World Class Learners
Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students
Prepare your students for the globalized world!
In the new global economy, the jobs that exist now might not exist by the time today's students enter the workplace. To succeed in this ever-changing world, students need to be able to think like entrepreneurs: resourceful, flexible, creative, and global.
Researcher and Professor Yong Zhao unlocks the secrets to cultivating independent thinkers who are willing and able to use their learning differently to create jobs and contribute positively to the globalized society. World Class Learners presents concepts that teachers, administrators and even parents can implement immediately, including how to:
- Understand the entrepreneurial spirit and harness it
- Foster student autonomy and leadership
- Champion inventive learners with necessary resources
- Develop global partners and resources
With the liberty to make meaningful decisions and explore nontraditional learning opportunities, today's students will develop into tomorrow's global entrepreneurs.
"In this important book, Yong Zhao demonstrates persuasively that the race for higher test scores is harmful to our society. What is needed most now, he reminds us, is freedom to think, freedom to invent, and freedom to differ from bureaucratically devised norms."
—Diane Ravitch, Author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System
"In his latest book, Yong Zhao forcefully challenges us to focus on entrepreneurship and innovation. Zhao has established himself as one of the most compelling voices in 21st century education. He is not an education reformer, trying to improve our performance within the old system. He is truly an education transformer, trying to articulate the outcomes that will matter most to our 21st century students."
—Ken Kay, CEO of EdLeader21
Founding President of Partnership for 21st Century Skills
"Professor Zhao describes in rich detail how our world is rapidly being pushed by the triple forces of demographic change, economic globalization, and technological innovation toward ever more demanding requirements for educational improvement in our schools. He shows that focusing excessively on test scores undermines the very kinds of creativity and initiative that are most badly needed for economic success, social well-being, and environmental sustainability."
"In this provocative book Professor Zhao argues that creativity and entrepreneurship, rather than test scores, ought to be the goals that mobilize societies as they improve education. He suggests that policies aimed at improving test scores harm the development of creativity and entrepreneurial skills. This is a fresh and important contribution to the global conversation on education reform, a compelling call for systematically generalizing the opportunities to develop creativity that are at the root of child centered education."
"As the global economy becomes ever more connected, increasing attention is paid to preparing students to be competitive in the international marketplace. Zhao (Univ. of Oregon) sketches out a plan that will help create independent thinkers who are able to engage in the creative thinking process necessary to foster job creation and positive contributions to society. In ten chapters, Zhao explores a variety of themes that buttress his call for change, including the inadequacy of a common curriculum, the need for entrepreneurs, ways to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, the achievement gap versus the entrepreneurial gap, how China encourages independent thought, ways to develop autonomy and leadership, product-orientaed learning, and ways of bringing the world to campus. Providing a host of charts and graphs, Zhao suggests that US schools need to concentrate on ways to build independence and creativity in students instead of emphasizing improving standardized test scores. Examples of schools that encourage creativity and entrepreneurship are included. A tremendous complement to Michael Fullan's Stratosphere (2012) or Donald Treffinger, Scott Isaken, and Brian Dorval's Creative Problem Solving (2000). Summing up: Highly recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduate students and above."