The Pedagogy of Confidence

Yvette Jackson shows educators how to focus on students’ strengths to inspire learning and high intellectual performance. Jackson asserts that the myth that the route to increasing achievement by focusing on weaknesses (promoted by policies such as NCLB) has blinded us to the strengths and intellectual potential of urban students—devaluing the motivation, initiative, and confidence of dedicated educators to search for and optimize this potential. The Pedagogy of Confidence dispels this myth and provides practical approaches for rekindling educators’ belief in their ability to inspire the vast capacity of their urban students.

Book Features:

• Describes practical approaches and examples of how inspirational educators implement High Operational Practices, offering strategies for dealing with cultural disconnects, the influence of new technologies, and language preferences of students.
• Illustrates how educators empower student investment in the “mediative learning community” to foster positive relationships.
• Presents historical, cognitive, and neuroscience research, providing educators the rationale and benefits of changing old policies and practices to new ones that will guide students to intellectual development, self-directed learning, and self-actualization.
• Explores the theory and methodology of cognitive psychologist Reuven Feuerstein, upon which The Pedagogy of Confidence is based.

Yvette Jackson is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, founded at the College Board and Teachers College, Columbia University. She is internationally recognized for her work in assessing the learning potential of disenfranchised urban students. Yvette Jackson is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact: yjackson.poc@gmail.com

“What Dr. Jackson proposes here is truly a remedy to ensure that students, no matter where they come from, and no matter where they go to school, have the ability to attain their innate intellectual potential.”

—Education Update

“Should be read by every educator and policymaker truly interested in closing the achievement gap."
—Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University

“This book will become the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of urban education."
—Joseph S. Renzulli, The University of Connecticut

“For urban educators who want to know how to be effective in teaching and developing strong relationships with their students.”
—Pedro A. Noguera, New York University

“The very in-depth elaboration of psychological, educational, and social concepts Dr. Jackson presents creates a large and ingenious inventory of pedagogical tools to promote the goals of achievement and upward mobility for those students who depend on teachers to make this possible.”
—From the Foreword by Reuven Feuerstein, Chairman and Founder, ICELP, Jerusalem, Israel

“The Pedagogy of Confidence renews our hope for schools as homes for the fullest development of the mind, classrooms as engaging, mediative environments, and all learners as having the propensity for continued, lifelong intellectual growth.”
—Arthur L. Costa, Professor Emeritus, California State University, Sacramento

2011 ForeWord Magazine Silver Book of the Year Award in Education