At the intersection of the global cities movement and the movement to optimize early education in and out of school, lies Playful Learning Landscapes. Twenty-first Century Learning models will need to embrace a breadth of skills that allow children to succeed in a world of increasing uncertainty and change. Projections suggest that by 2050 over 70% of the worlds’ children will be living in urban areas and that most of these children – over 825 million – will reach adulthood without even the basic secondary skills required to meet the workplace of today and tomorrow.
Funded by the Institute for Education Sciences with a grant to Roberta M. Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Jill deVilliers, Aquiles Iglesias, and Mary Wilson, Brooks Publishing has brought out our new language screener, developed to find children (ages 3 through 5) with potential language problems. As language is fundamental to children’s success in school and in life, we hope it will be adopted by schools to find children with potential language issues who might linger unnoticed in classrooms. It can be administered on any touchscreen tablet or computer and identifies children for referral. QUILS™ has a monolingual English version and a bilingual version for children learning both English and Spanish (the QUILS: ES). Stay tuned for our screener for 2-year-olds, Baby QUILS™!
Kathy’s latest book, co-authored with Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, PhD, was recently named one of New York Times Best Sellers. The full title of the work is “Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children.” Click below for more information!
Children are in the midst of a vast, unplanned experiment, surrounded by digital technologies that were not available but 5 years ago. At the apex of this boom is the introduction of applications (“apps”) for tablets and smartphones. However, there is simply not the time, money, or resources available to evaluate each app as it enters the market. Thus, “educational” apps—the number of which, as of January 2015, stood at 80,000 in Apple’s App Store (Apple, 2015)—are largely unregulated and untested. This article offers a way to define the potential educational impact of current and future apps.
This might sound strange, but I found talking to my dog much less stressful than talking to my babies. They had a lot in common: Both were non-verbal, both relied on me for their well-being, and both were in possession of what Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz called “baby schema.” This is the combination of large […]
Read full story >“Play has become a four-letter word.” So says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a psychologist at Temple University and one of the authors of a new paper about the importance of play in children’s lives. The clinical report, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, recommends that pediatricians write a “prescription for play” at doctor visits in the first two […]
Read full story >Imagine a drug that could enhance a child’s creativity, critical thinking and resilience. Imagine that this drug were simple to make, safe to take, and could be had for free. The nation’s leading pediatricians say this miracle compound exists. In a new clinical report, they are urging doctors to prescribe it liberally to the children in […]
Read full story >Kathy is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she contributes articles to her Blog on a regular basis.