no one is really talking about why, and it might not be what you expect.

Continuing their discussion of the pedagogical, institutional, and societal implications of rubrics and rubricizing, Joe, Michelle, and Steve get into rubrics and questions of ...

• privilege and the expression of structuralized racism
• the effort to dismantle public education through standardization
• how rubrics as a concept contribute to the undermining of teaching as a profession, 

and so much more.

Steve and the authors of Rubric Nation -- Michelle Tenam-Zemach and Joseph E. Flynn, Jr. -- get into it about all things rubrics and rubricization, as well as whatever it is that we are doing, good and bad, as an educational system regarding teaching, learning, democracy, assessment, studentship, dialogue, politics, critical thinking, teacher training, privilege, race, class, and our greater (and lesser?) humanity.  

Spoiler alert: it's "a mess."  But that's what makes this discussion particularly deep and interesting.

Steve welcomes futurist Frances Valintine: Founder of MindLab--the Best Start-up in Asia Pacific as judged by Steve Wozniak and Sir Richard Branson in 2014.  Frances is a member of the New Zealand Hall of Fame for Women Entrepreneurs (2022), and named one of the top 50 EdTech Educators in the World by EdTech International (2016).  They discuss progressive teaching practices and the wide-scale implementation of change across New Zealand, and its implications for our conception of educational institutions worldwide.

Listen for an in-depth discussion of the rigamarole around academic rigor, including what might be a very surprising--though nonetheless perfectly sensible--root of its challenges. 

Student vs. faculty conceptions of rigor
G.I. infections
"Summer School"

Part 2 on Jones's firing, including a cranky look at curious statements by NYU, and an uncomfortable look at time traveling through the academy.

Steve takes an in-depth look at NYU's expedited decision to fire distinguished Organic Chemistry professor, Dr. Maitland Jones, after receiving a petition from students complaining about his course.  What's really at the heart of NYU's actions?  What role did the petition play? What role should rigor play in education? And what in the world does the movie, Demolition Man, have to do with any of this?

Steve welcomes the University of Wyoming's own TK Stoudt and his students, Amy Bezzant, Maddy Davis, and James Roberts.  Hear about the triumph (and trials!) of peer assessment from an educator who's newer to implementing it, and from students who encountered it for the first time.  

• What really happens when we give Excalibur to Uryens?  
• Why should you have a campfire in your classroom?
• Should Maddie marry an NFL player?

Learn the answers to all that and more!

Steve welcomes the University of Wyoming's own TK Stoudt and his students, Amy Bezzant, Maddy Davis, and James Roberts.  Hear about the triumph (and trials!) of peer assessment from an educator who's newer to implementing it, and from students who encountered it for the first time.  

• What really happens when we give Excalibur to Uryens?  
• Why should you have a campfire in your classroom?
• Should Maddie marry an NFL player?

Learn the answers to all that and more!