In today’s episode, I had a chance to speak with renowned lecturer and author, Alfie Kohn. Alfie writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. He has published 14 different books since the late 1980’s and has been described by Time magazine as being America’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.”

As well, Kohn has been featured on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including the “Today” show and two appearances on “Oprah”; he has been profiled in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, while his work has been described and debated in many other leading publications.

There were so many questions that I wanted to ask and themes that I wanted to discuss with Alfie in this episode, but I mostly focused in on the areas of self-efficacy, agency, feedback and assessment, as well as individualized learning.  Alfie and I also dug into the key factors necessary for teachers to feel empowered in their own professional learning journeys.

Alfie is extremely passionate and very knowledgeable in many areas of education. His efforts to make research in human behavior accessible to a general audience have also been published in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Parents, and Psychology Today.

It was an honor to have Alfie Kohn on my podcast and he left me thinking more deeply not only about the work that I do in regards to coaching teachers around best educational practices, but also the importance of empowering my own children to better drive decision making in their own lives.

I hope you find this episode useful and that Alfie’s insight helps you to look at your own teaching a little differently.
Alfie’s Bio
Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. The most recent of his 14 books are SCHOOLING BEYOND MEASURE…And Other Unorthodox Essays About Education (2015) and THE MYTH OF THE SPOILED CHILD: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom About Children and Parenting (2014).  Of his earlier titles, the best known are PUNISHED BY REWARDS (1993), NO CONTEST: The Case Against Competition (1986), UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING (2005), and THE SCHOOLS OUR CHILDREN DESERVE (1999).

Kohn has been described in Time magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.” His criticisms of competition and rewards have helped to shape the thinking of educators — as well as parents and managers — across the country and abroad. Kohn has been featured on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including the “Today” show and two appearances on “Oprah”; he has been profiled in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, while his work has been described and debated in many other leading publications.

Kohn lectures widely at universities and to school faculties, parent groups, and corporations. In addition to speaking at staff development seminars and keynoting national education conferences on a regular basis, he conducts workshops for teachers and administrators on various topics. Among them: “Motivation from the Inside Out: Rethinking Rewards, Assessment, and Learning” and “Beyond Bribes and Threats: Realistic Alternatives to Controlling Students’ Behavior.” The latter corresponds to his book BEYOND DISCIPLINE: From Compliance to Community (ASCD, 1996), which he describes as “a modest attempt to overthrow the entire field of classroom management.”

Kohn’s various books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Swedish, Dutch, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Malaysian. He has also contributed to publications ranging from the Journal of Education to Ladies Home Journal, and from the Nation to the Harvard Business Review (“Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work”).