Progress-focused

This paper presents and examines the first school change program focusing on violence and caring based on self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan,2012). The program aimed at promoting teachers’ capacity to cope with violence and enhance caring without becoming more controlling.Comparisons of the effects of a 22-month-long program in three intervention schools and three control schools indicated that the program (a) reduced violent student behavior and controlling teacher behavior and (b) enhanced caring student behavior and active teacher response to violence. The results suggest that exposure to self-determination theory (SDT) concepts may promote a firm, yet non-controlling, teacher response to violence. More generally, the results highlight the potential for incorporating SDT ideas in violence reduction programs. Read full article here .

Some time ago, a paper was published describing two meta-analyzes on the effects of mindsets and mindset interventions ( Sisk et al., 2018 ). The authors conclude that the results in both analyzes were weak and that education is better able to spend its time and money on other things than on mindset interventions. They do, however, make the nuance that their research suggests that mindset interventions do seem worthwhile for special risk groups. However, there is quite a lot to haggle on the article. Not only on their findings, but, more importantly, on their interpretation of those findings. Read below why even the problematic article by Sisk et al. actually shows that mindset interventions are indeed interesting and important.

Last week, a participant in one of our courses brought in a case for intervision . His case was that he had recently found out that his mother, who lived quite far away from him, had dementia. He wanted to get some tips from the other participants about how he could deal as effectively as possible with this challenging situation. What he hoped to find was a way of dealing with the situation in which he could help his mother as much as possible while also keeping on taking good care of himself. During the exercise he received many compliments and tips. The exercise was both useful to him and to the other participants.

Progress-focused intervision can help teams to reflect on a case and to get some good ideas for progress within about 20 minutes. One person presents a case and the rest of the team are in a helping role. The approach has some rules and steps which I will describe below. It usually works best if the rules and steps are followed rather closely and if the process proceeds rather quickly. After all the steps have been taken there is no further discussion of the case.

Recently, I have become interested in a new technology which is gaining popularity and which will probably have a great impact on our society: the blockchain. Put simply, blockchain technology is a technological infrastructure underlying cryptocurrencies like  Bitcoin . Below I will explain a bit the emergence of this new technology, about what it is, and about why it will probably become very important.