The Orchid and the Dandelion: Optimizing middle-school math instruction
August 14, 2021
What if schools were designed to uncover each learner’s inner orchid and match them with the optimal environment? In this article from Education Next, author Laurence Holt gives Teach to One as an example of the prototypical student-centered approach that allows students to discover how they can cultivate their strengths.
“Such a redesign would not be easy. It is hard to change the fundamental structure of a system as large and socially ingrown as schooling. Like any good idea in education, there are some prototypes out there—such as Kundskapskolan, a Swedish school network in which advisors help students craft and follow an academic path, a model similar to what they will do in college, and Teach to One, a way of optimizing middle-school math instruction to a portfolio of options guided by an algorithm…”