Motivated Minds - by Deborah J Stipek (Paperback)

About the Book

A practical guide to ensuring your child's success in school. Through extensive research, combined with ongoing classroom implementation of their ideas, Deborah Stipek, Dean of the School of Education at Stanford, and Kathy Seal have created a program that will encourage motivation and a love of learning in children from toddlerhood through elementary school.

Book Synopsis

A practical guide to ensuring your child's success in school.

What makes children succeed in school? For the past twenty years, the focus has been on building children's self-esteem to help them achieve more in the classoom. But positive reinforcement hasn't necessarily resulted in measureable academic improvement. Through extensive research, combined with ongoing classroom implementation of their ideas, Deborah Stipek, Dean of the School of Education at Stanford, and Kathy Seal have created a program that will encourage motivation and a love of learning in children from toddlerhood through elementary school.

Stipek and Seal maintain that parents and teachers can build a solid foundation for learning by helping children to develop the key elements of success: competency, autonomy, curiosity, and critical relationships. The authors offer both practical advice on understanding different learning styles and down-to-earth tips about how to manage difficult issues -- competition, grades, praise, bribes, and rewards -- that inevitably arise for parents and teachers.

Most important, Stipek and Seal help parents create an enriching environment for their children at home that will mesh with the school experience and become a positive, effective climate for learning.

From the Back Cover

A SEASONED EDUCATOR SHOWS YOU HOW TO RAISE AN ENTHUSIASTIC, LIFELONG LEARNER

How do we show our children the great joys of learning? How do we get them to want more?

In the past, parents and educators have offered rewards and threatened punishment. More recently, they have focused on building self-esteem, but the latest research shows that this effort hasn't had a measurable impact in the classroom -- and can even discourage children from learning. Combining years of experience in schools with a thorough survey of current research, Deborah Stipek and Kathy Seal offer this fresh and practical guide to what really works. Packed with strategies for parents of toddlers and elementary school students, Motivated Minds explains how close relationships with adults and feelings of competency and autonomy make children want to learn.

Always engaging and insightful, the authors describe how to create an intellectually enriching home environment for children that will enhance their school experience. They offer practical advice on promoting enthusiasm, academic risk-taking, and persistence, and they give down-to-earth tips for managing difficult issues -- praise, grades, rewards, competition, and performance pressure -- that inevitably arise for schoolchildren and parents. Motivated Minds is a must for any parent wanting to raise a curious, creative, ambitious, and independent child.

About the Author

Deborah Stipek, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized scholar and researcher in the psychology of motivation and is involved in shaping national educational policy. She lives in Sherman Oaks, California. Kathy Seal has written for publications including The New York Times, Family Circle, and Parents as well as for educators' magazines. She lives in Santa Monica, California.