SFU Research Blog
Here is a link to a blog of mine posted to the SFU Research Blog (Faculty of Education): Personalized Learning – What’s Old is New, by Michael Maser, April 2021
“There’s no learning deficit in this pandemic year” – former superintendent
“When children come to school we need to listen to them … there is no assessment that applies to who they are or what they have learned (this year.”
Pandemic Learning Can Be Rich & Rewarding For Kids & Youth
The Great Disruption continues. Schooling, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, has been cast into the wind and, like so many autumn leaves, it swirls in all directions. As a result of trying to control the wind and grasp the leaves, many (most?) students, parents, teachers and administrators are left reeling and feeling a little dizzy. […]
What Would Aliens Report About Schooling Right Now?
Right now – in the fall of 2020, school fire alarms, wordwide, continue to ring and no one seems to know how to shut them off. The bells are ringing because of a pandemic that continues to disrupt education like nothing any of us have experienced in generations. Online learning, home-schooling, cohort-bubbling, outdoor classrooms – […]
‘Learning Your Way’ Pro-D course now available
ANNOUNCEMENT: I’m leading a 4-part Pro-D certificate course for Educators, Caregivers, Counsellors and others, through the Trasnformative Learning Foundation, starting next Thursday Sept. 17th. See more details here: Learning Your Way Pro-D course with Michael Maser “The brain develops throughout life, following a trajectory that is broadly consistent for humans but it is also individualized […]
IMAGINATION Needed More Than Ever in Education Re-Start
For the foreseeable future, schooling as people have understood it for decades, is furloughed. That means, for administrators, teachers, parents and students, what they had come to understand as educational practice – excepting last spring – is being replaced by something different. Realistically, the health risks from large-scale gatherings facing every person entering a school […]
Has Education’s ‘Disruptive’ Moment Arrived?
Since its inception in the late 1800s, mainstream education has proved remarkably fortified against any significant ‘disruption’ that might transform or revolutionize the main characteristics by which most people would recognize and experience it. Significant ‘disruptions’ in other fields include the development of the microscope in natural science, leading to numerous discoveries about all things […]
In personalizing learning we seek to imagine the best attributes of each learner
In an era of personalizing learning it’s important for educators to consider what, or rather, who is the person being referenced, being conjured up. This is rooted in one or other of a two-part process: i. the first arises in conceptualizing a person-not-yet-met, not-yet-experienced; by necessity, this person is invoked through imagination, and perhaps on […]
Look Beyond Summer ‘Slide’ to see Summer ‘Bounce’ in Kids’ Learning
The summer issue of ‘Learn’ magazine, published by the BC Ministry of Education and circulated to all active educators and administrators in the province, arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago. The lead essay, “Does Summer Learning Loss Exist: It Depends Who You Ask“, written by retired superintendent Geoff Johnson, had been recently […]
Personalized Learning Seeping into Post-Secondary Education
Personalizing learning is clearly making strategic inroads into K-12 education and especially across the US and in British Columbia, where dedicated educators and administrators are leading the way, helped along by supportive government ministries, organizations, students and parents. Should you seek confirmation on this, and its benefits, look no further than ‘Voyager Weekly’ magazine (online), […]
Michael’s book,