Shows
Education Bookcast90. Discovery learning: the idea that won't dieDiscovery learning is an approach that I was trying out at around the time I was in the 20's of episode numbers of this podcast. I tried out the idea of Maths Circles, running a few of my own and attending a course about them in Notre Dame University in the United States. I also tried running a Self-Organised Learning Environment or SOLE, modelled on the work of Sugata Mitra, famous for his "hole-in-the-wall" experiments in India. Since then, I have discovered the reasons why these sorts of approaches don't work, and I've been discussing this recently...
2020-06-2243 minEducation Bookcast89. The World Until Yesterday by Jared DiamondJared Diamond is a geographer and author of many bestselling books about civilisation, including Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. In The World Until Yesterday, he combines his scholarship and his personal experiences in the New Guinea highlands to discuss how non-state societies of hunter gatherers and subsistence farmers and herders differ from modern industrialised state societies. In so doing, he sheds a light on the differences between our modern world and the way that humans have lived for the majority of our existence on this planet. Although the whole book is fascinating, there is only one...
2020-06-081h 20Education Bookcast88. The Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-based, Experiential, and Inquiry-based TeachingEarlier in the life of this podcast I was experimenting with discovery learning. I was even something of a fan. I tried out "Maths Circles", a form of discovery- and inquiry-based teaching, with students aged 16-18 and 10-11, and even went on a course in the USA to try to learn more about it. My exploits are recorded in previous episodes. I could hardly call them a great success. Subsequently, I tried to find research on Maths Circles. The Internet didn't bring anything up. Eventually I put that obsession away and focused on other books and research...
2020-05-2553 minEducation Bookcast87. Experiential Learning by Colin Beard and John WilsonI'm just about to do another episode where I talk about a scientific article on this very topic, criticising the approach. I thought it only fair to see it from the side of the proponents as well. Unfortunately, this book is something of a disappointment. There are many minor annoyances early on such as inconsistent use of terminology and a lack of back-up to some claims. But there are much greater issues than that. For one thing, the authors seem to have difficulty defining the concept, and certainly find it hard to do so succinctly...
2020-05-1126 minEducation Bookcast86. Learning as information compressionThe inspiration for this episode is a rather technical tome entitled Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms by David MacKay. It's basically an infromation theory / machine learning textbook. I initially got it because it's known to be a rewarding work for the most nerdy people in the machine learning (a.k.a. "artificial intelligence") world, who want to get down to fundamentals and understand how concepts from the apparently seperate fields of information theory and inference interrelate. I haven't finished the book, and as of this writing I'm not actually actively reading it. I still wanted to...
2020-04-2729 minEducation Bookcast85. Why Don't Students Like School? by Daniel WillinghamDaniel Willingham is a cognitive scientist who specialises in the study of how people read. In this book, he brings forward nine principles of cognitive science that both have a substantial evidence base and are relevant to teachers. Although he wanted there to be ten, nine is all that he could find that would match those criteria. He names the chapters after questions that they answer rather than the principles that they expound, as this would pique the readers' interest more and make them more likely to remember the principles (he is a cognitive scientist after all...
2020-04-131h 12Education Bookcast84. Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas TalebNassim Nicholas Taleb is a former options trader who noticed that the financial markets were unstable ahead of the crash in 2008, and made a lot of money from shorting the market (betting that it would crash). Since then, he has written a quadrilogy of books on risk and decision-making under uncertainty which he calls the incerto. The books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, and the one I cover in this episode, Skin in the Game. At least two of his books - The Black Swan and Antifragile - have now made it as c...
2020-03-3025 minEducation Bookcast83. SuperMemo's 20 rules for formulating knowledgeSuperMemo is a flashcard and spaced repetition software that has been around since 1991. Its founder, Dr Piotr Wozniak, maintains a blog with many interesting discussions of learning and memory. One that stood out to me was the 20 rules for formulating knowledge, available via this link: http://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm. I read the article with an eye to finding fundamental or deep principles of learning, rather than improving the quality of my flashcards. The following rules were the ones that seemed to fit the bill: Do not learn if you do not understand. (Rule 1) Learn...
2020-03-1626 minEducation Bookcast82. Memorable Teaching by Peps McCreaContinuing with our information processing model theme (i.e. seeing the mind as made up of long-term memory and limited working memory), we now have a book on teaching practices that is based on this very model. The title of this book comes from the idea that as teachers, our aim is to make long-lasting, high-quality additions to students' long-term memories. After an introduction to this model of the mind, Peps McCrea goes on to elucidate 9 principles of memorable teaching: Manage information (information is always in competition for students' attention) Streamline communications (consider the way you...
2020-02-2945 minEducation Bookcast81b. ...except for this one "learning style"!There one major, well-documented factor that effects what the best kind of instruction is for different people: expertise. This episode's article is The expertise reversal effect by John Sweller et al. (2003). The effect is so called because certain changes in instructional materials and practices that have repeatedly been found to enhance learning in novices, have actually been found to reduce learning in more advanced students. Hence there is a "reversal" in effectiveness. The effect can easily be understood by considering the information processing model of the human mind (i.e. the idea of the thinking...
2020-02-1746 minEducation Bookcast81a. The Myth of Learning StylesLearning styles are one of the most widely believed psychological ideas known by scientists to be invalid. Over 90% of university students in the USA believe in them, and most adults will gladly share whether they consider themselves to be visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic learners (VAK theory is the leading learning styles theory). In this episode, we look at six publications showing the problems with learning styles theories. The problems fall into three layers: The questionnaires for many learning styles theories (i.e. the way in which the learning style of a given person is determined) have...
2020-02-1039 minEducation Bookcast80. The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve PetersThis is a book with a terrible title and wonderful ideas. Isn't there a saying about not judging the quality of a publication's contents by the attractiveness of its external design? Many famous athletes credit Steve Peters with being essential to their success, including footballer Steven Gerard and rower Sir Chris Hoy. This book summarises his ideas in a way that makes them accessible to everyone. Our minds are modular. Sometimes we are "at war with ourselves" or we "don't know why we did something". There are different parts inside us that sometimes cooperate and...
2020-01-271h 48Education Bookcast79. What learning isThis may be the most important episode on the podcast so far. When I started out on this journey of coming to understand education, I had a lot of questions. As I started to interrogate my questions further, probing the more fundamental holes in my understanding that lay behind them, I realised that I was missing answers to the most basic questions you could think of: What is education? And what is learning? I now feel that I have an answer to at least one of these questions. It's a very simple answer. So simple...
2020-01-131h 07Education Bookcast78. Interview with Dr James ComerIn this episode, I have the great privilege to invite Dr James Comer, the creator of the Comer School Development Program (SDP), onto the show. Dr Comer is the Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale Child Study Centre, and has been since 1976, as well as associate dean at the Yale School of Medicine. His School Development Program has been used in more than 600 schools, and he has been awarded 47 honorary degrees. I was a bit nervous during the interview, and it shows. I had great respect for Dr Comer even before I spoke to...
2019-12-251h 07Education Bookcast77b. Case study: the Comer SDP in New JerseyIn this part of the two-part episode about Linda Darling-Hammond's book With the Whole Child in Mind, we will look at one of the two case studies mentioned in the book, that of Norman S. Weir Elementary School in New Jersey. The Comer SDP was implemented there starting in 1997 with the appointment of Ruth Baskerville as the school principal. At this time, the school was described as "characterised by student disaffection with the learning process, frequent fights, and low staff morale in a building that was in disrepair". By the end of the 2003-04 school year, the...
2019-12-2317 minEducation Bookcast77a. With the Whole Child in Mind by Linda Darling-HammondLast episode, we saw a meta-analysis of comprehensive school reform (CSR) programmes. The best-performing programmes are Success for All, Direct Instruction, and the Comer School Development Program. The episode in this book concerns the Comer School Development Program (SDP), covering its philosophy and implementation. The focus of the SDP is on two main themes: improving relationships within the school; and thinking of all the ways in which child development can be fostered at school, known as the six developmental pathways (physical, language, ethical, social, psychological, and cognitive). The SDP is based on nine elements, split...
2019-12-1843 minEducation Bookcast76. Comprehensive School ReformComprehensive school reform (CSR) is a name for any set of policies that are simultaneously enacted in (usually a single) school for the purposes of school improvement. There are many different branded types of CSR program, including Core Knowledge, Direct Instruction, Montessori, Roots & Wings, School Development Program, and Success for All. This article is entitled Comprehensive School Reform and Achievement: A Meta-Analysis by Borman et al. It goes through all of the different types of comprehensive school reform programs that have been studied and identifies which ones are the most effective. Spoiler alert! It's the Comer School...
2019-12-1134 min
The ReasonRx PodcastEpisode 36 Educator Stanislaw Pstrokonski Discusses What He Has Learned From Reading About Education and Great TeachersEducator Stanislaw Pstrokonski of The Education Bookcast joins us to discuss his background, his podcast, why he started his podcast, and what he has learned from it. This is an interesting discussion for all those interested in education in any way: teachers, business professionals, coaches, and parents. And, heck, anyone who wants to learn or teach anything. He describes his podcast as "Education Bookcast is a podcast principally for teachers and parents who would like to know more about education. We cover one education-related book or article each episode, going over the key points, placing it...
2019-11-141h 18Education Bookcast75. What great teachers have in commonIn the past three episodes, we have looked at three great teachers: basketball coach John Wooden, mathematics teacher Jaime Escalante, and primary school teacher Marva Collins. Each has their own domain of expertise (basketball, mathematics, and literature) and age of students (university, high school, and primary school). Are there any ways in which we can generalise about them? A list of features that tend to make teachers likely to be nominated as "favourite" teachers are given in You Haven't Taught Until They've Learned (the book about John Wooden), and they are mostly true of the above three...
2019-11-041h 10Education Bookcast74e. Marva Collins' educational philosophyIn this final part of the series on legendary teacher Marva Collins, we look at her educational philosophy, i.e. things that she believed and that impacted her decisions and actions in and around the classroom, but that are hard to perceive directly and that are best understood by listening to what she said rather than looking at what she did. The key points concern the idea of relevance, the impact of progressive education, creativity, and the effect and prevalence of labelling children. I hope you've drawn as much inspiration and as many lessons from Marva Collins...
2019-10-2518 minEducation Bookcast74d. Marva Collins' curriculum and teaching approachIn this part of the series on Marva Collins, we look at her curriculum and some elements of the way that she taught. The most surprising thing is the kind of literature that she was presenting to such young children - authors such as Dostoyevsky, Plato, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dante, Tolstoy, Emerson, and Poe. Also, I managed to find a documentary about Marva Collins which shows how some of her students turned out over a decade later. It's on YouTube, here is the link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8b1Behi9FM. Enjoy the...
2019-10-2455 minEducation Bookcast74c. Dealing with difficult childrenWhen she was working at Delano Elementary School in Chicago, Marva would often be given the "worst", most disruptive students, and in her 14 years there she developed a way of dealing with them. By the time she set up her own school, she was a master of helping them get out of their destructive cycle and working to achieve their academic and social potential, which was way beyond what anybody had expected. In this episode, we look at several examples of Marva Collins dealing with particularly recalcitrant children. She is the expert here, so it's best to...
2019-10-2351 minEducation Bookcast74b. How to start the school year, Marva Collins styleIn one chapter of the book Marva Collins' Way, we are treated to a fly-on-the-wall view of Marva Collins' first day with a new class in a new school year. This is such a valuable resource that I've devoted one full part of this episode on Marva Collins to it. It demonstrates how she builds trust, sets the tone, motivates children, and gets them to believe in themselves. It is her school year and her educational philosophy in a nutshell, and therefore very much worth spending some time on. Enjoy the episode.
2019-10-2239 minEducation Bookcast74a. Marva Collins' Way by Marva Collins and Civia TamarkinMarva Collins is the best teacher I have ever seen or heard of. Working in a poor black neighbourhood in Chicago in the 1970s, she took on the worst of the worst - kids described as "unteachable", either actively defiant towards school or considered so learning-disabled as to never be able to learn to read - and within a space of one to two years had them reading and enjoying Shakespeare, Chaucer, Plato, and Dostoyevsky; exhibiting an insatiable thirst for knowledge; and reading ten books each over the summer break. These children were on average around eight years old...
2019-10-2137 minEducation Bookcast73e. Escalante - the glory yearsAfter the events of summer 1982, when Jaime Escalante's Advanced Placement Calculus students were accused of cheating and then vindicated on a re-test, Escalante had become famous first in local and then national news. The original story about an American institution, ETS, allegedly discriminating based on race to accuse the latino students of cheating, turned into a story of surprise and applause as an "academic sinkhole" like Garfield High managed to have such a large number of students taking AP Calculus. The events of 1982 inspired a film about Jaime Escalante, Stand and Deliver, which spread his fame to...
2019-02-1022 minEducation Bookcast73d. Escalante - raising academic standardsAfter a short time working at Garfield High School, Jaime Escalante was asked to take over Advanced Placement calculus. Advanced Placement is a type of examination which offers "college credit", meaning that those who pass have a reduced number of courses that they need to take to get a degree. It's a hard exam, basically. Escalante wasn't sure about the programme at first, but soon became keen to take it over and expand it. He felt that it gives an objective view of his work and that of his students, and gives them something to strive towards...
2019-02-1044 minEducation Bookcast73c. Garfield and discipline: a clash of philosophiesIn 1974, Garfield High School got a new principal (headmaster) in the form of Alex Avilez. The school was in turmoil, with a major gang presence, and a police presence to help combat the gang presence. It was noisy, with music blaring from "dozens" of radios; fights broke out often; truancy was rampant; and the dropout rate was 50%. Avilez's core belief was in people's fundamental goodness. He was excited about young people and about human potential, and wanted to aim for a peaceful Garfield High in which everyone loved one another. The way to achieve this, he decided...
2019-02-0832 minEducation Bookcast73b. Escalante: introducing the charactersOne of the main lessons from the story of Jaime Escalante's career at East LA's Garfeild High School was that it was ultimately a team effort to reach the academic level that the school eventually did. Apart from Escalante himself, there are two figures who stand out as central to the story: Henry Gradillas and Benjamin Jimenez. Gradillas joined Garfield High as a biology teacher after six years in the US army and a short stint as an orchard manager. He saw clear similarities between the young people in his classroom and those who he had been...
2019-02-0633 minEducation Bookcast73a. Escalante: The Best Teacher in America by Jay MatthewsJaime Escalante was a Bolivian teacher who came to Los Angeles in the 1960s. After joining the chaotic failing school Garfield High as a mathematics teacher in 1974, he soon began an Advanced Placement Calculus program that grew to an unheard of size for such a disadvantaged community. In 1982, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which wrote and marked the tests, suspected Garfield High students of cheating. This led to interest from the media and later fame for Escalante as people started to take notice of what was happening at the school. Soon after, the film Stand and Deliver...
2019-02-0320 minEducation Bookcast72b. John Wooden and cognitive scienceI first read You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned almost five years ago. In that time, I have learned much about how people learn. Re-reading the book now, I am struck by how much of what John Wooden did in his teaching is well supported by modern cognitive science. This is what I try to convey in this short addendum to the notes on John Wooden's pedagogy. Enjoy the episode.
2019-01-2820 minEducation Bookcast72a. Star coach John Wooden's pedagogyJohn Wooden was a basketball coach for UCLA and an English teacher. He is renowned as one of the greatest coaches of all time, winning 10 out of 12 NCAA championships, including seven in a row, and has been named Coach of the Century by ESPN among others. You Haven't Taught Until They've Learned is a book about his pedagogy, written by one of his former players (Swen Nater) and by an education researcher who had the rare privilege to observe his basketball practices and ask him detailed questions about his teaching (Ronald Gallimore). The dual authorship gives it...
2019-01-2039 minEducation Bookcast71. Visible Learning by John HattieJohn Hattie is an education researcher from New Zealand with a very ambitious goal: to synthesise the myriad quantitative research studies on education in a single publication. The number of articles affecting his book Visible Learning numbers in the region of 80 thousand (!). The results of his analysis have been hailed as the "Holy Grail" of education by such prestigious authorities as the Times Education Supplement. So, how did he and his team do it? Hattie uses an approach known as meta-analysis. Meta-analyses take numerous research articles trying to measure an effect and compare them in order...
2019-01-0221 minEducation Bookcast70. The Hidden Lives of Learners by Graham NuthallGraham Nuthall was an education researcher from New Zealand who spent most of his career on classroom observation, both by directly sitting in on lessons and by recording them by the hundred, watching them back, and analysing them with his team. He also made extensive use of interviews with students to clarify their thought processes. This short book communicates his most important findings to other researchers and to teachers. His most impressive achievement is being able to predict, with some accuracy, what concepts or facts children have learned based solely on classroom observation. His team would analyse...
2019-01-0148 minEducation BookcastA public service announcementIt's been three years since the start of Education Bookcast. I will be attempting to change the format to make episodes shorter. I also mention some successes of the past year.
2019-01-0146 minEducation Bookcast69. Edward de Bono: Criticisms and controversiesI've spent a total of seven episodes up till now on Edward de Bono's work on creativity, lateral thinking, and the workings of the mind. While reading his books, a number of criticisms arose in my mind which I never felt I had the chance to fully express. In the name of balance, I also looked for any criticisms of de Bono online, and I found some quite damning allegations. My criticisms from his books and these allegations are topics I would like to spend one episode talking about. The main problems with de Bono's books are...
2018-07-301h 25Education Bookcast68. The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigalStress is broadly understood to be a serious health risk and a destructive factor in many people's lives. It has been advertised as such for several decades. In The Upside of Stress, Kelly McGonigal explains how new research shows that stress may actually be something positive and life-enhancing rather than ruinous. The most central concept is that of "stress mindsets". Similar to fixed vs. growth mindset as described in Carol Dweck's book (covered in the first episode of this podcast), stress mindsets concern one's beliefs about the effects of stress. People with a "positive stress mindset" believe...
2018-07-161h 42Education Bookcast67. Edward de Bono: Odds and endsEdward de Bono has written a lot of books. Although they often contain small novelties, overall his bibliography is quite repetitive, meaning that it's not worth making an episode about every one of his books individually. In this episode, we'll look at six of his books in quick succession. It's the audio summary equivalent of "skimming" these books, which deserve little more if you're already familiar with the books of his we've considered so far on the podcast. First we look at the "six series": Six Thinking Hats, Six Action Shoes, Six Value Medals and Six Frames...
2018-07-0225 minEducation Bookcast66. The teacher crisis in the UKTeachers are leaving the profession in droves in Britain - over half have left before having worked for five years. New and experienced teachers alike leave, making the government consider other options for recruitment - generous stipends for training, or bringing in teachers from overseas. This is the UK teacher crisis. In this episode, I recount a conversation I had with a former teacher and current co-worker of mine which elucidated the root of the problem. The core issues were three: time, energy, and Ofsted (the UK schools inspectorate). The effects are complex and wide-ranging. What I...
2018-06-2446 minEducation Bookcast65. Beyond the Hole in the Wall by Sugata MitraSugata Mitra gained widespread acclaim after his TED talk on the Hole in the Wall experiment. In the experiment, he put a computer in a wall of a New Dehli slum, and found that children learned to use it all by themselves. His explorations continued, trying out whether such self-organising learning environments or SOLEs could perform as well as traditional classrooms in terms of children's learning. He since received funding from the World Bank to expand his project to a range of developing countries. However, independent researchers who have visited Hole in the Wall sites have been...
2018-05-2755 minEducation Bookcast64. What Bruce Lee taught me about learningA while back, I listened to an interview with Bruce Lee*. There were two things that I took away from it, neither of which I understood at the time: Bruce Lee's insistence that martial arts are first and foremost about self-expression; and the concept of "acting un-acting" or "un-acting acting" (elsewhere I have heard him talk about "fighting un-fighting"). Recently I was reminded of this interview, but this time it made sense to me, because of what I had learned in the meantime about the nature of learning. Perhaps surprisingly, another look at what he had said...
2018-05-071h 18Education Bookcast63. I am Right, You are Wrong by Edward de BonoWe've already seen a number of books by Edward de Bono. I am Right, You are Wrong is (was?) probably my favourite book of his, but since it is such a synthesis of his ideas I wanted to save it for after books that discuss his "core" ideas in detail. Now, having done that, it turns out that there is little to say about this book, for the very same reason - as a synthesis, it doesn't provide very many new ideas. That said, there are 7 ideas from this book that I would like to share, as...
2018-04-2322 minEducation Bookcast62. Brainstorming makes you less creativeI've recently been doing a series on creativity on the podcast. Edward de Bono has featured heavily, but there are other creativity-related topics and authors who I also want to talk about. In this episode, we look at the research on brainstorming, the technique for coming up with new ideas. The provocative title of this episode needs a little clarification. The most strongly supported finding in the research is that brainstorming in a group is not as effective as coming up with ideas individually, and then pooling them. Since brainstorming almost always refers to a group activity...
2018-04-091h 00Education Bookcast61. Po: Beyond Yes and No by Edward de BonoEdward de Bono has long stressed the need to be open to the creation of new words in order to support the development of new concepts and ideas, even in areas not considered "cutting edge". For example, in his book Simplicity, he makes the case (not too convincingly) that the words "simple" and "simplify" are too long and complicated, and they should themselves be simplified to the word "simp", as in "We should simp this so it will be more simp." (Understandably, de Bono has his detractors when it comes to these neologisms.) "Po" is a new...
2018-03-261h 27Education Bookcast60. Dual N-Back: The best "brain training"?In the previous episode, we looked at a range of articles concerning the effectiveness of so-called "brain training" in general, with a particular focus on Lumosity, one of the big players in the market. In this episode, we home in on perhaps the most promising type of "brain training": dual n-back. Dual n-back has more evidence than most other forms of "brain training" that it can increase working memory. This is a big deal, since working memory has otherwise not been found to change due to any intervention, but it is strongly implicated in higher reasoning and...
2018-03-121h 34Education Bookcast59. Does "brain-training" work? The case of LumosityCould specially designed exercises on your computer or mobile phone make you smarter? "Brain-training" is now a multi-billion pound industry, and that money comes from people hoping to get a boost in their mental faculties from spending time playing the various games in the apps in question. Do these apps work as they are supposed to? And if they are, shouldn't we have all children (and maybe adults too) make use of them? In this episode, I go through the research on this topic, with a particular focus on Lumosity, one of the biggest players in this...
2018-03-051h 01Education Bookcast58. The Use of Lateral Thinking by Edward de BonoIn this episode, we will look closely at Edward de Bono's idea of lateral thinking by considering two of his books, The Use of Lateral Thinking (1971) and Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity (1977). Lateral thinking is the central idea behind all of de Bono's work. It grows out of the models of mind that de Bono presented in his first book The Mechanism of Mind (1969), and was initially introduced in the second part of that book. De Bono coined the term himself, but now it is a commonly used word in the English language. De...
2018-03-031h 02Education Bookcast57. Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar ShafirAlthough ostensibly about economics, this book is in fact about the effect of poverty of various kinds on the mind. Poverty is a shortage of resources. It could be money, time (busy people are "time-poor"), or some other resource. When people experience scarcity, their minds automatically, subconsciously devote mental resources to the issue. The results of this are two. 1. They are more rational in their approach to the use of the resource, and use it more prudently. For example, usually supermarkets will have more than one size of packs of things, with the idea that...
2018-02-2852 minEducation Bookcast56. The Mechanism of Mind by Edward de BonoEdward de Bono's work can mostly be divided into two parts: models of how the mind works; and applications of principles extracted from those models to improve thinking, particularly creative thinking. The Mechanism of Mind is his first book, and it primarily deals with the first of these two parts. De Bono wrote The Mechanism of Mind in 1969, at a time when not much was known about the brain, nor about complex adaptive systems (the types of physical objects and situations studied by the fields of mathematics and physics known as chaos theory, complexity theory, and dynamical...
2018-02-271h 00Education Bookcast55. How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal NewportCal Newport is a computer scientist at Georgetown University who writes a blog called Study Hacks about effective study methods. We have covered one of his books already, So Good They Can't Ignore You, when I wanted to discuss career advice. Before writing How to Become a Straight-A Student, Newport visited a number of university campuses in the USA and looked for students who got the best grades. Curiously, he found that these usually came in two types - those who were constantly grinding away in their studies, as one might expect from a top student; and t...
2018-02-011h 17Education Bookcast54. Six Thinking Hats by Edward de BonoEdward de Bono is an expert on creativity, author of over 40 books on the subject. He invented the term "lateral thinking" in the 1960s, which is now a part of common parlance. Over his long career, he has worked with numerous large corporations such as Microsoft, Apple, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Siemens, Bose, HP, LinkedIn, and Texas Instruments, as well as schools, charities, and governments. His basic premise is that creativity can be taught by direct teaching of thinking skills and techniques, and that this kind of thinking is not a normal part of culture, but that it...
2018-01-3130 minEducation Bookcast53b. Brain-Based Learning by Eric Jensen [continued]This is the second part of the episode about Brain-Based Learning. In the previous part, I discussed the chapters concerning relative lateralisation (left/right hemispheres), rhythms (such as circadian rhythms), gender, physical activity, stress and threat, and the senses (vision, touch, taste, smell, and sound). In this episode we look at the chapters on emotions, teacher communication, motivation, attention, teaching how to think, memory, meaning making, and enriching the brain. Enjoy the episode. Music by podcastthemes.com.
2018-01-0955 minEducation Bookcast53a. Brain-Based Learning by Eric JensenEric Jensen is a former teacher with a PhD in Human Development from Fielding Graduate University. In 1981, he co-founded "the United States' first and largest brain-compatible learning program"[1], and he has been the head of Jensen Learning, a company that trains teachers what he calls "brain-friendly" or "brain-compatible" teaching and learning principles, since 1995. Brain-Based Learning is one of the first books that I read as I was getting into finding out more about education research several years ago. I am quite disappointed with this book. It's not very good. The problems with it are numerous. F...
2018-01-091h 19Education Bookcast52. How We Learn by Benedict CareyThis is an episode which requires little justification for its relevance to education - the title says it all. How We Learn presents a selection of cognitive science's more recent findings, some of which are rather counterintuitive, and gives several "tips" for how one might study more effectively based on these. Topics covered include the importance of forgetting (!) for learning; the effect of context on learning, and the idea that varied context provides for better learning by enhancing the number of cues for memory retrieval; the power of spaced repetition; test-taking as a study method; and incubation...
2017-12-221h 27Education Bookcast51. Review of episodes 1-50I've spent some time thinking about the past 50 episodes of the podcast, and I've identified a number of themes - why people do things; how people get good at things; inner states and beliefs; mathematics education; and educational myth-busting, to name a few. But I decided that this episode would be more interesting and helpful if it linked as many ideas as possible under a single umbrella. So, what's the most important idea that I talked about these past (almost) two years? To my mind, many episodes focused on the interaction between the subconscious and the conscious...
2017-11-281h 06Education Bookcast50. Types of explanationExplanations can broadly be categorised according to two adjectives: nomological and mechanistic. Mechanistic explanations are to do with cause and effect, and focus on events and causes that immediately precede the fact that we desire to explain. Nomological explanations are based on general principles. The following is the definition of the word "nomological": nomological. adj. Relating to or denoting principles that resemble laws, especially those laws of nature which are neither logically necessary nor theoretically explicable, but just are so. Here are some word pairs that I came up with that are near-synonymous to the...
2017-10-031h 13Education Bookcast49. The Art of Learning by Josh WaitzkinJosh Waitzkin was the international under-18 chess champion at age 18, only to quit chess at age 22 and pursue Tai-chi Push Hands, the martial application of Tai Chi. He became world champion in this martial art at age 28, and won the title several more times since then. As an accomplished competitor in two fields - one mental, one mostly physical - a book written by him about how he learns is obviously going to contain some interesting ideas. The main themes of what he writes about are two: learning by focusing on principles and deeply understanding the fundamentals...
2017-09-281h 38Education Bookcast48. I Thought It Was Just Me by Brené BrownThis book is about shame. Shame is a taboo emotion in our culture. It is not talked about, which is part of what makes it so powerful, and part of its essence - it is an emotion of disconnection, or feeling rejected or not worthy of the group. It can affect students as well as teachers, almost always negatively. Students can experience it coming from teachers (often with good intentions), or coming from other students as a form of bullying. In an educational or work setting, shame is often used as a motivator. It doesn't...
2017-09-271h 15Education Bookcast47. OptimismIn this episode, we will look at the article Seeing the Glass Half Full: A Review of the Causes and Consequences of Optimism by Mary Forgeard and Martin Seligman. (The name of the article was so long that I thought it might be better to give the episode a to-the-point, minimalistic title.) Since we just looked at self-esteem and at self-compassion, I thought it might be good to take a look at another concept within the same general psychological area: optimism. Is optimism good for you? What causes it? And how does it affect academic performance?
2017-09-2221 minEducation Bookcast46. Self Compassion by Kristin NeffWe've seen in the previous episode how trying to increase one's self-esteem is a dangerous proposition, and how having high self-esteem is not necessarily a good thing. Now it's time to look at another approach to the self which is a lot more promising. Self-compassion is an idea taken originally from traditional buddhist psychology, but now studied fairly extensively with the scientific method. In a word, it's being nice to yourself. It is trying to be your own "best friend" by thinking about how a good friend would relate to you in moments of difficulty, and adopting...
2017-09-221h 05Education Bookcast45. The problem with self-esteemSelf-esteem is a psychological concept that has penetrated everyday language. In many Western countries, it is generally understood that high self-esteem is essential to health, happiness, and success. Is this really the case? And how did this idea spread? So much was the excitement about self-esteem in the early 90's that the California state legislature set up a Task Force to Promote Self Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility, with an annual budget of over $700,000. All it took was some politicians with unusual metaphysical beliefs and flexible interpretations of the words of scientist ("The news most consistently...
2017-09-2054 minEducation Bookcast44. History as citizen-buildingI spent a month in summer in Lithuania on a language course. Some events while I was there prompted me to realise something about education that I had heard before, but never quite understood. The music played in this episode is Lietuvos istorijos repas by Šventinis bunkuchenas. Enjoy the episode.
2017-09-2053 minEducation Bookcast43. Night School [on sleep] by Richard WisemanIt reduces productivity, prevents learning, reduces effective IQ, disrupts relationships, undermines creative thinking, and saps self-control. It increases the risk of depression, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and ADHD. What is it? Lack of sleep. Sleep is essential for learning. We spend around a third of our lives in this state, and yet we take up much less than one third of our time thinking about how to make it better. In Night School, not only can we learn all about how sleep works, but also we can find out how to get be...
2017-06-251h 20Education Bookcast42. Do Schools Kill Creativity? by Sir Ken RobinsonSir Ken Robinson's TED talk Do Schools Kill Creativity is the most popular TED talk ever given, with just under 45 million views at the time of my writing this. It is so influential that Robinson has a page on his website devoted to feedback forms about how the talk changed people's lives. It is also nonsense. And yet, somehow, I was also convinced by it when I first heard it. The weakness of Robinson's arguments combined with the powerful effect he seems to have on people are testament to his incredible skill as a public speaker. The t...
2017-05-051h 40Education Bookcast41. What Reading Does for the MindI thought it was about time to cover something about books on this book-related podcast! Keith Stanovich and Annie Cunningham are two researchers who have spent their careers working together to understand the effects of reading on knowledge. Their research aims to answer a few questions in particular: 1. How much does reading matter in increasing people's knowledge? Is amount of reading irrelevant, since amount of information absorbed depends so much more strongly on innate intelligence than it does on exposure to more information? 2. How does reading compare to other sources of knowledge? Is re...
2017-04-131h 20Education Bookcast40. ADHD Does Not Exist by Richard Saul11% of children and 4% of adults in the US are said to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Dr Richard Saul has been a specialist in attention and learning problems in children and adults since the 1970's. He says that there is no such thing as ADHD. What, then, are all these children and adults suffering from? Dr Saul answers this question very thoroughly. It could be any of the following: Vision problems Sleep disturbance Substance abuse Mood disorders (bipolar disorder, depression) Hearing problems Learning disabilities Sensory processing disorder Giftedness Seizure disorders Obsessive-compulsive disorder Tourette's s...
2017-04-0837 minEducation Bookcast39b. The Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett [continued]This continues the episode about The Geography of Thought, looking at more ways in which the cultural differences manifest themselves in differing psychologies of people from different parts of the world. Themes include: Visual perception; Descriptions and understandings of the self; Attitudes to choice; "Fitting in" versus uniqueness; Attitudes to the law and contractual agreements; Factors affecting motivation; Preference for different types of reasoning; and Approaches to blame and causality. I also answer some questions posed at the beginning of last episode, namely: Why do modern Asians excel at science and maths, and yet have few...
2017-04-081h 13Education Bookcast39a. The Geography of Thought by Richard NisbettUnlike many books that I cover, this is one that I read recently and felt an urgent need to share its contents even before I got to the appropriate theme in a series of episodes. It hit me right where it hurts - in my fundamental assumptions about human nature. As I research the field of education and produce this podcast, I have been generally assuming that people are more or less the same everywhere in their fundamental modes of thinking and feeling. I presumed that the topic of motivation, for example, or that of cognitive biases...
2017-03-051h 15Education Bookcast38. Uncle Staś' advice column [RTTP, homeschooling, and the dangers of social media]I've received a lot of messages from listeners (as well as from an author!) in the past few days. Several of these messages are things that I would like to share, and there are two in particular that I would like to talk about since I imagine there may be many listeners who have the same questions. Firstly, I talk about my interactions with the folks at Reacting to the Past, and in particular with Mark Carnes, who emailed me within a day of the release of the episode about his book (Minds on Fire). ...
2017-02-191h 03Education Bookcast37. A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph KosterThe words "theory" and "fun" in such close proximity may make you suspicious. Or, they may make you curious. "Fun" is one of those ideas that is so natural and intuitive, and yet for that very reason is so hard to pin down. Raph Koster has a somewhat peculiar view of what fun is: "Fun is just another word for learning." As the head of Sony Online Entertainment, I'm inclined to believe him. If fun is learning, how do we ensure everyone in education gets more of it - and the right kind? This book...
2017-02-1954 minEducation Bookcast36. What is fun? What is play? What is a game?In recent episodes, we have been discussing games and play, and their relevance to education, as well as to an improved understanding of human psychology. In this episode, I approach some central questions of the field: What is a game? What is a toy? What is play? What is fun? It is by their very naturalness that play, fun, and games are hard to define. We can sense what they are, and that's exactly what makes them hard to put them into words. Jesse Schell surveys the literature and puts together the ideas and definitions of many...
2017-02-1752 minEducation Bookcast35b. Minds on Fire by Mark CarnesThis is a continuation of the episode on Minds on Fire by Mark Carnes. The main idea of this part of the episode is the effects that Reacting to the Past, and role-play in general, have on the "self", i.e. the psychological construct of our selves. Enjoy the episode.
2017-02-171h 13Education Bookcast35a. Minds on Fire by Mark CarnesLast episode, we looked at the various ways in which games can both improve our theoretical understanding of human psychology and of learning, and also at how they can be used practically to improve people's lives. In this episode, I want to discuss a particular practical application of games, and that is in so-called Reacting to the Past. Reacting to the Past is a type of live role-playing game where each participant plays a character from a particular historical time and place. For example, the setting may be the French revolution, and players would take the roles...
2017-02-161h 27Education Bookcast34b. Which is broken: reality, or Jane McGonigal's mind?This episode serves two purposes. On the one hand, I want to go over some more ideas from Jane McGonigal's book, as it is so rich in fresh and original ideas (they're fresh to me, anyway). On the other hand, I would like to go through a pointed criticism of the book entitled Jane McGonigal's Mind is Broken written by Edward Champion. Given how much I got from her book, I am surprised that there are people who are so strongly against it. I think it is good to go through it in the name of balance, t...
2017-01-021h 30Education Bookcast34a. Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigalJane McGonigal is a game designer who believes that, in many ways, games bring out the best in people. The reason for their popularity, she claims, is that they satisfy fundamental human needs. This leads, for example, to the highly insightful and completely counterintuitive notion that a big reason for people playing games is that it makes them feel productive. She peppers her book with reality "fixes" - comparisons of games with reality, where games come out on top, and lead the way to a better future. Here is a full list of those fixes. Unnecessary...
2017-01-021h 31Education Bookcast33. Interview with Malke Rosenfeld of Math in your FeetMalke Rosenfeld is the creator of Math in your Feet, a program to teach students mathematical concepts through the medium of dance. (Really!) She does school workshops and teacher trainings, and now has a new book, Math on the Move, describing her approach and the theory behind it. We talk about interdisciplinary learning, embodied learning, liking vs. hating maths, and attitudes to "alternative" teaching methods. Malke herself, like many people, never really "got" maths while she was at school. After getting involved in the percussive dance scene, she one day woke up to the possibility that "surely...
2017-01-0259 minEducation Bookcast32. The Visual Edge by Sargy Letuchy [interview]Today we have an interview with Sargy Letuchy, a public school teacher from Chicago, who has produced some materials to help other teachers with standards-based learning. The Visual Edge is a workbook of graphic organisers for K-12 teachers in the United States. Along the way, we also discuss some other pertinent education topics. Enjoy the episode.
2017-01-0253 minEducation Bookcast31+. How I learn languagesDepending on what counts as knowing a language, I speak anything between 7 and 12 languages, namely: English, Polish, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, and Persian well; Hungarian to a lesser extent; and Georgian, Armenian, Lithuanian, and Tibetan in the past, now mostly forgotten. Besides this, I have some knowledge of classical languages (Latin, classical Chinese, and ancient Greek); one constructed language (Esperanto); and there are a couple more languages that I've had a smaller amount of exposure to (Turkish and Maltese). I think that my experiences may be worth sharing to a general audience interested in e...
2017-01-021h 15Education Bookcast31. Lessons learned from 50 years of language teaching at the Foreign Service InstituteIn this episode, I review a paper from the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) about language learning and teaching. The key insights are eleven: Mature adults can learn a foreign language well enough through intensive language study to do things in the language (almost) as well as native speakers. "Language-learning aptitude" varies among individuals and affects their classroom learning success (but at least some aspects of aptitude can be learned). There is no "one right way" to teach (or learn) languages, nor is there a single "right" syllabus. Time on task and the intensity of the learning experience appear...
2016-12-201h 16Education Bookcast30. Cultural Learnings of America for make benefit glorious podcast of Education BookcastI wanted to share some things I learned from my trip to the US this summer, and what my own experience of running maths circles has been like so far. This episode includes: Discussion of the Summer Math Circle Institute; Tips and techniques learned from the Institute; My own experiences of running maths circles; Potatoes with added sugar; What you should and shouldn't assume about students; Why Math Circles (sometimes) work; Why Bloom's Taxonomy is upside-down; and The role of the teacher in having a vision for the students in his/her care. Enjoy the e...
2016-12-201h 39Education Bookcast29+. Interview with Robert Kaplan of The Math CircleInterview with Robert Kaplan, co-author of Out of the Labyrinth (the book we looked at in the previous episode), co-founder of The Math Circle, and the man behind the Summer Math Circle Institute course (which I attended this summer). Robert Kaplan tells of his colourful background, his experiences starting and running The Math Circle, and the recent explosion of interest and growth in maths circles in the favelas of Brazil. Enjoy the episode.
2016-11-1244 minEducation Bookcast29. Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free by Robert & Ellen KaplanThis is a book that I have more of a connection with than many of the others I cover on the podcast. I first bought a book by these authors when I was 17, and didn't read it until literally ten years later. It was a fascinating recreational maths book. I then discovered that they were involved in alternative maths education, and that they had even set up an organisation for this called The Math Circle. This book relates their experiences of running Math Circles, their philosophy and approach to maths and maths education, and some pointers as to how t...
2016-11-121h 09Education Bookcast28. Why do kids give stupid answers to simple maths questions?Have a go at some of these: An athlete's best time to run a mile is 4 minutes and 10 seconds. How long would it take him to run 5 miles? It takes one orchestra one hour to play a symphony. How long would it take two orchestras to play a symphony? On a ship, there are 13 goats and 12 sheep. How old is the captain? Among schoolchildren, the most common answers to these questions are: 20 minutes and 50 seconds; half an hour; and 25 years old. Hence the title: where are these thoughtless, silly...
2016-10-261h 05Education Bookcast27+. Interview with Dr Amanda SerenevyDr Amanda Serenevy is a mathematician and mathematics educator, focussing on outreach through the medium of Math Circles, and on teacher training. This episode appears as number "27+" because the previous episode, Consider the Circle, was about how Amanda rescued a young girl from a terrible time with maths at school. She is the founder and director of Riverbend Community Math Centre in South Bend, Indiana, which works to improve mathematics education within the local community. She runs teacher training courses throughout the year, both to help teachers with their pedagogy, and with their knowledge of maths itself. Sh...
2016-10-2441 minEducation Bookcast27. Consider the Circle by Eliza VanettA very short episode about an article written by a young girl concerning her experiences with maths. At school, she is faced daily with the same worksheet, always refusing to do it. Her teachers continue to give her the sheet every day for months, keeping her out of the normal classroom. She becomes resentful and angry at maths and at school, and continues her protest of inaction. When she discovers Math Circles, a different approach to maths education, then she stops feeling neglected and starts, gradually, to engage. With time she not only gains confidence...
2016-10-2415 minEducation Bookcast26. A Mathematician's Lament by Paul LockhartWhat do you think of mathematics? Is it: a sterile tool for accounting? boring, mindless, and annoying stuff your teacher makes you do? an anarchic, psychedelic adventure? If you answered 1., mathematician and teacher Paul Lockhart vehemently disagrees with you. If you answered 2., then Lockhart understands your plight. If you answered 3., then you really know what maths is. A Mathematician's Lament is a short book all about misconceptions, and how the system propagates them into an insurmountable monster hiding the true nature of a cherished art form. Kids in school hate maths lessons. Why? Because they're n...
2016-09-052h 19Education Bookcast25. Chess, gender, and intelligenceOver the past century, women have been gaining rights and prejudice against women has declined. Although many would argue that there's still a way to go, the progress is undeniable. Why, then, do men still outperform women in a number of intellectual domains? In this episode, we look at several articles that try to answer this question for one cognitive domain in particular: chess. Chess is a good domain to test for a number of reasons: There is little subjectivity or ambiguity in deciding who is a better chess player. In chess, you either win or yo...
2016-08-2937 minEducation Bookcast24. Outliers by Malcolm GladwellI write a little blurb like this for every episode, but I feel that some books hardly need any introduction. This is one such example. Malcolm Gladwell is one of the most celebrated journalists and writers of the early 21st century, and his book Outliers caused a splash in people's thinking about success. Why? One answer is that it popularised the idea of the so-called "10,000 hour rule", initially discovered by K. Anders Ericsson, concerning how much "deliberate practice" it takes to become a world-class expert in any field. "Popularised" is the key word here, as several others w...
2016-08-151h 48Education Bookcast23. So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport"Follow your passion" is bad advice. It seems an almost blasphemous thing to say. And yet in this book, Cal Newport argues that it is, indeed, generally a bad idea to try to base a career on a pre-existing passion. Firstly, as blunt and uninspiring as it may sound, most people don't *have* a passion to begin with. Hence the need to "find yourself" or figure out what you want to do with your life. People who do have a passion are usually passionate about something that can't provide them with a career, such as s...
2016-07-301h 36Education Bookcast22. The Talent Code by Daniel CoyleWith The Talent Code, we have another perspective on the development of expertise. Daniel Coyle looks at "talent hotbeds" in music, sport, and academics in order to piece together a theory of how people get good at things. In the process, he discovers different types of teachers, necessary for different stages in the process of achieving mastery.
2016-07-181h 17Education Bookcast21. The Defining Decade by Meg JayIn Genius Explained, we saw how people considered "geniuses" build up their skills over many years prior to their production of great works. Although this training usually happens in childhood and adolescence, we saw at least one case - that of George Stephenson - where the key knowledge and expertise were built up in early adulthood. This prompts me to cover a book about adult development to supplement our series on expertise. Meg Jay writes not just about adolescents, but directly for them. She is a therapist specialising in the twenty-something years, and her experience in therapy...
2016-07-041h 20Education Bookcast20b. Genius Explained [bringing up geniuses, genius writers, and the fallacies of talent] by Michael HoweLast episode, we got to see the lives of three exceptional individuals in depth: Charles Darwin, George Stephenson, and Michael Faraday. In today's episode, we take a look at how people have tried to bring up children to be prodigies, and to what extent they succeeded. We also look at genius writers so as to get a view of a more "artistic" kind of high achievement. Finally, Michael Howe explains explicitly why he thinks that the idea of inborn talent being necessary for genius doesn't have any real evidence behind it, and what he thinks the secret to genius re...
2016-06-201h 26Education Bookcast20a. Genius Explained [Darwin, Stephenson & Faraday] by Michael HoweIn Genius Explained, Michael Howe takes us through biographies of many people with great achievements, who we might consider to be "geniuses". It is an investigation into what makes geniuses so great, chiefly through looking at their upbringing. I'll refrain from sharing his conclusions in this brief description to keep up the suspense :). In this first part, we will look at Charles Darwin, George Stephenson, and Michael Faraday in depth.
2016-06-061h 20Education Bookcast19b. Seven Myths about Education [myths 4-7] by Daisy ChristodoulouA continuation of last week's episode about Daisy Christodoulou's book.
2016-05-2356 minEducation Bookcast19a. Seven Myths about Education by Daisy ChirstodoulouThis should be a controversial episode! I cover this book in the interests of looking at the cognitive science it refers to. However, this is also the sort of book that tries to undermine, or even overthrow, what might be interpreted as a failing ideology among many educators. It is therefore not possible for me to talk about it without at least paying some heed to a long-standing debate in education circles: progressivism versus traditionalism. Progressivism is hard to pin down exactly, because it's used as a catch-all term for many ideas in education. Some...
2016-05-161h 28Education Bookcast18. Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice by Matthew SyedWe are now moving on to a series of episodes answering the question: How do people get good at things? In Bounce, Commonwealth champion and Olympian table-tennis player Matthew Syed shares his research into this topic.
2016-05-101h 33Education Bookcast17. Blink by Malcolm GladwellThe funny thing about Malcolm Gladwell is that everyone seems to
enjoy reading him, but few remember many details of what he
actually wrote. I had a conversation with a parent of one of my
students not long ago about the overestimation of the importance of
IQ, referencing some studies done by Lewis Terman. She listened
with rapt attention and deep in thought. The information seemed
new, original, and surprising to her. I mentioned that Malcolm
Gladwell wrote about this in his book Outliers, to which she
responded, "I read that book!" Apparently these things don't
stick!
...
2016-05-0242 minEducation Bookcast16. Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John TierneyA natural continuation from last week. Habit formation, and breaking habits, takes willpower. So how does willpower work?
Like a muscle.
Willpower gets tired. You have a limited "store" of it, and it gets drained over the course of a day. So, if you had a stressful day at work, then you are much more likely to cave in and have that chocolate cake / cigarette. (Sound familiar?)
Willpower gets stronger with use. People who adopt strict exercise regimes, for example, start eating healthier, studying more (if they're students), and drinking and smoking less. This is also...
2016-04-251h 15Education Bookcast15. The Power of Habit by Charles DuhiggUp till now, we've had several episodes looking at the question of "why do people do what they do?". Most recently, we asked and answered that question from the perspective of persuasion, in a sense addressing the sub-question "why are people persuaded to do what they do?". Now we get a chance to look at it with the lens of habit: "why do people do the same things so often? How do these habits form? And how can we get rid of them?"
In case you think that habit is unimportant, my first priority would be to...
2016-04-181h 37Education Bookcast14. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert CialdiniSo far in the podcast, among other things, we've looked at the topic of motivation. In the last few episodes, we've also started to look at human irrationalities and their consequences. In this episode, we look at a topic that combines "why people do things" with human irrationality: persuasion.
Robert Cialdini spent most of his working life searching for the answer to one question: what is it that persuades people to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do? In this classic book, Cialdini summarises his findings over the length of his career as a psychologist.
He...
2016-04-111h 42
Rozmowy w NocyGRA ŻYCIA - Andrzej PstrokońskiCzy faktycznie daliśmy wygrać złoto drużynie ZSSR we Wrocławiu w 1963r. Przepis na nie tylko sportowy sukces Polski. Lęki walczącego zwycięzcy. Marzenia o tym kto stworzy miejsca pracy w Polsce. Realia polskiego emeryta.Rewelacyjny gość, Andrzej Pstrokoński o życiu sporcie i polityce.
Stefan Andrzej Pstrokoński -- polski koszykarz, trener koszykarski i polityk.
Reprezentant Polski podczas igrzysk olimpijskich w Rzymie w 1960 oraz igrzysk olimpijskich w Tokio w 1964. Pięciokrotnie występował na ME: w 1957, 1959, 1961, 1963 i 1965. W kadrze narodowej występował w latach 1956--1966. W tym czasie wziął udział w 200 spotkaniach, notując na swoim koncie 1009 p...
2013-12-0500 min