Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Family Functioning or Culture - the other Social driver for Learning and attainment It is conventional wisdom to link social and economic status with education and behaviour. A powerful belief is that if you are poor you are at risk. New research in Canada conducted by Doug Wilms refutes this. There are more kids in trouble from middle class families than from any other sector. His theory is that what is at the heart of poor attainment is what he calls Family Functioning or Culture. The worst results come from highly authoritarian families - the my way or the highway style. Just in behind are permissive families - any thing you do dear is OK with me. What is best is a style he calls authoritative. We have rules here but we explain them and as you get older you participate in developing them. The article links in to a remarkable technology  created by Values Technology that has ben used to measure culture in the workplace for many years. The ah ha for me was that VT show the same linkage to poor results with these styles at work. Maybe this is why many are so unhappy in bureaucracies which are both authoritarian and permissive in that they have a lot of rules but you can behave badly 4:57:00 PM    comment []

Doing well in school and at work - Creative Communities - Richard Florida What cities are the ones that are attracting the creative? Why are creative people leaving cities like Pittsburgh that have symphonies, galleries, universities restaurants, museum etc? Richard Florida tells us what type of community and social environment spurs on learning and creativity 4:44:27 PM    comment []

Doing well in school - A Series - Social Capital and Education - Robert Putnam What are the factors that help our children do well in school? We fuss alot about the school, the teacher and the curriculum. Here is the first of three articles that will take a different tack. They draw on new research that show clearly a link between the environment and the attainment. The first article is by the King of Social Capital - Robert Putnam He makes the case for a gradient showing that parts of the US with high Social Capital - which tracks TV watching - have better educational results. The gradients are steep. Great graphs in the text as well - see how your state does! 4:37:01 PM    comment []