A practical guide to ensuring your child's success in school.
What makes children succeed in school? For the past twenty years, the focus has been on building children's self-esteem to help them achieve more in the classoom. But positive reinforcement hasn't necessarily resulted in measureable academic improvement. Through extensive research, combined with ongoing classroom implementation of their ideas, Deborah Stipek, Dean of the School of Education at Stanford, and Kathy Seal have created a program that will encourage motivation and a love of learning in children from toddlerhood through elementary school.
Stipek and Seal maintain that parents and teachers can build a solid foundation for learning by helping children to develop the key elements of success: competency, autonomy, curiosity, and critical relationships. The authors offer both practical advice on understanding different learning styles and down-to-earth tips about how to manage difficult issues -- competition, grades, praise, bribes, and rewards -- that inevitably arise for parents and teachers.
Most important, Stipek and Seal help parents create an enriching environment for their children at home that will mesh with the school experience and become a positive, effective climate for learning.
Deborah Stipek, Ph.D., is the dean of the School of Education at Stanford University. An internationally recognized scholar who has published more than seventy articles and books on motivation, she was, for a decade, the director of UCLA's Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School, known worldwide as a laboratory for innovation in motivation. She lives in Palo Alto.
Kathy Seal is a journalist and author who has written about education and psychology since 1985 for such publications as "The New York Times, Family Circle," and "Parents." She and her family live in Santa Monica.
How do we show our children the great joys of learning? How do we get them to want more? In the past, parents and educators have offered rewards and threatened punishment. More recently, they have focused on building self-esteem, but the latest research shows that this effort hasn't had a measurable impact in the classroom--and can even discourage children from learning. Combining years of experience in schools with a thorough survey of current research, Deborah Stipek and Kathy Seal offer this fresh and practical guide to what really works. "Motivated Minds "explains how close relationships with adults and feelings of competency and autonomy make children want to learn.
The authors describe how to create an intellectually enriching environment for children that will enhance their school experience. They offer practical advice on promoting enthusiasm, academic risk-taking, and persistence, and they give down-to-earth tips for managing difficult issues--praise, grades, rewards, competition, and performance pressure--that inevitably arise for schoolchildren and parents.
""Motivated Minds" is an important guide for all those concerned with raising our children. Stipek and Seal offer a wealth of practical wisdom, providing readers with effective strategies for creating environments that enrich children's learning and overall development. While doing so, they also share with readers a deep understanding of the importance of caring and supportive relationships in children's lives."--Dr. James P. Comer, Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry, Yale Child Study Center; associate dean, Yale School of Medicine; author of "Waiting for a Miracle: Why Schools Can't Solve Our Problems--and How We Can"
""Motivated Minds" is a 'must read' for all parents who want their children to love learning. Deborah Stipek and Kathy Seal turn research findings into accessible, fun, and effective strategies parents and educators] can use today and every day to help their children succeed."--Ted Mitchell, Ph.D., president of Occidental College, senior education advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan, and former vice president for education and strategic initiative at the J. Paul Getty Trust
"Based on research and actual experience as psychologists and parents, Stipek and Seal offer insights on what makes children succeed in school and strategies for parents to help their children build a solid foundation in learning. The authors, countering popular emphasis on building self-esteem and relying on grades as rewards and measurements of success in learning, focus on showing how to raise children to be enthusiastic learners who are self-motivated. Stipek and Seal focus on four 'essential components of loving learning': basic skills, confidence of becoming more skilled, choices and control over what they learn, and parental support and respect. Stipek and Seal suggest that parents use their children's interests and passions outside of school to encourage learning. Parents should also connect school learning to the real world--for example, connect science to the natural world and math to everyday life. This book offers valuable strategies."--Vanessa Bush, "Booklist"
"Stipek, Dean of the School of Education at Stanford University, and Seal, a freelance psychology and education journalist, believe that most children are born with the desire to learn but that this desire starts to decline at about middle school. Rather than focusing solely on boosting self-esteem (which she says can 'do damage'), she advises educators and] parents to foster competence, autonomy, and relationship security in children. One of her most useful bits of advice is how to connect book learning to the real world. She also rightly points out that if children worry that making a mistake will make them look bad, they will avoid challenge. Caretakers, she says, should help children understand that they can feel and even get to be smarter by doing their work."--Annete V. Janes, "Library Journal"
