"James Nottingham’s work on Challenging Learning is a critical element of creating Visible Learners. This new series will help teachers hone the necessary pedagogical skills of dialogue, feedback, questioning, and mindset. There’s no better resource to encourage all learners to know and maximize their impact!"
John Hattie, Professor & Director, Melbourne Education Research Institute University of Melbourne
"In this era of rapid change, cognitive conflict is a constant challenge to be faced. James Nottingham’s Learning Challenge offers learners of all ages a place to be and a process to recognise and engage with. Offering young learners the opportunity to contend with the tension that goes with being 'in the pit' and think and talk about their own learning is immensely valuable. My experience, working with this concept is that it works!"
Simon Feasey, School Principal Bader Primary School, Thornaby, Stockton-on-Tees, England
"I use the pit to structure my courses at James Madison University. Students in my teacher education courses are deliberately placed into cognitive conflict around decisions in teaching and learning. It is an excellent fit. My students, one year away from having their own classrooms, will frequently walk into my class and announce that they are in the pit. Nottingham’s work is excellent!"
John Almarode, Professor of Education & Co-Director of the Center for STEM Education and Outreach James Madison University, College of Education, Harrisonburg VA
"In The Learning Challenge, James Nottingham shows us how to use generative concepts as focal points for engaging deep student thinking and discourse. His visual model of “pits and peaks” helps us realize that cooperatively grappling with cognitive conflicts in the pit is necessary to eventually reach new peaks of understanding. Nottingham provides a wealth of strategies, tools and examples to aid the teacher. The vast array of questions to stimulate student thinking is second to none."
H. Lynn Erickson, Educational Consultant Author, Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction for the Thinking Classroom, 2nd ed., Everett, WA
