Limitless Mind
Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers
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4.8 • 16 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Boaler is one of those rare and remarkable educators who not only know the secret of great teaching but also know how to give that gift to others.” — CAROL DWECK, author of Mindset
“Jo Boaler is one of the most creative and innovative educators today. Limitless Mind marries cutting-edge brain science with her experience in the classroom, not only proving that each of us has limitless potential but offering strategies for how we can achieve it.” — LAURENE POWELL JOBS
“A courageous freethinker with fresh ideas on learning.” — BOOKLIST
In this revolutionary book, a professor of education at Stanford University and acclaimed math educator who has spent decades studying the impact of beliefs and bias on education, reveals the six keys to unlocking learning potential, based on the latest scientific findings.
From the moment we enter school as children, we are made to feel as if our brains are fixed entities, capable of learning certain things and not others, influenced exclusively by genetics. This notion follows us into adulthood, where we tend to simply accept these established beliefs about our skillsets (i.e. that we don’t have “a math brain” or that we aren’t “the creative type”). These damaging—and as new science has revealed, false—assumptions have influenced all of us at some time, affecting our confidence and willingness to try new things and limiting our choices, and, ultimately, our futures.
Stanford University professor, bestselling author, and acclaimed educator Jo Boaler has spent decades studying the impact of beliefs and bias on education. In Limitless Mind, she explodes these myths and reveals the six keys to unlocking our boundless learning potential. Her research proves that those who achieve at the highest levels do not do so because of a genetic inclination toward any one skill but because of the keys that she reveals in the book. Our brains are not “fixed,” but entirely capable of change, growth, adaptability, and rewiring. Want to be fluent in mathematics? Learn a foreign language? Play the guitar? Write a book? The truth is not only that anyone at any age can learn anything, but the act of learning itself fundamentally changes who we are, and as Boaler argues so elegantly in the pages of this book, what we go on to achieve.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a useful study directed toward students and educators alike, Boaler (Mathematical Mindsets), a Stanford mathematics education professor, argues against approaching learning in terms of "fixed intelligence and giftedness," and in favor of approaching it through the new science of neuroplasticity. She notes that skills long thought genetically fixed, such as the rare phenomenon of perfect pitch, can be learned and nurtured, and maintains that it's more productive to categorize children as "hard-working" rather than "smart." In discussing math education in particular, Boaler points out international comparative tests in which American students did relatively poorly, attributing this to an excessive focus on memorization; she favors instead a diverse approach, such as taking visual as well as numerical approaches to solving math problems. An advocate of wide-ranging intellectual creativity, Boaler notes that two computer scientists who in 2018 solved a difficult equation that had long stymied mathematicians "believed their success came from the fact that they had less knowledge than others" and thus could "think differently." While Boaler's hyperbolic title promises too much her book shows the human mind as expansive but not unlimited and she can occasionally belabor a point, on the whole her guide offers fresh pedagogical approaches to educators and meaningful encouragement and ideas to students.
Customer Reviews
Dynamic
Great read from start to finish……