World Class Learners

Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students

by Yong Zhao

Number of pages: 288

Publisher: Corwin

BBB Library: Education

ISBN: 978-1-4522-0398-0



About the Author

Young Zhao is the Presidential Chair and Associate Dean for Global and Online Education at the College of Education, University of Oregon.

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Editorial Review

Innovation and entrepreneurship provide a way forward for solving the global challenges of the 21st century, building sustainable development, creating jobs, generating renewed economic growth, and advancing human welfare. To prepare global, creative, and entrepreneurial talents, education should not harm any child who aspires to do so or suppress their curiosity, imagination, and desire to be different by imposing upon him or her contents and skills judged to be good for him or her by an external agency, and thus depriving them of the opportunities to explore and express on their own. The most desirable education is one that enhances human curiosity and creativity, encourages risk taking, and cultivates the entrepreneurial spirit in the context of globalization.World Class Learnersis about the why and how of the most desirable education.  

Book Reviews

“Every parent, teacher, principal, administrator or community leader needs to read this book, if for no other reason but to understand the challenges facing tomorrow’s schools. His is a fresh perspective. Zhao provides an outside the box assessment of the standardized curriculum and provides practical steps for readying all children to become entrepreneurs and independent innovators without it. With the liberty to make meaningful decisions and explore nontraditional learning opportunities, his arguments for developing today’s students into tomorrow’s global entrepreneurs make great sense.”—P21

“If you are already a believer in the Maker Movement, Genius Hour, open-ended investigation and project-based learning (or as Zhao prefers to characterize it, product-based learning) you will be rewarded with plenty of information to support your view. Suggest this book to anyone who is a cheerleader for standardized learning and high-stakes testing. It will have a good chance of, if not downright changing minds, at least opening eyes. We need more of that—soon.”—Mister McIntosh Says

“In World Class Learners, Dr. Zhao unfolds all aspects of entrepreneurship, ranging from crowd-sourcing to genetics. He provides a worldwide look at the current educational climate, the entrepreneurial skills needed to be successful in life, as well as the “how” of making it happen in your classroom.”—Learning & the Brain

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Wisdom to Share

To prepare global, creative, and entrepreneurial talents, that is, everyone in the future, education should at first not harm any child who aspires to do so or suppress their curiosity, imagination, and desire to be different by imposing upon him or her contents and skills judged to be good for him or her by an external agency, and thus depriving them of the opportunities to explore and express on their own.

The most desirable education is one that enhances human curiosity and creativity, encourages risk taking, and cultivates the entrepreneurial spirit in the context of globalization.

Entrepreneurs are no longer only those who start a business and try to maximize profits. There are social entrepreneurswho recognize a social problem and apply entrepreneurial principles to achieve social change. There are intrapreneurs who bring significant innovative changes from within an organization. There are also policy entrepreneurs, whose enterprise is to bring innovative improvement in policy from within public and government institutions.

Schools in general reduce instead of enhance creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit because they have been designed to prepare good employees. And the qualities of a good employee in the traditional sense are drastically different from what makes a good entrepreneurial worker today.

While entrepreneurs may differ in what they do and the context in which they undertake entrepreneurship activities, there are some fundamental commonalities among all entrepreneurs: They are dissatisfied with an existing condition, then they see an opportunity and take the risk to change the condition with ingenuity, and finally they persist to make it successful, despite the ups and downs.

Great creative people are not accidents, but they are deliberately cultivated and supported.

Through freedom to learn and student leadership, students develop the foundational competencies that will help them become confident, creative, passionate, and responsible individuals and citizens. These are all necessary components of the entrepreneurial spirit.

Effective global entrepreneurs know how to avoid competing in areas where others are strong. Instead they would work to build a global supply chain of resources and talents. They would try to develop products and services to help improve a community’s weak area and make use of what it is strong at.

If schools can just respect children as human beings and support, not suppress, their passion, curiosity, and talent, our children will become global, creative, and entrepreneurial.