Jason Norris

It may surprise you—it was certainly surprising to us—but the field of education doesn't know very much at all about effective teaching. We have all known terrific teachers. You watch them at work for 10 minutes and you can tell how thoroughly they've mastered the craft. But nobody has been able to identify what, precisely, makes them so outstanding. This ignorance has serious ramifications. We can't give teachers the right kind of support because there's no way to distinguish the right kind from the wrong kind. We can't evaluate teaching because we are not consistent in what we're looking for. We can't spread best practices because we can't capture them in the first place. - Jason Norris

A design for a next-generation classroom that won an award earlier this year at Texas Wesleyan University has moved off the drawing board and into three dimensions at the Fort Worth institution. The winning proposal of classroom.NEXT, put together by Elizabeth Alexander, an associate professor of history, and five of her students, has been used to transform a traditional classroom into one that's "radically flexible," with an emphasis on four themes: flexibility, sensory stimulation, technology support, and "decenteredness." The space features furniture and equipment that can be easily wheeled around and reconfigured to promote multiple instructional methods. Other design elements include... - Jason Norris