Quotes from Eleanor Duckworth

Learning is Messy.

Teachers are often, and understandably, impatient for their students to develop clear and adequate ideas. But putting ideas in relation to each other isn't a simple job. It's confusing and this confusion does take time. All of us need time for our confusion if we are to build the breadth and depth that give significance to our knowledge.

All of us, from children to scientists, have difficulty accepting data that go against our firmly held beliefs. We have to restructure too much of our intellectual framework to assimilate such surprises. It is far less costly, at least for a time, to keep the framework and deny the fact.

But it's not the pressure of data that gives rise to the understanding. It's, on the contrary, the child's own struggle to make sense of the data

Real learning, attentive, real learning, deep learning, is playful and frustrating and joyful and discouraging and exciting and sociable and private all the time, which is what makes it great.

Getting people to think about what they think, and asking them questions about it, is the best way I know how to teach.