To Want to Learn: Insights and Provocations for Engaged Learning [Hardcover]

When students are self-motivated, they work harder at learning even if resources are inadequate. This?book argues that students and teachers waste time and energy because the curriculum rests on flawed mental models. Change requires?theories of?motivation and learning based on advances in neurobiology and cognitive studies.PART I: TO WANT TO LEARN Problems and Possibilities Perspectives on Engaged Living PART II: BRAIN, MIND, AND BODY Neurobiological Systems Psychology of Involvement PART III: MOTIVATION, LEARNING, AND SCHOOL CULTURE Considerations for Better Learning Institutional Culture, Motivation and Learning Postscript

Jack Kytle's wonderful book, To Want to Learn, offers a powerful antidote to those current images of schools as test centers, students as consumers, and teachers as technicians. Starting with the central question of motivation, Kytle eschews training for critical teaching and imagines learning as an ongoing act of creativity and hope. If you believe that schools should create students who can dream, experience joy and use their imagination in the interest of creating a better world, this is the book to read. - Henry A. Giroux, author of The Abandoned Generation

This is an unique and original effort to re-locate the learner in his/her full life context, to re-make learning an integral part of one's life aspirations, and to re-place the educator in front of his/her responsibility to contribute to the development of responsible human beings. Thanks to Jackson Kytle's solid theoretical grounding in both American and European social theory and thanks to his rich professional experience, contemporary thinking about education and learning has just become richer. - Matthias Finger, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Jack Kytle has written a remarkable book, one that accomplishes what its title invites. This volume engaged me, from start to finish, and inspired me to want to learn more.