The Window

"The Window" Moving to New Location!

2011-03-24T11:13:00.005-04:00

This blog, "The Window," is moving to a new site: http://blog.clerestorylearning.com/.

This will be the final post at this site.

If you signed up to receive the blog posts via email, you should continue to receive them without interruption.

If you receive new posts via an RSS feed, you will need to change the address in your reader.

The move is part of a total revision of the Clerestory Learning Web site, where more information is presented in a snappy new look. We hope you will visit us there soon!

The Environment of Achievement, Part 2

2011-02-09T21:18:00.005-05:00

“But hope is not disconnected from action or result; it is the drive that propels action and result. It is not an ungrounded feeling but a belief that action can bring about change.”

Hope is word #1, a characteristic of an atmosphere that enables optimal achievement.

The second: humility.

The dictionary suggests it involves a modest view of one’s own importance.

At this point I could rail against the lack of humility we often see in our public personas. I won’t, except to mention its potential influence on our thinking and on that of our students. The message we get from the media: to be successful see yourself as more important/gifted/intelligent/_____ than the next guy, and find a camera crew to capture your bravado. This viewpoint is actually detrimental to a learning mindset.

Why? What does humility have to do with learning?

Humility opens the mind to learning. In Fires in the Mind, Kathleen Cushman makes a convincing argument for valuing as initial motivation for learning.¹ We become interested in something new when we value the relationship we have with others who already know something about it (e.g., a son becoming a baseball player like his father), the products we can produce by knowing more than we do (e.g., a photographer who pursues mastering a new camera lens), and/or the satisfaction we get from having our questions and curiosities addressed (the child who tears a computer apart to discover what’s inside that makes it work). We value something other than our previously gained understandings. We place ourselves in the role of humble learner rather than overconfident know-it-all.

Note the implications for us as educators. To create and maintain a learning environment characterized by humility, we need to attend to our relationships with students. (Do I establish relationships with students that enable me to potentially inspire their interests in new learning?) We need to reveal what new learning will enable students to produce. (Do I know how what I teach has value beyond the classroom? and do I engage students in using what they learn beyond the classroom?) We need to foster students’ curiosity. (Do I use the power of questions and “I wonder…” statements to engage students’ attention and thinking?)

Humility makes the mind receptive to feedback. To summarize Daniel Pink in an overly succinct way, the equation for motivating learning is meaning + feedback.² If valuing initiates learning, feedback maintains the interest and deepens new understanding. But not just any feedback will fill this vital role. A paper returned to a student after three days with nothing more than a “B” or an “84” at the top does more harm than good. Why? Because it sparks a prideful, protective response. Either the student will pretend not to care about the grade (“I know I’m better than you think I am.”) or the student will argue to regain the points that were mysteriously lost (“I’ll prove that I’m better than you think I am.”). Either way the opportunity for learning from mistakes is likely lost.

To be effective, feedback must be part of learning; while the cement of new knowledge or understandings is still wet, the teacher needs to engage students in discussion, offering redirection, encouragement and exhortation, and additional challenge. Instructive feedback should have the goal of enabling each individual student learn as deeply and achieve as highly as possible.

How does instructive feedback contribute to an environment characterized by humility? First, the teacher models humility through the way feedback is given. Dr. Robert Brooks uses the term “we statements” to describe an effective approach.

Second, feedback communicates that error is part of learning and is expected. In Kathleen Cushman’s research, one student suggested that feedback during learning enabled her to laugh at herself and use the error as a prompt for additional learning. Without the feedback, she would have continued to practice her errors and have become frustrated when her progress stagnated. Such frustration often activates a defense response rather than a mindset that accepts and even seeks feedback.

Finally, feedback maintains the correct perception of learning as being endless. We can always know more, understand better, or improve how we do something. Feedback keeps us challenged and helps us avoid feeling like we know all we need to know. We accept the humility that comes with recognizing we never reach perfection in any area or with any topic.

In this area, I’m concerned about students for whom school learning seems to come easily. They often absorb and live by the idea that being smart means not having to put forth effort. This erroneous belief about intelligence has significant, negative ramifications for their learning and achievement.

When working with the teachers, I’m often asked, “What do I do with the students who master the concepts or skills easily and quickly?” A question I use to prompt my own thinking in this area is, “What does the next level of achievement with this concept or skill look like?” I then use the answer to direct my feedback to these students.

Implications for us as educators? We need to be providing students with supportive and helpful feedback during learning. (Am I engaging my students in such conversations?) This includes challenging students to keep learning, keep refining, keep extending their knowledge and skill, even when the immediate task is completed easily. (Do I keep every student challenged and growing? Do I pursue learning myself so that I model the endless nature of mastering new concepts and abilities?)

Humility maintains curiosity (and vice versa). Curiosity is the name we give to the state of having unanswered questions. And unanswered questions, by their nature, help us maintain a learning mindset. When we realize that we do not know all there is to know about something in which we are interested, we thirst. We pursue. We act as though what we do not know is more important than what we do. Humility allows us to question; asking questions keeps us humble.

How do we spark curiosity in the classroom? One of my favorite suggestions and examples comes from one of my favorite teachers, Dr. Judy Willis:

Hoping for ways to energize the next day’s math lesson for her middle school students, Dr. Willis visited a supermarket, seeking an inexpensive item she could display on the students’ desks as they entered the classroom. She settled on a small vegetable, not knowing exactly how she would use it. The next morning, Dr.

Willis started teaching the lesson without explaining the radishes the students discovered on their desks. At the lesson’s conclusion, the students asked about the radishes. Still uncertain of the answers, Dr. Willis replied, “Why do you think I put a radish on your desk for today’s lesson?” The students offered several explanations. They connected mathematical concepts with their sensory experience of the radish, making associations that seemed sensible to them. Though Dr. Willis could have “come up with something” to share as an explanation, the students’ thinking generated more connections, and their discovery of these connections fostered deeper understanding and better memory formation. In short, the students were engaged in significant elaboration of the day’s mathematical content prompted by its curiosity-generating pairing with a common vegetable.³

Curiosity, having unanswered questions, propels learning. (Am I making serious efforts to spark curiosity in my students?)

We may think of hope as looking up. However, that should not prime our thinking to view humility as looking down. Humility is looking around, finding out what we do not know, seeing what’s available for learning it, and pursuing it until we become, we produce, or we satiate.

How do we foster an atmosphere of humility in our classrooms, schools, systems? Here are the questions I’m using to prompt my thinking:

Do I establish relationships with studnets that enable me to potentially inspire their interests in new learning?
Do I know how what I teach has value beyond the classroom? and do I engage students in using what they learn beyond the classroom?
Do I use the power of questions and “I wonder…” statements to engage students’ attention and thinking?
Am I engaging my students in conversations that capitalize on feedback’s contribution to learning?
Do I keep every student challenged and growing?
Do I pursue learning myself so that I model the endless nature of mastering new concepts and abilities?
Am I making serious efforts to spark curiosity in my students?

What questions would you add?

References

Cushman, K., Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010).
Pink, D.H., Drive: The Surprising Truth Behind What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009).
Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 45.

Images

humility http://www.flickr.com/photos/49503002139@N01/3710722003

Curiosity http://www.flickr.com/photos/94859200@N00/540245890

The Environment of Achievement, Part 1

2011-01-24T14:30:00.008-05:00

Three words grabbed my attention. Ideas that can make the difference between a t-ball novice and A-Rod, between nephew Johnny’s string recital performance and a Yo-Yo Ma concert, between the weekend jogger and Paula Radcliffe.

No, not age, not time, nor even practice. (Though all these play a role.)

For decades, researchers have pitched their tents in one of two camps: either nature (i.e., genetics) makes us who we are, or nurture (i.e., environment) does. For every study claiming to capture the flag for one camp, a counter study contends that it retains the banner.

In The Genius in All of Us, David Shenk argues that the interaction of genes and environment produces the individuals we become. Environment, contends Shenk, plays a leading role in how genes are “expressed.” But let’s set the science and the debate aside for now and simply consider what allows ability to reach its fullest potential.

This brings us back to those three words. They appear in the opening of David Shenk’s book, and they should play a leading role in education: hope, humility, and determination.

Word #1: hope. Of the three words, this one gets the most negative press. Cynics point out that hoping never made something happen nor brought anything into existence. Some even suggest hope is damaging, viewing it as wishful thinking that prevents the action needed to generate change.

Such arguments fail to look behind results; they fail to consider the causes of observable effects. They’re akin to arguing that the pleasure of a warm fire on a cold night is unrelated to, and certainly not dependent on, the match used to ignite the flame.

But hope is not disconnected from action or result; it is the drive that propels action and result. It is not an ungrounded feeling but a belief that action can bring about change. No great change has ever been attempted without hope, even if the belief was never voiced.

The dictionary associates several concepts with hope: expectation, belief, desire, good. I’d add another: resilience. Here’s why:

Resilience involves maintaining hope despite failure. Set-backs in life are inevitable, whether one is trying to strut across a narrow balance beam or learn to balance lopsided equations. Response to setbacks makes the difference between progress and stagnation, and hope motivates forward movement. Students need to learn to remain positive, believing that hard work can eventually overcome most setbacks and that the effort can yield beneficial and satisfying results. Relatedly…

Resilience involves embracing failure as an element of learning and progress.Hope can endure difficulties when the difficulties are seen as revealers of weaknesses that can be targeted and tweaked. Once recognized, weaknesses can become the focus of the efforts that lead to eventual success. (If students are not failing—encountering challenges—in your classroom, their learning may be minimal or even non-existent.)

David Shenk shares a compelling illustration. Basketball great

Michael Jordan would use

informal, pick-up games to work on

skills he knew were his weakest. While others in these games relied on doing what they already knew they could, Jordan

analyzed his setbacks, identified their causes, and then worked to correct them. The hope of eventual success made failure something to seek rather than avoid.

As teachers, we have a critical role to play in helping students perceive failure correctly. The feedback we give students can make the difference between failure that focuses effort and failure that is fatal to further attempts.

Finally, resilience involves being able to change direction. Failure is easy to repeat. You simply do the exact same thing you did previously while expecting the result to be different. (I believe this was Einstein’s definition of insanity.) It takes effort to consider alternative approaches and to maintain the hope that making such changes can yield better results.

To help students grow into individuals who do not view failure as fatal, we must nurture their spirits, helping them maintain hope, especially when learning is challenging.

Some questions I’ve been pondering lately include:

How resilient is my hope in the face of challenge?
How do I convey hope when my students face challenges and obstacles?
Is my classroom/school/district a place characterized by hope and its accompanying momentum?
How am I modeling resilient hope?

What questions would you add?

Images

Shape of a hoper http://www.flickr.com/photos/36613169@N00/449902272

Shahab http://www.flickr.com/photos/11037770@N00/297719275

Using Groups Effectively: 10 Principles

2011-01-04T09:52:00.009-05:00

Confession: as a student, I usually hate group work. I know, I know. Having students

work in groups reaps a bounty of benefits, including boosting students’ social skills and upping the number of “happy campers” in the classroom. Such findings filter through my thinking when I’m preparing to teach, so I do use group interaction, hoping that the promises from its advocates will be realized. Occasionally they are; often they are not.

I recently attended a conference session featuring Keith Sawyer. In addition to being a jazz pianist (a musical collaborator), Sawyer is an expert on the effectiveness of group efforts. His presentation focused on what has been and potentially can be accomplished through collaboration, but he hinted that just getting people into groups is not the answer.

This piqued my curiosity, so I bought his book Group Genius. In it I’ve begun to find some answers to my questions: When are groups effective as means of learning? What tasks are better accomplished collaboratively than individually? How do you structure groups for optimal effectiveness and results?

Though his focus is on creativity, I think Sawyer’s insights apply to our use of groups to foster learning. Here are ten principles I’ve picked up:

Flow matters. Flow is a term used to describe a state of high engagement in which thoughts run freely and progress occurs, often without group members being conscious of it. However, flow is like intrinsic motivation; it can’t be created on demand. The best we can do as teachers is provide a classroom environment that fosters flow.
Conversation is key. Sawyer succinctly explains this principle: “Conversation leads to flow, and flow leads to creativity.” When having students work in groups, consider what will spark rich conversation. The original researcher on flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, found that rich conversation precedes and ignites flow more than any other activity.¹ Tasks that require (or force) interaction lead to richer collaborative conceptualization.
Set a clear but open-ended goal. Groups produce the richest ideas when they have a goal that will focus their interaction but also has fluid enough boundaries to allow for creativity. This is a challenge we often overlook. As teachers, we often have an idea of what a group’s final product should look like (or sound like, or…). If we put students into groups to produce a predetermined outcome, we prevent creative thinking from finding an entry point.
Try not announcing time limits. As teachers we often use a time limit as a “motivator” that we hope will keep group work focused. In reality, this may be a major detractor from quality group work. Deadlines, according to Sawyer, tend to impede flow and produce lower quality results. Groups produce their best work in low-pressure situations. Without a need to “keep one eye on the clock,” the group’s focus can be fully given to the task.
Do not appoint a group “leader.” In research studies, supervisors, or group leaders, tend to subvert flow unless they participate as an equal, listening and allowing the group’s thoughts and decisions to guide the interaction.
Keep it small. Groups with the minimum number of members that are needed to accomplish a task are more efficient and effective.
Consider weaving together individual and group work. For additive tasks—tasks in which a group is expectedtoproduce a list, adding one idea to another—research suggests that better results develop when individual thinking precedes the pooling of ideas in a group setting. Researchers also suggest that alternating between individual and group work helps keep the work focused but not fixated—i.e., not limited to one aspect or detail of an idea or issue. (By the way, this weaving of individual and group interaction may be reason why technological or “electronic brainstorming” is often effective.)
“Divide and conquer” ≠ collaboration. When groups assign members to specific responsibilities for completing a task they undermine the thinking that collaboration can produce. Sawyer talks about creativity via collaboration as being “exponential,” meaning that it is constructed via conversation. One individual’s thought may inspire another group member’s insight, which in turn sparks new concepts for another. It is this emergent thinking that enables collaboration to accomplish what individual effort cannot.
Think threefold. Group tasks that produce the best results often have three defining characteristics: 1) they are novel, something students have not done before, 2) they feature a visual component, something that can be represented in nonverbal forms, and 3) they are relational, meaning they require the combining of ideas or components to be accomplished.
Be complementary. The best groups are composed of members who have enough familiarity with one another to be comfortable but who possess varied backgrounds and experiences. Again, because of how we typically use groups in classrooms, we tend to form groups around ability—if there is at least one “good student” in the group, we think something will get done. However, Sawyer suggests ability should be less of a consideration than diversity in experience. This can be challenging to accomplish but it’s worth considering when grouping students for collaborative tasks.

These insights have me rethinking groups, not whether or not to use them, but when and how to use them effectively. As with every aspect of teaching, using groups effectively requires mindful planning and attention to more than who works with whom. As Sawyer summarizes, “Putting people into groups isn’t a magical dust that makes everyone more creative. It has to be the right kind of group, and the group has to match the task.”²

References

Sawyer, K., Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 43.
Ibid., 73.

Images

Four heads are better than one. http://www.flickr.com/photos/26406919@N00/279625345.
OZ_ 1318. http://www.flickr.com/photos/30864080@N00/1414782810.

Smart MOVES

2010-10-18T09:54:00.008-04:00

I’m convinced: our schools need to give fitness a place in the curriculum. Let me clarify one thing. By an emphasis on fitness, I’m not recommending more or longer recess periods (though they may help), nor more or longer physical education classes (though, again, they may help). I fear some schools may reach these conclusions and implement changes without additional thought. Such an approach would be a mistake as schedule changes are only part of a good response to the growing body of research.

An emphasis on fitness is different from merely increasing unstructured play time or adding more days of dodgeball into the schedule. (Forgive me, PE Teachers. I know that many of you do not consider dodgeball to be a beneficial way to spend a physical education class. I’m speaking to the erroneous perception, not your work!)

Dr. John Ratey, who literally wrote the book on this subject, uses a school in Naperville, IL to illustrate an emphasis on fitness. During one physical education session Ratey observed, students ran a mile while wearing heart rate monitors. In addition to completing the distance, students focused on reaching a target heart rate and on improving their times recorded in earlier previous sessions. Ratey then explains this focus:

The essence…is teaching fitness instead of sports. The underlying philosophy is that if physical education class can be used to instruct kids how to monitor and maintain their own health and fitness, then the lessons they learn will serve them for life. And probably a longer and happier life at that. What’s being taught, really, is a lifestyle. The students are developing healthy habits, skills, and a sense of fun, along with knowledge of how their bodies work…[The] effects [of this emphasis] have shown up in some unexpected places—namely, the classroom.1

Sure, I’m concerned about the childhood obesity rate (estimates put the number around 23 million children in the US—more than thirty times the number during my youth). Being overweight influences movement, both physical AND cognitive, and it’s this latter impact that interests me.

Consider these recent findings:

Fit children possess more of the neural geography used in learning and thinking. For example, in-shape children have “significantly larger basal ganglia, a key part of the brain that aids in maintaining attention and ‘executive control,’ or the ability to coordinate actions and thoughts crisply.”2 (Executive function is “an umbrella term for the complex cognitive processes that serve ongoing, goal-directed behaviors,” including goal setting, planning, organizing and initiating behavior over time, flexibility, attention, working memory capacity, and self-regulation. It comprises abilities to plan for the future, control impulses, and make sense of incoming data.3) In a similar study, fit children possessed larger hippocampi—more than 10% larger— and scored significantly higher on tests of associated memory than their less fit peers. (The hippocampus is a brain structure associated with memory, both encoding and retrieval.) The researchers concluded that “interventions to increase childhood physical activity could have an important effect on brain development.”4 In short, fitter children develop brains with the potential for better learning and thinking.

Childhood fitness also affects capacities that uphold and empower learning. For example, children engaged in regular fitness activity score higher on tests of self-regulation, an executive function that provides critical support for learning. Self-regulation is the ability to consciously suppress or delay responses in order to work for a higher goal. It predicts academic success better than IQ. It also better predicts GPA, standardized test achievement, homework completion, the potential for GPA gains during the course of a year, and even SAT scores. Self-regulation is like the support struts of a bridge; it is not the roadway to learning, but without it, an individual lacks the emotional and cognitive control that optimize learning. Researchers have also discovered relationships of fitness and academic achievement. A recent study focused on students representing four different categories: 1) children who possessed high physical fitness levels in fifth grade and maintained those levels in seventh grade, 2) students who were fit in fifth grade but lost their fitness by seventh grade, 3) students who were not fit in fifth grade but were physically fit by seventh grade, and (sadly) 4) students who were not physically fit in fifth grade and remained not fit in seventh grade. In reading, math, science and social studies, the fit in fifth, fit in seventh group outscored their peers. The students who gained fitness between fifth and seventh grades had the second best scores. The students who lost fitness from fifth to seventh grades had the next to lowest scores, with the never fit group scoring the lowest. Researchers conclude that physical fitness actually shows up in academic performance.5 Schools minimizing physical education classes to spend more time on academic subjects may actually dampen the academic performance of their students.

However, not all types of fitness show similar results. Teenage boys with higher cardiovascular fitness outperformed their peers in intelligence, education, and even income as adults. The researchers from this study stress the importance of cardiovascular fitness: “In every measure of cognitive functioning they analyzed—from verbal ability to logical performance to geometric perception to mechanical skills—average test scores increased according to aerobic fitness.”6 Weight training alone did not provide the same effect.

What do we do with such convincing evidence—evidence that suggests the best tool to improving learning may be a pair of running shoes for each child? What do we need to change besides perceptions and schedules? Since physical movement seems to improve cognitive “movement,” how do we help our students get smarter by moving more?

I’m going to ponder these questions as I head out for a run. Anyone care to join either the run or conversation? Looking forward to your comments! For now, I’ll give John Ratey the last word:

The notion that [fitness can influence learning] is supported by emerging research showing that physical activity sparks biological changes that encourage brain cells to bind to one another. For the brain to learn, these connections must be made; they reflect the brain’s fundamental ability to adapt to challenges. The more neuroscientists discover about this process, the clearer it becomes that exercise provides an unparalleled stimulus, creating an environment in which the brain is ready, willing, and able to learn…”7.

References

Ratey, J., SPARK: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2008), 12.
Parker-Pope, T., Phys Ed: Can Exercise Make Kids Smarter? http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/phys-ed-can-exercise-make-kids-smarter/?emc=eta1
Meltzer, L., Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 1.
ScienceDaily., Children's Brain Development Is Linked to Physical Fitness, Research Finds. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100915171536.htm.
ScienceDaily., Students' Physical Fitness Associated With Academic Achievement; Organized Physical Activity. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100302185522.htm.
ScienceDaily., Fit Teenage Boys Are Smarter—But Muscle Strength Isn't the Secret, Study Shows. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091207143351.htm.
Ratey, 10.

Images

‘Running Shoes’ http://www.flickr.com/photos/64015205@N00/46324600
‘Morro Bay, CA High School Physical Education+class+-+teen+girls+run+up+and+down+the+Morro+Strand+State+Beach’ http://www.flickr.com/photos/72825507@N00/3253894179

Do You Speak "Academia"?

2010-09-05T12:14:00.007-04:00

If our profession exists to enable understanding of new ideas, should we really have our own language? Consider the following opening paragraph from a recent journal article:

“Education is an all-encompassing institution where schools can be found in each and every continent, culture, and society; their functional principles, organizational structure, and modus operandi are quite universal.”1

The paragraph, from an article with content I appreciate, illustrates several “rules” of academic writing. As a result, it violates several principles of good writing.

To begin, the opening main clause, “Education is an all-encompassing institution,” makes little sense, and the rest of the sentence fails to clarify its meaning. The use of “each and every” is redundant; if each continent and culture, then, by default, it is every continent and culture. After the semicolon, good verbs become weak adjectives: functional and organizational. The entire paragraph could be restructured as an easily understood sentence: In every society, schools organize, function, and operate similarly.

Lest I be guilty hypocrisy, here’s a sample of my own convoluted academic writing:

As a causal-comparative study, instructional time represents an uncontrolled factor. Teachers in each fifth grade classroom made decisions about instructional time based on the required time to complete activities dictated by the reading program in use. It is likely that instructional time varied between the classrooms, but the decisions about instructional time were based on the independent variable used to define the groups. Any variance developed, in part, because of the independent variable being examined.

Interpretation: The teachers in each fifth-grade classroom were not given minimum or maximum time limits. They determined how much time to spend on reading each day by considering their students’ needs and the activities recommended by their reading programs.

So what? Why pick on paragraphs pulled from their contexts? If you read (or try to read) educational journals, you’ll find that these examples are not isolated. They illustrate the “academic style” characterizing such periodicals. These periodicals, their supporters argue, provide the link between research and classroom practice. But the poor communication—the academic writing—requires the reader to add steps to the usually efficient cognition of comprehension. The reader is forced to pause and ask, “What does that mean in plain English?” It’s not that different from reading text in a second language, one in which the reader may be knowledgeable but not proficient.

Unfortunately, it’s not just our journals that speak their own language. This same gap often exists between students and their textbooks. Consider the following passage from an advanced high school biology text:

The technical aspects of life involve the complex chemical interactions that take place among the several thousand different kinds of molecules found in any living cell. Of these, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the master molecule in whose structure is encoded all of the information needed to create and direct the chemical machinery of life. Analysis of the flow and regulation of this genetic information among DNA, RNA (ribonucleic acid), and protein is the subject of molecular genetics.2

Rather than “A-ha!,” such writing often elicits, “Huh?,” as a recent study highlights:

Middle and high school students who read fluently in English class and on the Web may find that they cannot understand their science texts. And their science teachers may be ill prepared to guide them in reading the academic language in which science information is presented.3

This issue is so prevalent that some experts recommend we teach students “academic language.”

This additional distance between the writer and reader decreases the likelihood that the journals will actually be read. And if the journals are not read by teachers, the research will be slow to influence educational practice, if it does at all. With some research, a “translator” will eventually convert the findings into easily understood material for teachers. Research that does not attract the attention of such a translator may remain unknown and unused. We are spending time, effort, and sometimes money on research doomed to remain idle because it’s not communicated well. The poor writing prevents worthwhile application.

Similarly, our textbooks may alienate students and hinder learning. If understanding depends on translating the language, students who struggle with this prerequisite may lack the motivation or inertia to think beyond, or even through, the interpretation. We’re making understanding more difficult—a seeming antithesis to our role as educators.

Does academia serve its purpose by maintaining its own language? Why can’t “academic” journals and textbooks utilize common principles of good writing. Why do we insist on communication complexity when our goals would be better served by simple clarity?

Tradition? Are we trying to honor the past by continuing to insist on outdated standards? If so, then we should rethink our goals. Journals are not meant to influence the present but to carry on conventions of the past. Textbooks are not meant to inform but to complicate learning. If this is their purpose, teachers and students ignoring journal and textbook content should not be considered a problem.

Status? Are we insisting on “academic writing” because it separates journals from the “rags” intended for the masses or textbooks from the unlearned? If so, our goal must be to maintain some perceived elite readership—a readership probably not teaching or sitting in our classrooms. And thankfully so! Who wants children to be in a classroom where the teacher communicates with consistent complexity? ‘Children, today the teacher (the academic style outlaws use of the personal pronoun I!) will initiate a discussion of the upper atmosphere in post-sunset conditions.” In other words, “Today we’re going to talk about stars.” SImplicity produces clarity; complexity produces confusion.

Alignment? Do we think that our research and subject matter is complicated, therefore our communicating should also be complex? This is so contrary to logic and sound teaching that it’s an oxymoron. A basic principle of writing (and teaching) rebuts this argument: A complex topic requires simple writing, especially when the reader likely lacks the author’s background knowledge and experience. This is almost always the case when a researcher seeks to address individuals who were not part of the research team or involved in similar research themselves, or when experts in a field seek to articulate concepts for students.

As an example, consider the topic of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) previously discussed in the textbook example. Complex? Absolutely, yet note how beautifully and simply John Medina writes about it:

One of the most unexpected findings of recent years is that DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is not randomly jammed into the nucleus, as one might stuff cotton into a teddy bear. Rather, DNA is folded into the nucleus in a complex and tightly regulated manner. The reason for this molecular origami: cellular career options. Fold the DNA one way and the cell will become a contributing member of your liver. Fold it another way and the cell will become part of your busy bloodstream. Fold it a third way and you get a nerve cell—and the ability to read this sentence.4

Medina presents ideas simply and in ways known to foster learning. As the brain engages in elaboration, it overlays new data with known experiences, making connections that help construct understanding. Medina relates a new, complex topic to a familiar childhood activity—origami (even though he is not writing for children). By giving us a reference point for understanding DNA, he equips us with the tools needed to construct understanding. Isn’t this what we should be striving for, both in our textbooks and our journals?

Why, then, do we not insist that good, clear writing characterize our journals, the journals researchers want us to read and heed, and the textbooks we use in our classrooms? We’re educators. Let’s write like we want people to actually learn something.

Chen, D., Schooling as a Knowledge System: Lessons from Cramim Experimental School, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-228X.2009.01078.x/pdf.
Micklos, D. & Freyer, G.A., DNA Science: A First Course (Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2003) 4.
Science Daily Staff, Academic Language Impedes Students' Ability to Learn Science, Expert Argues, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100422153758.htm.
Medina, J., Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Seattle: Pear Press, 2008), 53.

Images
'...but there's still so much left' www.flickr.com/photos/8592577@N08/3186580567
'Day #2: Back to the grind' www.flickr.com/photos/45676611@N00/361121941

Learning and the Brain Presentation: Daniel Willingham

2010-06-07T13:46:00.002-04:00

Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist and author of Why Don't Students Like School, made an insightful presentation at the Learning and the Brain Conference in DC. As you read through these "tweets," keep in mind that I was posting the comments/ideas of the presenter. These do not necessarily represent my conclusions from the research.

These are my "tweets" posted live from Willingham's presentation at the conference.

Will use initials DW to indicate Willingham’s comments/ideas.
DW: Title of pres: Why Students Don’t Like School.
DW: Interest in topic sprung from daughter’s excitement over possible snow days.
DW: Daughter basically liked school but would have chosen to not have it most days.
DW: How to make classroom activities more appealing? What drives our choices.
DW: Factors of choice: 1. Outcome of choice 2. Probability of outcome 3. Costs of choice 4. Personality.
DW: Outcomes can be concrete, can be emotional. Probability of outcome influences effort.
DW: Cost: is task easy? hard? Relationship of effort required to probability of outcome.
DW: Personality factors: self-discipline, carefulness, thoroughness, organization,
deliberate, need for achievement.
DW: Appeal of choice=outcome x probability/input x personality (figuratively!).
DW: Policy-makers only think in terms of personality: “Kids just need more ‘grit.’”
DW: Teachers think in terms of interest. Better to think about probability—how can we make students successful.
DW: When psychological pain of risk is higher than psychological gain, people do not want to participate.
DW: Opportunity to gain more is not the sole factor in choices—e.g., 50% of winning $30 vs. risk of losing $20.
DW: The potential loss is the weightier factor in choices, not the potential gain. What are student losses.
DW: Student losses: failure and shame. Fear of loss influences effort.
DW: Make sure students experience successes. Minimize the “loss”—e.g., failure is not a terrible thing.
DW: It’s a tough sell, but unique to schools. Kids fail at video games, but see it as learning. Think of academic work differently.
DW: Dweck’s work indicates beliefs about intelligence contribute to this different view of failure. (More info on student beliefs & learning.)
DW: At every possibility, emphasize the malleability of intelligence—something you get not something you are.
DW: “Time discounting”: time between choice & outcome influences power of influence— e.g., ice cream in store vs. ice cream in bowl.
DW: Example, value of money given now considered more valuable than same amount promised to be given to you later.
DW: If you want child to value the outcome, the outcome needs to be almost immediate. Promised future rewards have no appeal.
DW: Most academic outcomes are distant—diplomas, grades, pizza party on Friday.
DW: Evaluations of outcomes are relative. Framing outcomes example: Tom Sawyer painting fence.
DW: Software engineers reframing: “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”
DW: Teachers should frame for positive outcomes not negative outcomes. Emphasize reward not punishment.
DW: Punishment gets compliance only as long as “punisher” is present. Rewards are longer lasting.
DW: Rewards change behavior, often to the point of internalization—e.g., I’m a kid who turns in things on-time.
DW: Example of framing: UVA honor system—most profs emphasize the penalty of dismissal rather than how students can live up to idea.
DW: Reasonable goals for each “session” (e.g., exercise) promote success. Daily targets are better than full goal.
DW: Example: not “writing my dissertation” but “writing 200 words today.
DW: Small goals help because they seem achievable. “Good grade” goal—success unknown. “Do this today”—manageable outcome.
DW: Another approach: fuse a task with a more desirable task—charities do this: attend a concert rather than give $ outright.
DW: Example in edu: gaming in the classroom (e.g., Jeopardy in classroom).
DW: Scheduling also helps—daily schedule for completing a term paper works better than just deadlines for final papers.
DW: Emotional support > guilt. e.g., exercising with a friend (support) vs. working alone.
DW: Group work where students are responsible to one another—hard to pull-off, but effective if achieved.
DW: Personality elements: student’s self-image as a student. Students who feel they don’t belong in school are overwhelmed by image.
DW: How does a student reach this conclusion, this hindering self-image. This is not self-esteem.
DW: Students need to feel 1) I’m needed here, and 2) I can contribute. How do we encourage this.
DW: Emphasize classroom as community, everyone has responsibilities, everyone participate in range of activities.
DW: …everyone tastes success and failure. Curriculum needs to be broad (e.g., science gets only about 5-6% of 3rd grade time.)
DW: Challenges for teachers: creating community, vulnerability (teacher’s willingness to fail, tendency to control).

Learning & the Brain Presentation: Martha Denckla

2010-06-07T12:24:00.001-04:00

One of my favorite conferences is the Learning and the Brain Conference held at various locations several times a year. The most recent conference was held in Washington, D.C. in early May. I tried to play the role of on-the-spot-reporter and "tweeted" live from the conference.

As you read through these "tweets," keep in mind that I was posting the comments/ideas of the presenter. These do not necessarily represent my conclusions from the research.

Here are my posts from Martha Denckla's keynote:

Martha Denckla is next presenter. Topic: “The Syndrome ADHD & the Symptom ‘Attention Deficit’ Overlap Only Partially.”
Denckla is an M.D., director of developmental cognitive neurology at Kennedy Krieger Institute, part of Johns Hopkins.
Going to use “MD” to indicate ideas/comments from Dr. Martha Denckla.
MD: Major issue in ADHD: the executive function capacity.
MD: Officially, ADHD (not ADD) with subtypes of inattentive and hyperactivity (or, in full-blown, both).
MD: Is there really a “deficit” in ADHD—a quantitative lesser amount? (Denckla suggests
that there is not.)
MD: In testing for ADHD, a problem can occur in at least four different “steps” of testing process.
MD: Many “disagreements” between ADHD scientists are due to differences in study population—not comparing the same elements.
MD: “Frontal filtering,” or selective deficit, not “bottom up” processing, is associated with ADHD.
MD: More anticipatory errors occur with ADHD, but not covert orienting attention.
MD: ADHD children are more dependent on correct cueing. Some studies suggest ADHD deficits worse on left side (rt. hemisphere issue?).
MD: ADHD child has intact “bottom up” orienting, but slow response to unexpected events—slower to reorient/re-direct attention.
MD: LOTS of evidence for Attention ALLOCATION Deficit—more descriptive name for actual problem. Not a deficit of attention.
MD: In ADHD, “distractability” is really “attractability.” Intrinsically rewarding activities are “attractive.”
MD: Lack of inhibition when required task lacks “attractability,” cannot allocate attention appropriately.
MD: Specific actions done by the nervous system require inhibition of other actions.
MD: Inhibition is “other side of coin” of focused attention.
MD: Suggested title: A-AD, Allocation-of-Attention Deficit. Impulsivity is shared across subtypes; hyperactivity is less common.
MD: Cognitive impulsivity resembles inattention. ADHD is “radar sweep” attention but weak in “spotlight” attention.
MD: Sweep of surroundings vs. narrow, steady, intense focus.
MD: Right hemisphere more involved in “radar” attention; left hemisphere more involved in
“spotlight” attention.
MD: Triad of ADHD weaknesses: motor, cognitive, & emotional display control—all executive function issues.
MD: Motor control in place around age 15; cognitive, around 25; emotional display, around 32—stages of maturity. Interesting minimal age for President of US: 35.
MD: Motor control issues are often indicators of risk for developing ADHD.
MD: Girls are typically a year ahead of boys in motor control development until puberty.
MD: Example of motor control: finger sequencing on a single hand (not moving other hand in tandem).
MD: Future research: relationship of emotional and cognitive regulation. Emotion plays role in focused attention.
MD: “Real frontier”: adverse impact of adversity/stress—causes an “amygdala detour” in the brain.
MD: So, as a child struggles in school, that stress can mimic ADHD when the child actually does not have ADHD.
MD: “If you don;t have ADHD at age 7 you don’t suddenly develop it at age 9.” The “Oh-we-missed-the-ADHD” idea is usually wrong.

Be the Change. Listen. Follow-up.

2010-06-07T09:40:00.003-04:00

“We need effective, high quality, meaningful professional development,” I wrote in a recent blog post. “Otherwise we do a disservice to hard-working professionals and deserve the bruises their opinions inflict on our egos.”

While leading the best possible professional development session for every teacher in the room is unlikely to ever happen, there are some ways we can help avoid professional development being a “waste of time.”

1. Be the change. Leaders of professional development seem to forget that they’re actually teaching, and that part of teaching is modeling the activity you hope to see adopted. A session devoted to equipping teachers to implement more collaborative learning that is presented via “death by PowerPoint” is an oxymoron, a term originating from a Greek word appropriately meaning “pointedly foolish.” As one teacher recently expressed it, “Why does the worst teaching often happen in sessions on how to improve teaching?” Why, indeed? Modeling is a powerful teaching technique. In addition to communicating that the suggested new approach promotes learning, demonstration taps into some of the brain’s natural learning systems:

This may be because demonstration actually encourages the brain to engage. Specialized neurons known as mirror neurons make practicing “in the head” possible…When a teacher repeatedly performs a sequence of steps, her students’ mirror neurons may enable their own preliminary practice of the same steps. In other words, as a teacher demonstrates a skill, students mentally rehearse it.1

Leading professional development sessions that utilize the instructional techniques and approaches being recommended is more than a courtesy. It increases the likelihood that teachers will appreciate and understand the concepts being shared.

2. Listen. I have a tendency to get preoccupied with my preparation and forget that I’ll actually have people in the professional development session. Not just people but colleagues!

A few years ago, I was asked by another organization to lead a day of professional development for a large school district in the Northeast. I arrived early and began to prepare the room and my materials. The teacher whose classroom was being used as the meeting site was there when I arrived. She shared with me what had been going on at the school. Contract negotiations were underway and not going well; a strike was likely. She informed me that I would have representatives from both the union and administration sitting in for the day and that either or both may speak up at any time to contest any ideas I presented. After thinking of possible escape scenarios, I left the room and found a quiet place to think. I needed to redirect the focus of the group—at least as much as possible—or the day would be a waste.

As the teachers and union/administration reps came into the classroom, I asked them to think back to when they decided to become an educator and to jot down the most influential reasons for their choice. I opened the session sharing a brief account of my decision to become a teacher. I then had them do the same in small groups. As they recounted their original motivations for becoming educators, I could sense the atmosphere change. I mentally collected comments I overheard from the conversations and used them to summarize why we were now coming together to explore how we could do what we wanted to do even better. Surprisingly, there were no objections from either rep during the day. While it wasn’t an ideal day of professional development, it became more beneficial because I listened and had enough flexibility to adapt to the needs of my colleagues.

Though we’ve been invited to lead professional development, we do not have all the answers. Professional development involves merging new research findings with current personnel—i.e., bringing ideas and people together. One way I’ve tried to do more of this recently is to ask teachers if any of them have tried something similar to a new approach I’ve explained. If any have, I invite them to share their experience. This invites elaboration, a critical cognitive process for constructing understanding. If the teacher’s experience was positive, we discuss why the approach was successful. If the teacher’s experience was frustrating, we often find together the reason for it and develop a plan for structuring it better the next time. This give-and-take values everyone, respects the experience present in the session, and allows the leader to be a colleague rather than an aloof expert.

3. Follow up. I’ve written previously about the importance of coaching and the characteristics of an effective coach. A one-time information flood is ineffective, no matter how engaging the session’s leader may be. Teachers need support as they begin to implement new ideas, methods, and approaches. Note that support, not judgement, is needed. Showing up with an evaluation form is a certain way to kill any benefit professional development might yield. Teachers are learners, and we need the time and space to try, to reflect, to try again, to get helpful feedback, and to truly master implementation. We need the opportunity to learn. Coaching provides this opportunity, along with the encouragement and feedback necessary for success.

Let’s not dismiss professional development as useless because of a few bad experiences. Rather, let’s structure professional development so that it truly invests in teachers, providing them with new and effective means of investing in our students.

Authentic learning for both is what we’re chasing. Catching it requires professional development of the highest quality.

References Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 68.

Image: 'Cautious / Suspicious' http://www.flickr.com/photos/15923063@N00/272239167

Learning & the Brain Presentation: Michael Posner

2010-05-28T15:22:00.006-04:00

To provide readers with a sense of the conference, I'm going to post my Twitter stream from each presentation. These are the actual "tweets" I posted from the conference. I've cleaned them up a little, but other than a few corrected typos, they represent the raw ideas presented at the conference.

As you read through these "tweets," keep in mind that I was posting the comments/ideas of the presenter. These do not necessarily represent my conclusions from the research.

Here are my posts from the first keynote presenter, Michael Posner:

First speaker is Michael Posner, topic: Brain’s Attention Networks. Will use initials (MP) to indicate speaker.
Posner is from the University of Oregon and was recently honored by the President for his work in cognitive neuroscience.
MP: Attention is a central topic for education. New tech giving us new insight into nature of attention.
MP: Attention is a set of neural networks—at least 3: alerting, orienting, & executive. Each set associated w/different brain area.
MP: At rest, two brain networks are active, “default state,” which alert brain to change.
MP: Alerting deficits in early childhood later negatively affect the executive network.
MP: There are both overt AND covert shifts in attention.
MP: A deficit in orienting attention network correlates with some autistic behaviors.
MP: Executive network is associated with conflicts in sensory data and self-regulation.
Post on importance of self-regulation: http://is.gd/bXdb.
MP: Effortful control of attention is one self-regulation element of the executive network.
MP: The anterior cingulate is related to self-regulation; size & activity can predict self-regulation capacity.
MP: Executive network deficiency is related to most cognitive disorders.
MP: Individual differences in executive network functioning are wide-ranging.
MP: For example, the speed in managing conflicts in sensory data correlate w/self-regulation capacity.
MP: Separate white matter pathways deal with the three attention networks.
MP: Recent study shows IBMT (form of meditation) actually influences those white matter pathways positively.
MP: IBMT meditation influences brain state, which positively influences executive functions.
MP: Differing neurotransmitters are also associated with each attention network. This can help guide gene research.
MP: When does executive network begin to self-regulate individual? Evidence shows around 7-10 months of age.
MP: Around 7 months, a child is aware of conflicts in sensory data—e.g., a scene different from expectation.
MP: Anticipatory looking at 4-7 months correlates w/some self-regulation abilities at 4 years of age.
MP: Connectivity of the executive network, however, develops slowly—present at age 9 but not fully connected.
MP: Showing novel objects may help produce connectivity within executive attention networks.
MP: Gene DRD4 present on a specific chromosone correlates with ADHD. (Genetic basis discovered?)
MP: If gene is present AND parenting is poor, MAJOR ADHD impulsivity develops.
MP: “True experts” have “highly elaborated semantic memory,” correlated w/activity in fusiform gyrus.
MP: High levels of experience influence brain activity for specific areas. Fusiform gyrus active in chess, bird, & dog experts.
Posner now taking questions from audience.
MP: Alerting attention deficiency associates w/aging & ADHD disorders.
MP: Orienting attention deficiency associates w/autism.
MP: Executive attention deficiency associates w/Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, addiction, & others.
MP: Parents not to blame for ADHD children; research shows correlation in extreme impulsivity.
MP: With research subjects, parenting classes actually decreased children’s impulsivity.
(As you can imagine, some resistance to these ideas. Posner: “Just sharing what research shows.”)
MP: My research will be translated to classroom by educators, not me. I’m just a scientist. We need teachers to think this through.

Professional Development: A Defense

2010-05-26T16:09:00.006-04:00

Teacher conversations about professional development often include the terms worthless and waste of time, and a general disdain for typical approaches is often evident. The back-and-forth can be a bruising arena for those who actually provide professional development, and I’ve been feeling a bit bruised recently. Don’t worry. The bruises have only been blows to my ego. (The only actual bruise I have came compliments of a concrete planter on the corner of New Jersey & M Streets in Washington, D.C., and that’s not a tale I care to retell.)

I must confess that my own experience supports such derogatory comments. I once spent an entire morning of “professional development” brainstorming alternate ways to earn a living. Though I’m sure the administration’s intent and the presenter’s goals were worthwhile, the session was so poorly designed that worthless and waste of time accurately described the result.

Why, then, do the current perspectives of professional development seem bruising? A few years ago I began an organization committed to “investing in teachers,” a “school’s most valuable asset.” And, yes, professional development is a significant component of what we do. So, allow me to provide a brief defense of professional development based on what it can do when it’s effectively designed.

Professional development can contribute to increased student learning. As we learn more about teaching and related topics, such as findings from neuro- and cognitive science, we discover principles that can improve our teaching. As our teaching becomes more effective, our students understand more. Our growth in teaching influences their depth of learning.

Many times, our growth in teaching relates to our instructional design—an element that directly influences student learning: “Many breakdowns in student learning may be a function of poor classroom curriculum design,” suggests Robert J. Marzano. “...the expert teacher has acquired a wide array of instructional strategies along with the knowledge of when these strategies might be the most useful.”¹Professional development can equip us with additional strategies for fostering learning.

Professional development can provide a common language for teachers to talk to teachers about teaching. This increases the possibility of collaboration, a practice known to improve practice:

Surgeon and author Dr. Atul Gawande details conclusions of a Harvard Business School study on the learning curve surgeons experience when learning new surgical techniques. Practice in itself proved an unreliable predictor of learning rate and success, but how surgeons practiced made a significant difference. A surgeon leading one of the quickest-learning teams picked “team members with whom he had worked well before” and kept “them together through the first fifteen cases before allowing any new members. He had the team go through a dry run the day before the first case, then deliberately scheduled six operations in the first week, so little would be forgotten in between. He convened the team before each case to discuss it in detail and afterward to debrief.” In contrast, a surgeon who had significantly more experience led one of the slowest-learning teams. He involved different personnel in each surgery, “which is to say that it was no team at all,” and led no pre- or post-operation discussions. Increased collaboration quickened learning rate and improved performance. Most important, patients benefitted from the surgeon’s collaborative approach.²

Educational research reaches a similar conclusion: collaboration improves teacher performance. Unfortunately our learning institutions often impede professional growth by inhibiting collaboration. As a result, we can actually hinder student learning by failing to sharpen one another through collaboration.³ Common professional development can provide a basis and means for such collaboration.

Professional development can provide new research that equips teachers to be more intentional. New research often illuminates why what we already know to be successful teaching is effective. This recognition helps us become more intentional in our use of various methods and approaches. When we understand why something works, we know better how to optimize its effectiveness. A consistently good teacher is an intentional teacher, and the more we understand about teaching and learning, the more intentional we can become. Professional development can do these things, which also means it can fail to do them, and this is a source of teacher frustration and justifiably bruising comments:

Unfortunately, schools provide little help. Most professional development programs for teachers, claims Richard Paul, are “episodic, intellectually unchallenging, and fragmented” with “very little discussion on or about serious educational issues, and when there is such discussion it is often simplistic.”⁴

Those leading professional development sessions have a critical responsibility. In the next post I’ll explore some principles that should be considered when designing and leading professional development. We need effective, high quality, meaningful professional development.

Otherwise we do a disservice to hard-working professionals and deserve the bruises their opinions inflict on our egos.

References

Marzano, R.J., What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2003), 106, 78.

Gawande, A., Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 230.

Sergiovanni, T.J., Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992), 88.

Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 191.

Image: 'Audience' http://www.flickr.com/photos/30127486@N00/267785927

Motivation, the Elusive Drive

2010-04-21T09:41:00.007-04:00

“Come on, you can do it!”

They were wrong.

In my youth I played a sport that makes up a chunk of many-a-child’s early athletic endeavors. My father was passionate about it. My older brother was MVP of his high school team. And I…just didn’t get it. In the final game of my final year of eligibility, by some fluke of fate, I managed two significant plays. In an entire season of mediocrity those two plays were what stayed in the minds of the coaches, and I was named to the all-star team. The “honor” meant practicing beyond the season’s end and playing games against all-star teams from other locales.

My father was proud. My older brother thought, for the first time, that I might follow in his footsteps. I was miserable. Miserable and unmotivated. Somehow I maintained a pulse despite a lack of heart for the game; I was merely a body filling a position.

My coach and teammates yelled endless go-get-‘em, show-’em-what-you’ve-got’s to no avail. I didn’t get the sport. Never did. It was meaningless to me, and I was definitely the team’s weakest link. Without motivation, I remained in my mediocrity, not interested in learning how to improve. This is the only time I can remember my parents allowing me to quit something I had started, and I’m sure their allowance immediately improved the team.

An Elusive Drive
Motivation is elusive. In part because motivation is idiosyncratic. We all assign different levels of significance and meaning to different things. What captivated my father and brother’s interests seemed like only a time-filler to me. Part of discovering ourselves is finding those things that spur us to action—meaningful, intentionally chosen action. When we find these captivating pursuits, our inner drive kicks in and we act with purpose, passion, and even inspiration.

Students are individuals. What motivates one may not motivate another, which is why a blanket approach, be it “sticks” or “carrots,” rarely works, especially long term. I once used a reading motivational program initiated by a national restaurant chain. I’d set monthly goals for students and if they achieved them they received a certificate to use at the restaurant. For a month or two, I’d have 80%+ of my students achieve the goal. Then the achievement rate took a dip, followed by another and another, until only a few students were achieving the monthly goals. I was trying to motivate individuals with a one-size-fits-all approach, and my use of extrinsic motivation probably negatively influenced any intrinsic motivation some of my students had for reading.

One Hot Potato
Motivation seems to be our controversy of the moment. On one “side” we have famous authors and speakers suggesting that extrinsic motivation is wasted energy. On the other, we have researchers paying students for various academic-related achievements. We can cite research that supports both perspectives, which leaves us arguing over philosophical stances and pragmatic solutions.

Let’s step away from the shouting for a moment and consider principles that can guide our thinking about motivation and learning.

Extrinsic Motivation: Be Specific in the Short-term
Focusing attention on a post-task reward can promote action. For example, I love Boston Cream Pie (which isn’t a pie at all), but it’s not a common dessert here in Alabama where banana pudding is more the norm. Once in a while the urge to taste the delicious combination of cake, cream, and dark chocolate moves my attention and action to the kitchen. I bake the dessert so I can eat the dessert. The reward at the end of the task moves me and makes me move. I don’t enjoy the process of baking enough to make Boston Cream Pie every day, every week, or even every month. But occasionally, the reward at the end is enough to make me don a baker’s cap (at least figuratively).

This example illustrates some important principles for using extrinsic motivation. First, extrinsic motivation is best used for short-term, measurable tasks. Research suggests that attempts at using extrinsic motivation long-term actually end up undermining motivation. An initial burst of activity is typically followed by decreased drive and achievement. Daniel Pink suggests using extrinsic motivation only when there is no intrinsic motivation that may be undermined.1

Short-term extrinsic motivation can be effective if the task is concrete and measurable. For example, Roland Fryer Jr.’s controversial research found that paying students for high test scores or good grades was far less effective than paying students for each book they read.2 The reason: students knew how to achieve the reward for reading a book but did not necessarily know what to do to raise their test scores or grades. For extrinsic motivation to be effective, the targeted action needs to be specific and the individual needs to know exactly how to accomplish the desired goal.

Daniel Pink describes such tasks as those that “require following a prescribed set of rules to a specific end.”3 The message: offering extrinsic motivation for vague concepts, such as good behavior or more effort, is unlikely to succeed. Using extrinsic motivation for specific, concrete tasks, such as mowing the lawn or reading a book, can be effective, but probably only in the short-term.

That does not mean that short-term extrinsic motivation cannot lead to long-term changes in behavior. If the motivation sustains a change long enough, the individual may develop new habits that persist beyond the external reward. For example, a student offered a reward for a specific behavior, such as returning an item to its appropriate place of storage after use, may develop the habit of putting the item back after each use. Pink warns, however, that offering the extrinsic motivation long term often leads to resentment as the “motivatee” feels manipulated by the one offering the reward. Short-term, specific, and measurable can make extrinsic motivation work without most negative side-effects.

Intrinsic Motivation: Setting the Stage
Wouldn’t it be great if there were a recipe for igniting intrinsic motivation—”Do X and all your students will be passionate about learning.” Yeah, that would be great. We can dream, but the reality is that intrinsic motivation is impossible to generate for someone else. However, we can create environments where intrinsic motivation is more likely to flourish.

First, create conditions in which students experience competence. Humans like to feel capable of meeting challenges, whether it’s working a formula correctly or running a mile. We like to feel like we can be successful, even when it takes work. How do we create these conditions in our classrooms? One of the most powerful modifications a teacher can make is increasing the amount of instructive feedback given to students while they are working on a task. Formative assessment combined with instructive feedback is the heart of effective teaching. As a teacher moves throughout the classroom observing students at work and offering additional challenge and redirection as necessary, students gain confidence in their abilities to be successful. Why? Because someone is there to point the way. It’s that simple. When we are working to learn something new, having someone who knows how to do what we’re trying to learn and who is willing to offer feedback and guidance kicks our intrinsic motivation into gear.

Second, establish an environment that communicates autonomy. Students like to feel like they have some control over their actions. (Teachers do too, by the way!) If everything in a classroom is so structured that students never have options, intrinsic motivation will wither. The choices can be as simple as either A or B. The point is not to provide students with a myriad of options, but to make sure that giving students choices is a regular part of the classroom. Don’t confuse autonomy with independence. It’s not that students want to be left alone to achieve for themselves but that they want to feel like they have some say in how they learn and demonstrate their learning. In fact, given as an option, many students will choose to work collaboratively with others, recognizing that such interdependence has many potential benefits.

Third, provide appropriate challenge for students. Many times increasing the challenge means doing less as teachers. We have a tendency to think and act as though giving students all the new material nicely organized and tied up is the best way for them to get it. After all, putting it all together worked for us as we interacted with the material. That, right there, is the key: we accepted the challenge of processing the material and gained deeper understanding of it as a result. Students need to go through a similar process—to take on the challenge of sorting the new material.

Research supports this conclusion. A study that has been replicated featured two groups both given the text passage to read. For one group, the text was preceded by an outline that had the same organization as the text. In other words, the researcher, or teacher, communicated that this was the way the ideas should be organized. For the second group, the text was preceded by an outline having a different organization from the text. The researchers then gave two different tests to both groups. The first test was simply to recall the text passage. In other words, it measured superficial learning of the text. In this first test, the group that had received the outline that matched the text had the better scores.

However, when the researchers tested deep learning by testing each group’s ability to use ideas from the text to engage in creative problem-solving, the second group, the group that had been given an outline that differed from the organization of the text passage, significantly outperformed the other group.

Why did the results differ for the two groups? Here’s the researcher’s explanation: “The efforts that participants in the second group made to relate the outline to the text reduced their ability to recall the text but increased their understanding of it. This increased understanding meant that they were better placed than participants in the first group to generalize or transfer their knowledge to the creative problems.” The extra challenge of restructuring the outline to match the text better equipped them to transfer their learning or to act with intention in using the new material.4

Dr. Judy WIllis recently presented valuable insights regarding the brain and challenge. When, as students, our brains are not challenged we become bored easily, and boredom is actually a form of stress. When stressed, the regions of the brain associated with “fight, flight, or freeze” become active, generating behaviors often associated with a variety of disorders, including ADHD, oppositional-defiant disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and others. As a neurologist, Dr. Willis began to question the high percentage of children she saw who supposedly had indicators of these disorders. Knowing the numbers seemed far too high, Dr. Willis began to visit classrooms and noticed that, for many students, the questionable behaviors occurred when the child was either unchallenged or feeling incompetent in relation to the challenge.5 Appropriate challenge avoids the extremes that can extinguish intrinsic motivation.

Fourth, help students perceive progress. I love the Nike+ system used with my mp3 player to track my runs. After each run, I can see my progress in relation to personal goals, established standards, previous runs, and much more. I have a visual representation of my progress. Researchers often refer to this as something like the “gamer effect,” gamer being the player of video games. When you play a video game and reach the end of a challenge, you move on to the next level. You always know where you are in relation to the game’s ultimate challenge and conclusion. You can “see” progress.  

Would it be possible to help students see their own progress? If we have a series of skills that ultimately enable students to complete some task or reach some answer—could we provide them with a chart that shows the progression? Could they check off “levels” as they master the sub-skills? Think, “How can I represent the learning in a way that students will be able to see progress?”

Finally, help students discover meaning in their learning.

…meaning is motivational. Because the brain constantly strives to make sense of the sensory data our experiences provide, finding meaning triggers the brain’s reward system and increases the likelihood of our retaining the information. “The brain’s determination of what is meaningful and what is not is reflected not only in the initial perceptual processes but also in the conscious processing of information,” claims Patricia Wolfe. “Information that fits into or adds to an existing network has a much better chance of storage than information that doesn’t.”6

Meaning emerges as students blend new learning with past experience (elaboration) and as I see its relevance to their current world (intention). By helping students see the relationship between new learning and their past and present experiences, we can make our instruction conducive to intrinsic motivation.

Remember, there is no magic formula for generating intrinsic motivation or guarantee that even with all these conditions in place that it will flourish. This, however, gives a focus, a place to put our energies so that intrinsic motivation is possible.

In conclusion, let’s consider one more major influence on intrinsic motivation: the teacher’s passion (or lack of it) for the subject matter being taught. We have the responsibility of learning to like everything we teach so that our attitude toward it is consistently upbeat and positive. Many of us likely became teachers because of a dynamic teacher in our past. We need to be that dynamic teacher in our classrooms.

I’d like to pay you $5.00 for reading this entire article, but I wouldn’t want to undermine any intrinsic motivation you may have for implementing its ideas. My continued curiosity about the topic led me to write it—i.e., I didn’t write it for pay! Hopefully it’s generated some ideas worth considering. Applying new learning does have its own rewards!

And who knows? With enough intrinsic motivation you might earn, deserve, and enjoy a post on the all-star team!

Sources

Pink, D.H., Drive: The Surprising Truth Behind What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009).
Ripley, A., “Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?” Time, April 8, 2010.
Pink, 62.
Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M.W., & Anderson, M.C., Memory (New York: Psychology Press, 2009) 113-135.
Willis, J., “Teaching Students How They Can Change Their Intelligence by Teaching Them a Brain Owner’s Manual,” presented at Learning and the Brain: Using Brain Research to Raise IQ and Achievement (San Francisco, 2010).
Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010) 46-47.

Photos

‘Free Hey Now You’re An All Star+Creative+Commons‘ http://www.flickr.com/photos/40645538@N00/480008410
‘Murphy‘ http://www.flickr.com/photos/98799884@N00/405782341
‘goodbye‘http://www.flickr.com/photos/73645804@N00/306073299

Creative Thinking in the Classroom, Part 2

2010-04-12T20:16:00.003-04:00

Time. Is there a greater challenge for educators? It seems like instructional time is often the target of well-meaning but time-devouring programs. Assemblies, pep rallies, fund-raising motivational events, and those intercom announcements eat precious minutes, and these are on top of an already bloated curriculum. As a result, we tend to eliminate anything that has a whiff of being extraneous.

One major casualty: creative thinking. However, as I discussed in Part 1, for the brain creative thinking is not just the predecessor to producing art. It is a means of deepening understanding. In other words, creative thinking is a cognitive gateway to deeper, more meaningful learning. Let’s examine how learning can spark creative thinking, which can lead to deeper learning.

Learning involves four “core processes,” two of which are comprehension and elaboration. If learning proceeds in a straightforward fashion—experience→comprehension→elaboration→application—it can bypass opportunities for creative thinking. This is unfortunate because learning can spark creative thinking:

The resulting understanding prompts a creative curve. The mind says, “Wait a minute! Let’s explore that again, but this time from a different perspective, or with a different reference point, or in multiple dimensions, or by combining it with _____.” Neuroscientist and writer Gregory Berns describes this as “reverse perception.” Creative thinking, claims Berns, “comes from using the same neural circuits used to perceive natural objects,” but in reverse. Instead of perceiving what is and acting on it, the mind seeks what else could be. The individual re-explores the new data, returning to comprehension to disorganize, relabel, and re-sort the data in a different way. This difference may be in perspective, in scale, in dimension, or in any ways that alter initial thinking about the data. For example, the creative individual may engage a creative tool (e.g., drawing an analogy) or explore representational variety (e.g., a multiple intelligences approach, such as representing verbal data in a musical or spatial form).1

This figure shows the “creative curve.”
When given the opportunity to re-explore understandings, the brain often engages in re-comprehension, the sorting of critical details, and re-elaboration, the recognition of new patterns. These new patterns may be new, unique, creative. As the individual examines these new patterns, methods of expressing them may come to mind. These possible expressions are then examined for potential, and if deemed effective, the individual may proceed to producing a creative product. At this point the individual’s skills in the chosen medium come into play—i.e., an experienced and capable painter will likely produce work of a higher quality than the novice. However, both beginner and master benefit from the thinking preceding the expression because it’s the thinking that deepens understanding of the original topic.

Note that learning and creative thinking are actually overlapping processes. Both engage (re-)comprehension and (re-)elaboration, and as a result, both have the potential to deepen understanding. If deep learning of subject matter is the goal, creative thinking can help achieve it. Also note that creative thinking requires time and space. If learning proceeds too efficiently, opportunities for creative thinking are lost. Challenging students to revisit subject matter, reorganize its details in different schemes, and explore those reorganizations for new patterns can initiate creative insights. Those insights contribute to deeper learning. When creative thinking leads to creative products, another opportunity for deepening learning is generated:

…creative works can deepen learning in the classroom. For example, Erica, a middle school teacher, has her students develop a series of symbols to summarize a work of literature. For example, one student summarizes Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in a series of three symbols: a tightly clenched hand, that same hand with three different colored streaks of light surrounding it and a large timepiece in the background, and finally an open hand extending forward. The results become new data for the other students. As they examine the symbols, the students reprocess the details of the literature, consider the connection between the story and the symbol, and make a decision regarding the symbol’s effectiveness. This reprocessing—interacting with the symbols as if they were ‘another person’—mirrors learning’s core processes, engaging recall and thought about the original stimulus. This rethinking fosters deeper learning of the subject matter.2

There are also implications for our teaching. Want to be creative in your instructional design? Your brain needs the time and space to explore the subject matter—to reorganize it, search for new patterns, and apply the resulting insights to teaching plans. Unfortunately this time and space is probably the biggest challenge to our teaching more creatively. One way I deal with this is to look ahead and identify the major upcoming instructional units. This look ahead creates a space between what I’m currently teaching and what I will be teaching and gives my mind time to explore the subject matter in ways that enable creative thinking.

Getting away from my normal work space seems to help. Many of my creative ideas find me during morning runs. Actually, research suggests such a change of scenery increases the likelihood of creative thinking:

Sometimes a simple change of environment is enough to jog the perceptual system out of familiar categories. This may be one reason why restaurants figure so prominently as sites of perceptual breakthroughs...When confronted with places never seen before, the brain must create new categories. It is in this process that the brain jumbles around old ideas with new images to create new syntheses.3

Creative thinking and learning are complementary processes. Learning enables creative thinking, and creative thinking deepens learning. This is why my target-based organization of thinking does not include a separate ring devoted to creative thinking. I see creative thinking as a type of learning. As such, teaching students to think creatively is critical if we seek to develop self-directed learners. Add skill in expression, such as the methods and approaches taught via the arts, and we’ll be graduating creative thinkers with the skills to engage the world through art—or at least bring artful expression to their lives and work.

Sources

Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 231-232.
Ibid., 234-235.
Berns, G., Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2008), 33.

Creative Thinking in the Classroom, Part 1

2010-04-01T10:42:00.006-04:00

Sirens seize our attention. They scream, “Crisis!” and we scan the horizon or media streams to secure the details.

Despite their obvious function, sirens do little to actually address the emergencies they signal. After awareness is achieved, sirens fall silent while those charged with solving problems shift into high gear. The perp is pursued, the fire is fought, the EMT's and ambulance crew care for the injured. It’s these individuals on the ground who address whatever triggered the siren’s screech across the airwaves.

Creativity has become the target of many sirens, pundits who find purpose in critiquing current educational practices. Some, such as Sir Ken Robinson, go so far as accusing education of killing students’ creativity. (By the way, this is not a criticism of Mr. Robinson. I appreciate his thinking, share his talks with others, and have read all of his books!) These sirens have served a purpose: educators are aware of and talking about the need to develop students’ creative capacities. However, many of us are not shifting into high gear to address this problem because we have not been equipped to do so. Returning to the analogy, if I am the first on an accident scene I’ll do what I can while praying for the EMTs to arrive soon. I’m simply not equipped to deal with serious injuries. And with all due respect, suggesting that more dance or drama be added to the curriculum does little to help the people “on the ground,” classroom teachers, foster creative thinking in students.

To explore creative thinking in the classroom we must first recognize that creativity is broader than the arts. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a HUGE supporter of arts in the schools. Music, drama, writing, architecture, and literature are major contributors to my life, and I’m learning to appreciate the arts not included in that list. I believe strongly that young people should receive regular experiences and instruction in the arts.

However, creative thinking is a valued process in nearly every field. The Root-Bernsteins realized this when they launched their ground-breaking research on creative thinking. From their penetrating study, the Root-Bernsteins identify “thinking tools” employed by creative individuals.1 These tools cross disciplines, showing creative breakthroughs in multiple professional fields. For example, a practicing biologist is just as likely to gain insight from analogizing as a sculptor of abstract artwork. The Root-Bernsteins show us that creative thinking possesses value beyond the stage and easel. Unfortunately findings from the study “Are They Really Ready to Work?” reveal that only 21 percent of American corporate leaders reported excellence in this area among recent college graduates seeking employment with their companies.”2 Nearly ⅘ of the corporate world is dissatisfied with the creativity new hires bring to the workplace. Creative thinking needs to be an emphasis in all of education, not just students’ training in the arts.

To integrate creative thinking into our teaching, we need answers to a few questions: 1) What do we know about creative thinking?, 2) Is there any relationship between creative thinking and learning?, and if so 3) How can we engage students in creative thinking while continuing to teach our required curriculum?

While much of what sparks creativity and the neurological processes that enable it remains a mystery, evidence suggests creativity includes a period of disorganization prior to creation. In the landmark book The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius, Dr. Nancy C. Andreasen hypothesizes:

...that during the creative process the brain begins by disorganizing, making links between shadowy forms of objects or symbols or words or remembered experiences that have not been previously linked. Out of this disorganization, self-organization eventually emerges and takes over in the brain. The result is a completely new and original thing: a mathematical function, a symphony, or a poem.3

My favorite description of this disorganization-reorganization process comes from architect Steven Holl, who writes:

In each project, we begin with information and disorder, confusion of purpose, program ambiguity, an infinity of materials and forms. All of these elements, like obfuscating smoke, swirl in a nervous atmosphere. Architecture is the result of acting on this indeterminacy.4

Perhaps the presence of “obfuscating smoke” is what prevents us from knowing more about creativity. However, it appears that a period of disorganization gives way to a period of defining and organizing, which is followed by a period of associating data with known concepts through which patterns begin to emerge.

If true, creativity shares some cognitive processes with learning. In fact, since learning involves the transformation of data into meaning, some researchers describe learning itself as a creative act. It is possible that these shared processes result, in part, from shared brain geography. As Science writer Greg Miller explains, researchers at University College London found that the hippocampus, a brain structure critical for forming new memories, is also essential for imagining scenes. Such findings “provide experimental evidence that memory and imagination may share neural circuitry.”5

These findings hold potential implications for us as educators.

First, if creative thinking promotes personal and professional success, it is something we should be addressing in schools. Sir Ken Robinson is right: “Creativity is possible in science, in technology, in management, in business, in music, in any activity that engages human intelligence.”6 As such, creative thinking should be one of the portals through which we engage students in our subject matter.

Second, if creativity and learning aren’t completely different languages—if, in fact, they share cognitive processes—then integrating creative thinking into learning should be possible. We should be able to design instruction that engages creative thinking that not only fosters its own development but also deepens the learning of our original subject matter. We need to find ways to welcome the “obfuscating smoke” into our classrooms!

We’ll explore some how-to ideas in the second post on this topic. Perhaps then we can silence, or at least dampen, some of the sirens.

By the way, these ideas are explored in depth Chapter 8 of The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain. Copies are available directly from Clerestory Press or through Amazon.com.

Sources

Root-Bernstein, R. & Root-Bernstein, M., Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People (Boston: Mariner Books, 2001), 118.
Rappaport, J., Arts Skills are Life Skills. http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/06/12/arts_skills_are_life_skills/.
Andreasen, N.C., The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius (New York: Penguin Group, 2005), 77-78.
Holl, S., Phenomena and Idea. http://www.stevenholl.com/writings/phenomena.html.
Miller, G., A Surprising Connection Between Memory and Imagination, Science, 315, (2007), 312.
Robinson, K., Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative (Oxford, UK: Capstone Publishing, 2001), 10.

Images

'Fire Hose' http://www.flickr.com/photos/93635055@N00/2422704380
'Chalk' http://www.flickr.com/photos/53326337@N00/4273547554

Let's Banish Critical Thinking, Part 3: Reason & Evaluate

2010-03-17T11:05:00.011-04:00

No matter how close to the center their shot lands, beginning marksmen achieve success simply by hitting the target. As they learn, practice, and gain experience, the target’s center becomes their focus. They develop accuracy, intentionally steadying their state and securing the center in their sights. Thinking is similar. Engaging the target’s outer rings first supports movement toward the target’s center. Movement toward the center also increases the interaction between the rings.

Reasoning and evaluation, the target’s inner rings, are two sides of the same coin. Before we examine this coin, let’s briefly review the target’s outer circles: memorization and learning. Some information possesses its greatest value when it’s memorized. At its best, memorizing enables efficiency in thinking and acting. However, memorizing, while valuable when engaged selectively, has its limits.

Learning often involves four core processes, or four “states” of thinking. (Thinking is more fluid than the term states suggests, but this simplification can help us understand its flow.) Through experience, the brain gains raw sensory data. During comprehension, the brain sorts, labels, and organizes the raw sensory data. Through elaboration, the brain examines the organized data for patterns, recalls relevant prior experiences, and blends the new data with your experiences to construct understanding. During application the brain practices using or expressing the new understanding. We should increase instruction in the skills of learning, not just guide student learning of core subject matter. In other words, we need to place more value and emphasis on teaching students how to self-teach (or self-learn). We need to teach them the thinking skills that enable self-directed learning.

Reasoning builds on learning because it requires knowledge of the subject about which one wants to think. That may seem obvious, but some instructional thinking programs suggest that by using their bag of tricks students will be able to think critically about anything. While certain understandings and skills do enable reasoning, there must be sufficient knowledge about the subject to avoid reasoning void of solid content or invalid due to misunderstanding. Reasoning uses the ideas gained through learning to construct arguments, identify supportable conclusions, and structure ideas so that their relationships, value, and implications are evident. It also empowers decision-making.

Let’s watch learning and reasoning in action.

The Tour de France mesmerizes Stan. He knew that people raced on bikes, but he never saw the excitement this annual contest generates. A trip to a local bike shop intensifies Stan’s interest. The bikes themselves, the accessory equipment, the experience of freedom riding even in the store’s parking lot draws Stan into a new world, and, thus, into learning. In conversation with the store’s knowledgeable salesperson, Stan asks questions about bike types, manufacturers, and basic equipment needs. He leaves with a copy of a book, in which he seeks new information on bike selection and maintenance. His vocabulary expands, as terms like derailleur and carbon-fiber frame contribute to his emerging understanding. Stan researches road vs. mountain vs. BMX bikes and considers what type of cycling most interests him. He charts information about various makes and models of bike and reviews expert opinions on each. He considers this data from various perspectives: What do riders say about a make/model? What are repair shops’ experience with each? What does each manufacturer reveal about the intended use for each of their models? Stan actively seeks needed information and organizes and examines it in ways that deepen his understanding of this new world.

Stan grows more excited as his learning deepens, and soon he is eager to purchase his own bike.

Enter reasoning.

Decision-making is similar to constructing a valid argument, and making a sound decision requires many of the same understandings and skills. For example, Stan’s research may have revealed that Brand A offers a longer warranty on all its bikes than all the other manufacturers he reviewed. Thus, he forms a statement that represents reality (i.e., not an opinion)—a “categorical statement”: “Brand A’s warranty is longer than the other manufacturers I am considering.” As he continues to review what his research reveals, he forms several such statements—some universal and some particular in nature. Stan also monitors his thinking as he compares features on differing models. For example, Stan knows from his various test rides that he has a strong preference for a specific type of shifting and braking controls. When comparing controls, he stays aware that, because of his bias, he will likely favor models with his preferred controls. This is not an error in his thinking, but it does present an additional consideration.

Stan also monitors his thinking for fallacies. For example, he watches for post hoc errors, such as eliminating a make just because it is the company that supports his favorite cyclist’s main competitor—e.g., “They must make bikes for jerks because so-and-so rides one.”) He also tries to minimize emotionally potent factors—e.g., “I really like the detailing on this model. Since it’s cool, I’ll get that bike.”

Throughout this process, Stan is constructing a conditional argument with as much truth and validity his understanding of cycling allows. He is reasoning. When the time comes to discuss getting a bike with his parents, who offered to contribute to the purchase as part of Stan’s birthday present, he’s ready with a well-crafted “argument” and a decision made via his best reasoning abilities.

Note how Stan’s learning enabled his reasoning. Had he selected a bike on his first visit to the bike shop immediately following the Tour de France, he would likely have made a different, less-reasoned decision, which may or may not have proved to be a wise choice. Emotion would have been the main basis of his decision because he did not possess the understanding that his period of learning provided. Without knowledge of a subject, we tend to make affective, less-informed decisions. (Note, you can never completely eliminate emotion’s role in decision-making, but you can moderate its influence. See Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide for an extended discussion of this.)

Problem-solving follows a similar route. The first step involves learning about the problem and its context (or reviewing such information if the problem arises in a familiar area). Reasoning then both produces and evaluates potential solutions. If the first attempt does not solve the problem, analysis of the attempt in relation to the problem often leads to another potential solution. Though we often portray trial and error as an unstructured process, the truth is that better trials often result from learning and reasoning. (Think about it, do you really want a surgeon who approaches a problem through a pure, unthinking trial-and-error approach?) Selecting a potential solution is not that different from decision-making, which is a focused form of reasoning.

Now, you may be wondering, why my visual, the target, separates reasoning and evaluation when both seem to be involved in forming valid and truthful arguments. When I use the term evaluation, I mean the capacity to analyze, evaluate, and accept or reject someone else’s argument. This certainly requires the same understandings and skills of reasoning, but it requires understanding the argument and its constructs as formed by someone else. Is this more difficult than forming valid arguments and engaging in metacognition throughout the process? I wouldn’t claim that, except that there is an additional step, and this additional step is crucial. The thinker must understand, without initial bias, the argument another makes. (We have plenty of adults in our nation’s capital and on our cable “news” networks who regularly demonstrate their lack of this crucial, additional step.) This requires overcoming challenges such as the error of discrediting the messenger rather than evaluating the message—an error that can hijack thinking before a single idea of the argument has been considered. This is a significant challenge that is largely absent from forming one’s own valid arguments.

Additionally, by learning to form truthful and valid arguments, students gain experiential knowledge that can aid valid evaluation. An analogy may help clarify this relationship. Housing inspectors undergo various levels of education and meet certain requirements depending on where their practice is located. Thorough inspectors often have construction experience. Knowing from experience where builders are tempted to take short-cuts helps the inspector know what to examine carefully. From constructing experience, the inspector gains knowledge that strengthens his evaluation capacity. Similarly, forming truthful and valid arguments aids evaluation of arguments made by others.

Reasoning and evaluation depend on skills. The table below details some of these essential abilities. (D. Q. McInerny’s Being Logical provides a great and succinct introduction to many of these concepts.)
These abilities can be viewed as a series of developmental steps that can be emphasized in the classroom. For example, a group of educators in Philadelphia took the ability to form conditional arguments and discussed, “What is the range of this skill? What do its initial steps of development look like? What would its fullest expression look like?” After we grappled with these concepts, we considered when instruction for each step might begin and where it might mature to mastery. Here’s what evolved:Exploring thinking in this way helps a plan for instruction to emerge. Teachers gain guidance for actually teaching thinking and can better plan for its inclusion in learning. Ideally, I believe we’d approach everything through a thinking lens. For example, instead of teaching magnetism as a science unit, we’d teach a thinking skill, such as stating premises and conclusions, using magnetism as the subject matter. Simply altering how we view and approach instruction can make the difference between students seeing us as the expert from whom they must learn and seeing themselves as capable learners who possess the skills they need to learn independently.

My intention in this series has not been to provide an exhaustive look at thinking but to suggest an alternate perspective. By seeing thinking as central to learning rather than a nice addition to classroom interaction, we can begin to explore the implications for our teaching, from what we teach to how we teach it. I have not explored creativity in this series. I plan to do so in my next post, which I’ll present as separate from this series.

Thank you for reading and for your comments. These posts are intended to be discussion starters. I certainly learn much from the interaction they spark. I hope you’ll learn, reason, and evaluate these ideas and share your own conclusions!

Image: 'DSC04717' http://www.flickr.com/photos/81607647@N00/26584970

Let's Banish Critical Thinking, Part 2: Learn

2010-02-15T10:20:00.011-05:00

Kyle examined his bookmarks. If he’d printed out all the information he’d found the paper would pile up to well over an inch high. Even though he’d been discerning in the references he noted, the information available was overwhelming and defeating, an obstacle that prevented Kyle from moving past the data collecting stage of his project. Whether he chose the traditional approach and wrote a paper or the technological option of a multimedia presentation, Kyle couldn’t communicate ideas he didn’t yet “own” himself, and the list of bookmarks represented more than he could ever apprehend.

His teacher expected evidence of his learning, but Kyle lacked the know-how that could enable his success. Kyle was a successful student in traditional classrooms, but he did not know how to learn, especially when he was responsible for the process.

As teachers we tend to focus on our teaching and assume students know how to learn. It’s a natural perspective—we teach, students learn. Focusing on learning can seem misdirected because what we’re going to do in the classroom demands our immediate concern—it’s what we describe in the required lesson plans. However, failing to focus on student learning capacity produces the predicament Kyle faced: expectation without enablement.

I suggested in the previous post that we examine thinking as a target. “Memorize” formed the target’s outermost ring. Learning represents a movement toward the target’s center and beyond mere recall. In fact, we’re moving from a relatively straightforward process (rehearse→remember→recall) to more complicated combinations of processes.

Learning often involves four core processes, or four “states” of thinking. (Thinking is more fluid than the term states suggests, but this simplification can help us understand its flow.) Through experience, the brain gains raw sensory data. During comprehension, the brain sorts, labels, and organizes the raw sensory data. Through elaboration, the brain examines the organized data for patterns, recalls relevant prior experiences, and blends the new data with your experiences to construct understanding. During application the brain practices using or expressing the new understanding. There’s much more that could be said just about these core processes (an entire chapter of The Architecture of Learning explores these in depth), but allow me to move on and introduce a related idea.

The influential book 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times argues for a greater emphasis on “Learning and Innovation Skills.” Such skills, explain authors Trilling and Fadel, “are the keys to unlocking a lifetime of learning and creative work.”1 We should increase instruction in the skills of learning, not just guide student learning of core subject matter. In other words, we need to place more value and emphasis on teaching students how to self-teach (or self-learn). We need to teach them how to engage learning’s core processes; we need to teach them the thinking skills that enable self-directed learning.

As we explore learning’s core processes in detail, a myriad of related skills emerge. Here’s a partial chart I’ve compiled. (Click on the table to enlarge it.) All these skills either contribute to a core process or engage a combination of learning’s core processes.

Going deeper, learning to learn becomes even more interesting (or complex, depending on your perspective), but what we can actually teach comes into focus. For example, a group of educators in Philadelphia took part of the very first skill (identifying, clarifying, and phrasing questions) and discussed, “What is the range of this skill? What do its initial steps of development look like? What would its fullest expression look like?” After we grappled with these concepts, we considered when instruction for each step might begin and where it might mature to mastery. Here’s what evolved: As we saw this potential scope emerge, the group became excited. For the first time, many of them felt they knew what to teach to equip students to think critically. (I know, I used the term I’m advocating we banish!) My response, and what I still believe, is that we identified, at least in part, the skills we could teach that would equip students to learn independently. Learning is not separate from thinking but dependent on it:

What we know results from what and how we think. Researcher and critical thinking expert Diane F. Halpern explains:

Knowledge is not something static that gets transferred from one person to another like pouring water from one glass to another. It is dynamic. Information becomes knowledge when we make our own meaning out of it…[We] create knowledge every time we learn a new concept.

Educator Laura Erlauer agrees, explaining that thinking processes “allow the brain to thoroughly understand the new concepts and internalize them into meaningful memories.” Learning is a product of thinking.2

Where does that leave us? Here are a few possible conclusions:

Learning is more than memorizing. It engages cognitive processes (comprehension, elaboration, application) that extend beyond rehearsal and recall. Learning is powered by thinking, and learning provides new material for thinking. (As one commenter on the last post put it, you have to have something to think about.)
Teaching students how to become learners requires helping them develop these cognitive processes and their associated skills/sub-skills.
The associated skills possess “steps” of development that provide more specific direction for what we can emphasize in the classroom.
Teaching these skills should be our priority. Everything else, such as the specific topics we teach, should be the material students learn through practice in using these skills. In other words, these skills should “drive” the curriculum. That does not mean we do not teach the traditional disciplines, but that the traditional disciplines are a means to the desired end of equipping self-directed learners.

I realize this leaves plenty of unanswered questions, such as:

What are the developmental steps for all the other skills?
What about problem solving? creativity? reasoning?
How can we “cover” the mandated curriculum while teaching students the skills to become self-directed learners?
How does teaching students to become self-directed learners aid achievement as measured on standardized testing?
Are there approaches we can use that would engage students in utilizing these skills while becoming knowledgeable of new subject matter?

I’ll address some of these in future posts, but honestly, I don’t have answers to all of them. It seems current educational mandates and structures hinder good answers to some of these critical questions (and produce the very problems Kyle faced). Changing direction likely requires a rethinking of current emphases and structures.

But then you probably already knew that.

References

Trilling, B. & Fadel, C., 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 49.
Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 186).

Here's a Thought: Let's Banish Critical Thinking

2010-02-04T11:06:00.005-05:00

I’ve been thinking about thinking lately, and I’ve had it with critical thinking. Note the italics. I’ve had it with the term critical thinking, not the actual practice. From a recent immersion in thinking-related research, I’ve concluded that critical thinking is like the weather: everybody talks about it but few do anything about it.

No arena bandies the term about as widely as education. Few conferences fail to include at least one session devoted to the topic, and book vendors at these events hawk the latest tomes dedicated to it. Educators seem to agree on the need for students to learn to think critically, but that seems to be the end of their consensus. Ask three different educators for their definition of critical thinking and you’re likely to get at least four different ideas, and at least half of them will include a nod to Bloom’s Taxonomy. Somewhere in our history, many of us were convinced that if our questioning climbed a ladder and we called on students whose names we wrote on popsicle sticks and pulled randomly from a styrofoam cup, we were teaching students critical thinking.

Because of the confusion all these preconceived notions create, I propose that we stop talking about critical thinking and instead just think about thinking. To that end, I’ve started referencing a different model. Imagine thinking as a target. As any marksman knows, the center of the target is where you aim if you want the best result. However, though the center of this target represents the ultimate goal, the outer circles are not without value. Let’s examine the first of these outer circles: memorize.

Wait, don’t stop reading! I know memorizing lacks the flash and appeal of the target’s other circles, but our brains do indeed memorize information, sometimes without our consent. For example, I know every lyric to the 70’s classic but somewhat mind-numbing “Funkytown.” I never intentionally sat down and used flash cards to learn the lyrics. They just got stuck in my head, which is one way to define memorizing. We memorize when things get stuck in our heads, on purpose or otherwise.

When educators talk about memorizing, it’s usually with a scowl on their faces and the taste of battery acid on their tongues. Memorizing is so beneath us. We don’t have students memorize anything. Everything we teach is meaningful. It’s all the others—teachers who teach other disciplines—who make students memorize unnecessary information. We’re above such an approach. We climb questioning ladders and pull popsicle sticks, for pete’s sake!

But let’s be honest. Despite the fact that most everything factual can now be found quickly via technology, some information still possesses its greatest value when it’s memorized. At its best, memorizing enables efficiency in thinking and acting. For example, knowing how to spell the words critical and thinking saved me plenty of time in developing this post. If I didn’t know instantly how to spell most of the words I use in writing, I’d probably have far less to say. (I know what you’re thinking: that’d be a bad thing?) Can you imagine trying to compose any significant passage of writing if you had to stop and check your wireless device for the correct spelling of every word?

I once had an experience that provides a picture of what this might be like. My wife and I love going to the theater for live performances. One time, just before the curtain was raised on a new drama, the announcer spoke via the public address system: “Today the role of Countess Calista will be played by Jane Smith, script in hand.” Apparently the lead actress and her understudy were unavailable. Sure enough, Ms. Smith waltzed onto stage with “script in hand,” and read her lines throughout the performance. It was disjointed and distracting. So much so that I can’t even remember the name of play, let alone what it was about. Memorizing has its place, even when technology that can provide the next line or correct spelling exists.

However, at its worse, memorization becomes merely testable material that lacks any use beyond the end of an instructional unit. With such material, its measurability is often its sole benefit, and it’s a benefit for the teacher not the student. Unfortunately it seems that many schools would rather aim for this outermost circle, decreasing the likelihood of hitting any part of the thinking target. But if we aim for and even hit this outermost circle, we have problems. Memorizing, while valuable when engaged selectively, has its limits.

First, students who only memorize remain subject to dogma’s sway. Parroting is evidence of memorizing, and a student who has highly developed memorizing capacity without equally developed processing abilities will tend to repeat the ideas of others, often without understanding.

Second and relatedly, students only equipped to memorize tend to accept without question. Such individuals tend to take the words that fall from the mouths of people they like and repeat them whether they are true or not. Since they lack the ability to process the ideas the words represent, accepting and repeating those words become the individual’s way of “thinking.”

Third, individuals who rely solely on memorizing as thinking cannot entertain or even understand conflicting ideas. That which they’ve memorized becomes their sole reference, so anything new must conform with the previously memorized information.

In short, merely memorizing severely limits an individual. So, while hitting the outermost circle represents one element of mental activity, always aiming there produces individuals I don’t think most schools and teachers would claim as their intended outcome. We need to consider the inner circles (and we will in future posts) and actually teach students the cognitive skills associated with them. Popsicle sticks and questioning variety alone won’t get us there.

Let’s think about thinking—teaching it, increasing it, developing students who actually can do it—but let’s leave our confusing dance with critical thinking behind.

Top Image: 'la linea della vita, nichilismo' http://www.flickr.com/photos/32347849@N08/3269623518

A Standing Ovation for "Tweeps"

2010-01-22T09:09:00.002-05:00

You’ve probably seen the commercial. Two exasperated teens telling their parents that all this social media use has got to stop. The parents are invading worlds formerly considered havens of youth-only interaction. Partway through the role reversal, the father sends out a “tweet” that says something like, “I am sitting on the patio right now.”

If that’s your only exposure to tools like Twitter, you can be forgiven for thinking it’s all a ridiculous waste of time. But this morning, I’m thankful that such frivolous tools exist. More importantly, I’m thankful for the individuals who make these frivolous tools incredibly valuable.

I don’t remember why I first got on Twitter. It probably resulted from frequent mentions on National Public Radio or something similar. I learned quickly about tools that would help me follow conversations on topics I had an interest in, and soon was “following” several other educators. These “tweeps” were mostly individuals I’d never met, but we had common interests and this provided a basis for conversation.

Yesterday, I held in my hands a copy of a book I’d written—a first for me, and I was overwhelmed by the experience. No, it’s not like holding your firstborn child, I realize, but I was nearly struck dumb by it anyway. (In fact, the printer interpreted my silence as dissatisfaction with the result. Nothing could be further from the truth!) I opened the book almost immediately to the Acknowledgments. There they were—individuals from my life who invested in me and had made this moment possible. I hope they understand the depth of my gratitude for what they gave and see the book as a product of the grace that flowed through them as they contributed to my life.

But a critical group is missing, and this morning I want them to know how much I value them. My “tweeps,” “Personal Learning Network,” or whatever you want to call the group of individuals with whom I interact on Twitter, deserve a standing ovation. Why?

Because they expanded your world. It’s easy to find people to validate your thinking as long as you remain in your confined world. But on Twitter, I found colleagues who would challenge my thinking, expand my thinking, and force me to consider perspectives and scenarios I had not previously. This fosters my own growth and forces me to find support for my ideas. An opinion is a fine thing, but if you want it considered seriously by others, you need to offer honest and valid support for it. My colleagues on Twitter exhort me to find such support, offer ideas of their own, and refine, strengthen, and sometimes redirect my conclusions.

Because they cheer you on. My wife often talks about the “graciousness” of the Twitter “community.” I’ve certainly had support from individuals I see on a regular basis, but my Twitter colleagues have been there almost daily. Even if they disagree with me on occasion, they support me as I take chances. I know from experience that 140 characters can be just enough to encourage a person to persevere.

Because they share their thinking. I’m astounded at the brilliance of the individuals I follow on Twitter. Their thinking about education is not trite. It’s far deeper than the conversations I typically have in faculty lounges, and I’m exhilarated by the quality of the ideas and their expression. Want to find individuals who can change education for the better? Follow the people I do on Twitter. Every aspect of education gets a full examination and the recommended diagnoses and treatment plans are almost always worth serious consideration.

I could go on. More than half of the pre-publication endorsements of my book are from individuals I “met” on Twitter. I refer to many of the people I follow as friends. In fact, if you heard me talk about them without knowing my connection to them, you’d think they were people I’d met in the “real world.” I get excited for them as they encounter life-changing events. I feel frustration when they struggle. They’ve become more than a community of colleagues connected via technology.

So, I want to acknowledge this amazing group. Thank you for running along side me as I traveled the journey to publication. Thank you for expanding my world, cheering me on, and sharing your potentially world-changing thinking. Let’s continue running together. Who knows, maybe they’ll use us in a future commercial to show the world the real value that can be found in seemingly frivolous tools. It’s not the tool itself that lifts it from the ridiculous to the remarkable. It’s the quality of the individuals who choose to join the community it creates. Please join me in a standing ovation for such individuals.

Image: 'Prelude To A Successful Career In Cultural+Production' http://www.flickr.com/photos/87069406@N00/364568552

A Teacher's Lessons from Writing, Part 2

2010-01-19T12:56:00.004-05:00

My cell phone rang when we were deciding which package of paper towels to buy.

“Kevin, this is John Paine. Do you have a few moments to talk?”

I had both anticipated and dreaded this call, and the paper goods lane of Publix was not my ideal setting for the conversation. My wife, sensing it was the call I’d been waiting for, dug through her purse to find a beat-up memo pad, found a page with about an inch of clean space, and thrust it into my hands along with a pen. I think she waved as she headed for the frozen foods section.

“Um, sure Mr. Paine, this is fine.” I found some clearance between a package of paper towels and the shelf above it. Voila! an impromptu desk.

“I’ve read your manuscript in its entirety and will send you specifics, but I wanted to discuss a few general things with you by phone first.”

“Okay.” (Note the high intelligence of my response. I was a bundle of nerves.)

I found Mr. Paine, no lie, via an internet search, and I never expected him to take on my manuscript. A professional editor, he’d worked on books I recognized by authors I recognized. He’s on the speed dial of several major publishers and is called for emergencies, such as a book still needing editing on the eve of its print run. When he requested the rest of my manuscript after reading the first hundred pages, I thought it might be so he could have a non-example to share with colleagues for a few profession-related laughs.

“I think you’ve don a good job to this point,” he said. “In fact, I wish my teachers had taught this way.” Even though it was my writing he was editing, his comment on teaching caught my ear.

“Really?” I asked. (Again, note the deep intellect represented in my response.)

“Yes, I would have learned much more and it all would have seemed far more interesting and relevant.”

This was a gift. Even if he then said that the writing should never accost a reader’s eyes, I would have floated out of the paper goods aisle.

“There are some things you can do that I think will make your message even clearer,” he continued. “One thing that editors help writers do is see a manuscript from a reader’s perspective. That’s my job, so here are a few general suggestions.”

Like a good paper towel, I absorbed all I could from Mr. Paine’s comments. I won’t bore you with the details, but this conversation launched one of the greatest periods of learning I’ve experienced. I needed to step away from my investment in the project and view it from a different perspective. As I worked with Mr. Paine through the following weeks, I grew in my understanding of seeing from a reader’s perspective. I needed more examples. I needed to use fewer technical terms. I was at my best when I allowed my examples to become short stories that entertained and informed. I was at my worst when my writing failed to touch the ground, when its theory remained theory without practical applications. I needed an editor, a teacher, someone to say, “I know your intent. Here’s a better way to communicate it.”

As a teacher, I know that letting others see our work in the classroom can be intimidating. Many of us have experienced the administrator and clipboard fly-by described by Alan Sitomer, which was most likely followed by a brief discussion in the administrator’s office with the ceremonial placement of the evaluation in our personnel files. But, as I learned, there is value in having someone else redirect our perspective—not with a clipboard and brief observation. Instead, we need “editors,” coaches who come along side us and help us do what we do better, perhaps with more of the learner’s perspective in mind. We need professional relationships like those described by Derek Keenan in his excellent blog post.

Though I’ve written about coaching before, the value of such a relationship became clearer to me through my experience with a professional editor. This, I thought, is what I need in my teaching. Someone who respects my work, who sees its value, and yet sees how I could make it even better, how I could make it more effective. Someone who can guide me to see and think like my learners, not check a box or circle a number on a form. Someone who wants my work to be its best because of its potential influence, not someone who’s crossing a task off of their to-do list.

I need a professional editor for my teaching.

Image: 'Happy Buggy Wednesday' http://www.flickr.com/photos/10687935@N04/3946962619

A Teacher's Lessons from Writing, Part 1

2010-01-15T11:27:00.004-05:00

I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. My first book is about to be published, but the printing/binding process is taking longer than I’d like. (Don’t worry, this isn’t really about the book.) This period between final revisions and publication has given me time to reflect on the journey, and, as usual, my thoughts have been exploring connections to teaching. Surprisingly, many principles seem relevant, such as…

Audience matters. Yes, I know this seems obvious, but it wasn’t at first. I started writing shortly after my last stint in graduate school, and I could out APA style the APA itself. I adhered to the style boundaries with such fealty that I was surprised not to be appointed to the committee determining proper citation forms for tweets and wall postings.

So, I anticipated great responses when I distributed early copies of the initial chapters to colleagues. With as much kindness as one can express such sentiment, they basically suggested that unless I intended to submit the work to the Journal of Sky-High Instructional Theory, I had work to do. Constantly reading “the teacher,” who never became a real person with a name, and frequently being interrupted by date and page number citations made reading my early writing laborious.

When it became clear that I was hunting in the wrong forest, I changed from writing to reading. I became a voracious gatherer of books about writing. I’ll save the extensive influence of this self-education for a later post. For now, I’ll just point out that I was of two minds in my writing. I wanted to write for teachers, my colleagues. Publishers would suggest I wanted to write for a “general audience.” However, my actual writing targeted university professors—the individuals who had been my audience and had held my fate in their hands for the past several years. How could I change direction? Several books offered suggestions that are nicely summarized in this passage from Mark Tredinnick:

Good writing is not mannered and stilted—it’s not inflected with overanxious politeness, nor false with bonhomie, nor false with confidence, nor anything faux or excessive…Good writing is calm and cool, and it remembers its manners. Everyone likes to be treated with a relaxed mix of dignity, grace, and respect by someone who knows what he’s talking about but isn’t trying to show it off. That’s the kind of attitude writers want toward their readers.1

After I somewhat ironically checked a dictionary for bonhomie (cheerful friendliness), I realized I needed to find my voice—a way of writing that sounded like me in real-life, not me as a grad student.

This prompted me to reflect on the writing I required of my students. Did I ever allow them to explore and find their voices? Was I offering them only an audience of one—me, their teacher—that would so stilt their writing that it would be of no interest to a “general audience”? If so, was I truly preparing them to influence their world?

Over the last few years, I’ve gotten to lead a course called “Writer’s Stylus” for teachers. The five days of professional development provide a metamorphic experience. Teachers from all disciplines start the week writing like students—that is, they write with “overanxious politeness” and false “bonhomie.” As the week progresses, they begin to find their voices and write with such dignity and grace that they deserve to be read, many for the first time in their lives. If you write regularly, this may not seem that transformational, but trust me, it literally changes lives. While I get excited about what these teachers will do instructionally, I grow even more excited by their personal growth. Finding your voice can truly change an individual’s outlook, confidence, and, yes, life.

So what am I doing with my students? Sure, you can argue that they need to learn to write for the academic world, and I’ll agree. But if that’s all I emphasize, have I equipped them to write for the larger world? Have I enabled them to make history more than a dry recounting of facts? Have I encouraged them to take readers to a volcanic eruption and care about the people affected by it? Have I empowered them to present the structure of mathematics as a dynamic window on the world? Have I helped them write literature and not just write about it?

Audience matters, but it is the writer who must change, must grow, must discover how to communicate as himself. Authenticity is what draws an audience.

Did I master this aspect? I’d never claim that I did. I have hope, but more than that, I have a renewed focus in my teaching: help learners find their voices and equip them to “speak” with “calm and cool,” with “dignity, grace, and respect,” not to show-off, but to confidently impact their world.

1. Tredinnick, M., Writing Well: The Essential Guide (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008), 184.

Image: 'in Concert' http://www.flickr.com/photos/45409431@N00/2459533929

The Life-Changing Dance

2010-01-14T09:51:00.006-05:00

I'm currently working on a revision of the Architecture of Learning Basic Course. In an apparently analogy-minded moment, I wrote the following Introduction to the Course Book:

Why is effective teaching such a challenge?

On its surface, teaching seems like a simple activity. The teacher teaches, explaining or demonstrating some new concept or skill, and the student learns, absorbing and remembering the new material.

Watch what happens when we apply that same perspective to a different profession. On its surface, performing surgery seems like a simple activity. The surgeon operates, opening a human body and repairing or removing some internal malady, and the patient cooperates, showing up in the operating room and healing nicely when all is said and done.

Reduced to this level anything appears deceptively simple. However, every surgeon knows that operating is far more complex than this description suggests. Likewise, every teacher knows that fostering learning requires more than an explanation or demonstration provides.

Why? Because the human brain is not a computer; input≠output. On its way to becoming a recallable memory, new data passes through an embodied brain—a world of dazzling networks and constant activity. This world provides the setting for learning’s dance. The ballet begins, and dancers enter and exit as concepts blend and patterns emerge. Past experiences come out of storage to mingle with new data entering the stage via the senses. If the dance continues, the new data transforms into meaningful memories that can be called out of storage for future performances. This improvisational movement is learning. The teacher’s task is to provide the music that sparks this neuronal dance.

Now teaching does not seem so simple, does it?

In addition to the complexity of students’ inner worlds, external elements further complicate our work. Technology offers us an immense and ever-growing collection of tools—many of which feature enough bells and whistles to qualify as computerized cacophony if not used effectively. How do we design teaching that uses the best tools at optimal points in learning’s unplanned choreography?

Kevin Kelly, a writer and observer of “cyberculture,” offers a helpful insight: “Complexity that works is built up out of modules that work perfectly, layered one over the other.” This quote works well as an explanation of Architecture of Learning. Strands that possess an inner consistency are layered according to focus. As the focus shifts from one “layer” to another, students engage in the mental activities that compose learning’s dance. The Architecture of Learning Blueprints help the teacher select and sequence “music” that awakens students’ neurons.

You are invited to join learning’s dance. As you move through this course, think deeply about the ideas you encounter. Have the courage to try new approaches. Permit yourself to become a learner—a student—as you enrich your professional capacity to design instruction.

Then return to teaching, recognizing the challenge, but eager to invite your students to the life-changing dance that is learning.

Hoping you've invited your students to the dance today!

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thelunch_box/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Learning? Diving Required!

2010-01-04T16:22:00.005-05:00

If you’ve ever swum in a hotel swimming pool, you’ve likely seen the sign: “No diving! Water depth is too shallow.” The pool is not deep enough to allow safe diving, and the fear, of course, is that the hotel will be sued if swimmers injure themselves by diving head-first into the pool.

It is probably a good policy for hotels, but not for constructing lasting learning. According to memory researchers, depth of processing increases retention. Why? Because deep processing “allows a richer and more elaborate code, which in turn becomes more readily available.”1 This idea is not a new one. In 1890, William James wrote: “The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other will be the one with the best memory.”2

The message: to make learning memorable, engage students in deep thinking about new material. But what constitutes deep thinking in new learning? Research suggests two mental activities, comprehension and elaboration.

Comprehension involves organizing new data. “During comprehension, the brain sorts, labels, and organizes the raw sensory data.”3 As teachers, we often organize material as we prepare to present it to students. However, the research claims that the students must label and sort new material themselves to increase the likelihood of retaining it. Even if students replicate the teacher’s organization of the material, the act of sorting and labeling the data themselves contributes to learning. Learning is somewhat like medicine. If the teacher takes the medicine, it does the student little good. But when the student takes the medicine, when the student thinks deeply about new material, the medicine can work as intended.

So, what does comprehension look like in the classroom? Students manipulating representations of ideas into structured schemes, such as tables, sequences, hierarchies, or even stories. For example, after explaining and modeling the steps involved in eliminating unneeded or ineffective modifiers from writing, a teacher may have the students develop flow charts to illustrate and sequence the steps. Naturally, the teacher presents and models the steps in their correct order, but having the students sequence the steps engages them in one aspect of the deep processing that promotes retention and recall.

This is also true of deep thinking’s second mental activity, elaboration. Elaboration “involves linking the material being rehearsed to other material in memory.”4 The term conceptual blending aptly describes elaboration. “The brain receives and sorts sensory data causing patterns to emerge. The patterns direct the brain to search its long-term memory stores for previous experiences that illustrate similar patterns…Once recalled, the previous experience provides a reference point for further thinking about the newly received data.”5 Understanding develops as a student recognizes relevant connections between the reference point and the new data, and “blends” these ideas.

What does elaboration look like in the classroom? “Increasing the variety of ways the brain processes information (e.g., both verbal and nonverbal) increases connections between new and known information.6 Learners deepen their understanding of new information by representing it in varied forms.” Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences offers a way to vary the ways students interact with material. For example, during an earth science unit, a teacher may challenge students to find or create music that illustrates volcanic eruption or create personified accounts in which a volcano shares its goals, fears, and strengths as it prepares to erupt. “Note what such tasks require of the learner. Significant connections between the new material [e.g., volcanic eruption] and a nonverbal reference point [e.g., music] must be explored.” Such exploration engages learners in deep processing of the new material. “The resulting connections, which stem from the student’s life experience, create a conceptual network that gives him greater flexibility in thinking.”7

Unlike a shallow swimming pool, when it comes to learning, diving deep is good for one’s head!

Notes

Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M.W., & Anderson, M.C., Memory (New York: Psychology Press, 2009) 102.
Ibid. quoted on p. 102.
Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010) 8.
Baddeley, 103.
Washburn, 14.
deWinstanley, P. A., & Bjork, R. A., “Successful Lecturing: Presenting Information in Ways that Engage Effective Processing,” in Halpern, D. F., & Hakel, M. D. (Eds.), Applying the Science of Learning to University and Beyond, vol. 89 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002).
Washburn, 21.

photo credit: englishpianobloke (Flickr.com)

Why Instructional Time Matters

2009-11-30T13:51:00.005-05:00

But time keeps flowing like a river (on and on) 
To the sea, to the sea ’til it's gone forever…

At least that’s what the Alan Parsons Project suggested in their hit song. But poets and songwriters aren’t the only ones seemingly consumed by the passage of time. Educators frequently talk about the concept, discussing “time-on-task,” school start and end times, and the length of the school year. What’s behind this preoccupation with instructional time? Does it matter if the school day is interrupted for pep rallies, award assemblies, announcements from the office, and the like? Isn’t the school calendar that revolves around the needs of an agrarian culture adequate for today’s students? Why does nearly every conversation with teachers end up being a discussion of time and the lack of it in classrooms?

Teachers have sound reasons for being concerned about time. More than 100 years of research suggests a significant correlation between time spent learning and the amount of learning that results. As memory expert Alan Baddeley describes it, “In short, as far as learning is concerned, you get what you pay for.”1 The relationship between this research finding and teaching may seem obvious, but let’s dive deeper into the research and its implications. Researchers originally connected expertise in playing the violin with the amount of time spent in individual practice. They found that experts spent more than 10,000 hours practicing, while lesser experts spent about 7500 hours practicing, accomplished experts spent around 5000 hours practicing, and committed amateurs spent around 1500 hours practicing. While the numbers fluctuate slightly, the general range has remained surprisingly consistent as researchers examined expertise levels in other disciplines.2

What does this have to do with teaching? Probably more than we realize. For example, every school system I’ve encountered has significant literacy goals for students. Most schools would like to produce expert, or at least lesser expert or accomplished, readers. According to the research, developing such readers requires at least 5000 hours of practice—5000+ hours that students focus on applying and developing their reading capacity. With that in mind, let’s examine a possible scenario. If a child spends one hour each day for 175 days of the school year from grades one through eight, she will have invested approximately 1400 hours in developing reading expertise—not even enough for “committed amateur” levels! What if we add kindergarten and high school? The student still comes up woefully short at 2275 hours—not even halfway to accomplished levels.

No, this doesn’t include the time a child may spend reading at home, but it would be a rare child who actually spends the extra 2300+ hours needed to achieve “accomplished expert” levels. And to make the situation more challenging, recent research on the amount of time students actually spend reading in school classrooms ranges from a low of seven minutes to a high of 23 minutes.3 (Note that the research focuses on time spent practicing—recalling and applying skills—not on the amount of time the teacher presents information.)

Admittedly, we are not attempting to produce readers for the stage at Carnegie Hall, but this research on time and learning should not be dismissed. Time spent learning does matter for a student’s achievement. We’ve only explored this connection to developing literacy capacity, but the same would be true if applied to other disciplines. Want to develop expert mathematicians (or at least “committed amateur” mathematicians)? Time matters. Want to develop accomplished scientists (or, again, at least “committed amateur” scientists)? Time matters. The time a child spends recalling and applying learning correlates with the child’s level of expertise. When it comes to learning, time invested in recalling and applying relates to ability and achievement.

In conclusion, here are some questions to consider:

What are our priorities? In what areas of the curriculum are we attempting to develop more than amateur capacity? In what areas of the curriculum are we striving for more than amateur achievement?
How does our time (both given and devoted) reflect those priorities?
What is needed to increase the time students choose to spend in recall and application of new learning?
What are the implications of this research for our own professional development?

Share your thoughts and insights!

References

Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M. W., & Anderson, M. C. Memory (New York: Psychology Press, 2009), p. 70-78.
Ibid.
In-School Independent Reading. http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/literacy/in_read3.html

To Retain New Learning, Do the Math

2009-11-08T12:09:00.003-05:00

Every teacher experiences the frustration. Content and skills taught throughout the year seem to abandon students during springtime standardized testing. “How can they not know this?” thinks the the teacher. “We learned this back in November.”

Recent research reveals some likely causes, and the principles for retaining new learning may not be intuitive to us as teachers. For example, multiple retrievals rather than multiple exposures promote better retention of new learning.1 In other words, the more students are required to recall new content or skills, the better their memory will be. Reviewing the material with students does not have the same effect. The students must be engaged in activity that requires them to recall the material. Even when students recall details incorrectly, if the teacher promptly provides the necessary instructive feedback, engaging students in recall of the material fosters better retention of new learning than a teacher-led review.2

But how often should teachers be engaging students in recall of newly learned material? Two findings provide answers.

First, repeated recall should occur frequently immediately following new learning. For example, a teacher who teaches students to add fractions should engage students in recall and use of that material several times over the school days immediately following instruction. Again, even if students do not recall the skill correctly, requiring recall combined with immediate instructive feedback is more effective than reviewing the skill.3

Second, once the initial period of learning and multiple retrievals is past, students still need to be engaged regularly in recall of the material. In general, students need to recall the material after a delay of 10 to 20% of the time between initial learning and final testing.4 For example, if students learn a new skill with only a month of school (about 20 school days) remaining, they should be engaged in recall of that skill every 2-4 days. This increases the likelihood that the new learning will be part of their knowledge when they begin the following school year. (Ideally, they would be recalling that skill every 7-14 days over a 10-week summer break!)

So, let’s go back to our opening scenario: a teacher teaches material in November that students need to recall for testing in May—a gap of about six months, or about 120 school days. To increase the likelihood that students will recall the material in May, they should be engaged in retrieving it every 12-24 days, once or twice a month, probably closer to every 12 days for the first few months and every 24 days for the last few months. It is critical that every retrieval be accompanied by immediate instructive feedback.

One more principle helps us design activities that engage students in retrieving new learning. The more material students are required to recall, the better. For example, if students are required to retrieve or construct an explanation of how to add fractions and actually apply the skill to add fractions, their retention will be greater than if they are merely required to apply the skill.4

According to this research, many of our classrooms may be structured for minimal memory retention. If we begin every school year reviewing material from the previous years and spend the second half of the school year introducing new material, students are less likely to retain the new learning in future school years because they were not engaged in recalling it throughout the school year. We need to be teaching more new material at the beginning of the school year and reviewing that material as the school year progresses. Perhaps this helps explain another common teacher frustration: the “They should have learned this last year” syndrome that we’ve all experienced.

Retrieval + Instructive Feedback = Retention of New Learning.

Devachi, L. The Limits of Memory: How to Maximize Your Memory Trace. Presented at the 2008 North American Neuroleadership Summit, New York.
Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M. W., & Anderson, M. C. Memory (New York: Psychology Press, 2009), p. 70-78.
Ibid. 74.
Ibid. 82.

Authors, Illustrators, and Teaching: Part 2

2009-10-15T16:08:00.003-04:00

Authors and illustrators get treated like rock stars at the National Book Festival. Readers crowd into tents, some literally with standing room only, to see and hear the people behind favorite narratives and artwork. The payoff is worth the effort. Many authors and illustrators are as interesting in person as they are on paper.

In the last post, I discussed three authors and illustrators who provided insights related to teaching. Here are three more who similarly challenged and inspired me.

Sharon Creech was, in honesty, quite different from what I expected. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t an author who would embody one of her characters so perfectly that you felt like you were in theater with an accomplished actress rather than under a tent with a writer. Her editor shared the stage and played a role as Mrs. Creech read and enacted a section from her latest book, The Unfinished Angel. With drama and humor, the two wordsmiths captivated the crowd, even those beyond the tent’s borders. (By the way, for the record, unfinished angels speak in English with an Italian accent and make up words when necessary!)

Drama and humor. Tension and laughter. What a great combination for teaching. When I prepare to teach, do I look for the drama and humor in new material? Do I use these tools to not only keep attention but make material more memorable? Do I go the extra mile to bring such creativity to my teaching? I love this quote from Saul Bellow: “No school without spectacular eccentrics and crazy hearts is worth attending.” Do I allow myself to be the “spectacular eccentric” or “crazy heart” when doing so would promote learning?

Up next, another Newbery-winning author, Kate DiCamillo. I must highlight the perseverance DiCamillo personified. When rain knocked out power to the sound system, she continued to take questions and shout answers to the audience. This sounds less of an accomplishment than it actually was. The tent was jam packed and people wandered through steady rain falling outside.

But it was DiCamillo’s anecdote about the origins of The Tale of Despereaux that captivated my thoughts. A young boy suggested a story about a hero with large ears. At first, DiCamillo didn’t give the suggestion much thought. It certainly wasn’t much to go on when trying to write a whole book! But the idea stayed with her, and about five years later, The Tale of Despereaux was published.

Simply listening to students can sometimes provide substantial professional development! In trying to teach a group new concepts recently, one individual kept asking for examples. Every time I’d thoroughly explain something, at least in my own thinking, I’d get asked for an example—sometimes more than one. Listen to the suggestion, I told myself. Keep it in mind. Use it to improve your teaching. As I responded with examples, I could see the a-ha! moments multiply. The request, when fulfilled, made me a better teacher.

Sometimes a suggestion, even one focused on a hero with large ears, is all the you need to communicate in fresh and effective ways.

Finally, my favorite presentation came from Jerry Pinkney. Mr. Pinkney is a five-time Caldecott Honor medalist, and his latest book, a retelling of the Lion and the Mouse fable through illustrations, should catch the committee’s attention this year.

Mr. Pinkney shared his childhood with the audience. Growing up in the Philadelphia area, his parents, neither of whom possessed artistic talents, encouraged all their children to draw. It was something to do—something to keep the children occupied. While young Jerry manned a newspaper stand, an artist caught a glimpse of his sketches. Impressed, the artist invited Jerry to his studio. Before that visit, Pinkney was unaware that art was something you could do for a living, and oh!, the world of colors and artist’s tools that he encountered for the first time.

One caring adult—that’s it, just one caring adult opened up the world that would become Jerry Pinkney’s focus and passion. There’s a thought for teachers, but that’s not the one that I carried away with me.

Almost in passing, this successful, revered, and award-winning illustrator mentioned that he still takes drawing lessons. “You can always improve some aspect of what you do,” he explained, “and it’s important that you do so.”

While I can’t sign up for weekly teaching lessons, I can seek out professional development opportunities that will stretch some aspect of my teaching. Such continual growth is what Jerry Pinkney claims has empowered his success for several decades. My relevance and influence as a teacher may, likewise, depend on my willingness to continue growing professionally.

Drama, humor, wisdom, and growth. Sounds like a good recipe for teaching. In fact, it’s not a bad recipe for life.

An Educator Races (but not to the top)

2009-10-05T17:43:00.006-04:00

The single shot from the starter pistol stirred me out of my pre-race stupor. Here we go, I thought. This is what those early morning runs prepared you for—hopefully. As I started moving toward the starting line of the Montgomery Half-Marathon (it took 27 seconds to get to the starting line!), Paul’s admonishment to run the race set before you infiltrated my thoughts. The race set before you. Reflecting on that concept brought to mind the advice friends had offered. Start out slower than you want to ultimately run. Use your head, especially for the first five miles. Be aware of other runners and avoid impeding their running. Take advantage of every water station. I shook them from consciousness and tried to focus on running my race.

That sounds easy, but doing it becomes much more difficult when you are surrounded by hundreds of other runners. How do you run your race when you are one drop in a moving wave? To be honest, I never figured it out, and for the first three miles I allowed myself to just be part of the wave. At the third mile marker, the wave became more like separated ripples, and I noticed that I was ahead of my target pace. Good news, right? Maybe. My concern then became having the stamina to finish the distance of 13.1 miles.

I kept trying to slow myself down. I even found a runner with a watch who was trying to run my target pace. I stayed behind him for a couple minutes, but couldn’t stand it and ended up passing him. At this point it became clear to me that running my race would depend mostly on listening to my body and heeding its suggestions.

I must pause to tell you about the funniest part of this experience. I’m an avid reader of Runner’s World magazine, and 99% of the advice I recalled from its pages proved true during the race. However, the RW writers made drinking from a tiny paper cup while continuing to run sound as easy as walking and chewing gum. As I entered the first water station I knew not to stop. That creates a major hazard for other runners (imagine a car stopping suddenly in front of you while driving). I knew to hone in on one volunteer, make eye contact, and grab and go. Shouting thanks was optional, but I managed it nonetheless. Now, just get the liquid into your mouth. Easy, right?

I pinched the cup, as I remember Runner’s World explaining, and tried “funneling” the water into my mouth. If the water in the cup had remained calm, all would have been fine. But my running served as a submerged earthquake, creating a tidal wave in my tiny paper cup. As I attempted to pour the water into my mouth, the tsunami continued its upward trajectory, soaking my entire face and adding to the muck on the inside of my glasses. Determined to do it right, I got brave at the second water station and grabbed a cup of sports drink. The same thing happened. My head was now drenched and dripping watery Gatorade. I stuck out my tongue to catch a few drops, laughed at myself, and kept running. It took me five water stations to get the motion right! Apparently, though my running pace was ahead of schedule, my learning pace was behind.

Somewhere around the five mile mark, I overheard the following conversation:

Runner A: Hey, Bob, I didn’t know you were a runner!
Runner B: I’m not! I just started in March. This is my first race. When I started I could only run 90 seconds before resting. Now look at what I’m doing! It’s crazy!
Runner A: No, not crazy. Awesome!

Like me, Bob was running his race. In six months, he’d gone from being a non-runner to running a half-marathon. What an inspiration!

I must pause to make an observation about people. Specifically, non-runners. Every once in a while, someone would be sitting out on their lawn and occasionally yelling to the runners. (Some might have yelled at us, but I often was too distracted to hear clearly!) I think at least six different people told me, “This is the last hill! It’s all downhill from here!” They were liars, every single one. Others would yell, “Keep going! You’re almost there!” Thanks, but at the four-mile mark of a 13.1 mile race, you’re not even close to being almost there.

However, many people really did provide a lift of spirits. On the campus of Alabama State University, the percussion section of the school’s marching band rhythm-ed us across the campus. In the Colonial Heights neighborhood, a group of neighbors stood at the corner shouting greetings and welcoming us to their home turf. At another point, a family had their car doors open and its radio blasting; the beat of Motown carried us on its waves. A gentleman on a bike showed up at several mile markers to cheer the runners forward. Each of these made me glad to be there. (I had quite the opposite reaction to whomever in “historic Cloverdale” thought it would be funny to cook bacon with all the windows open, but I’ll let that go!) Another activity that upped the friendly factor was the many runners who thanked the police officers and volunteers who made the event safe and smooth from beginning to end. I hope all of them knew the sincerity behind those yelps of gratitude.

Somewhere after the 10th mile marker, I lost track of how far I had gone. Was the next mile marker 11 or 12? I convinced myself it would be 12. Obviously, it wasn’t. I surprised myself by not being defeated or even set back too badly from this miscalculation. Somehow I was able to push ahead, glad to finally know for sure what the next mile marker would be.

And oh, the joy of hitting mile marker 12 and then 13 and noting that I was still ahead of my target pace. It was possible that in addition to finishing I might actually finish in under two hours! (Cue the Chariots of Fire theme!). “Hear those bells?” called a spectator. “They’re waiting for you at the end!” Again, technically the bells were not at the end, but they did pull me forward. In fact, as I rounded the last corner I found a burst of energy and actually sped toward the finish. Recalling Runner’s World’s recommendations again, I tried to ignore the clock and run through the finish so the photos of me would be magazine cover material. Let’s just say that between the Gatorade baths and the fact that I looked like I had just run 13 miles, I won’t be appearing at your newsstand anytime soon. Nonetheless, my wife did capture the moment, providing evidence of the accomplishment.

A few moments of chaos—a man with what looked like a pin-pong paddle stepped forward to scan my timing chip, a volunteer threw a finisher’s medal around my neck, and a couple volunteers offered water and bananas to the weary—and it was over. It was over way too soon. I was just beginning to have fun! There is little that generates more motivation than success.

By now you may be wondering what this has to do with education. After all, that is the focus of this blog. To make some connections, let me share some questions that I’ve asked myself:

Do I recognize that my students must each run his/her own race to learning—that learning is always an individual act? How am I creating the conditions that allow each learner to find their way to new understandings and abilities?
How do I lift the spirits of learners who find the going difficult? Do I toss easy lines at them? or do I encourage them with honesty while running along side them to help them progress?
Do I allow and help my students to laugh at themselves? Failure combined with self-anger is a sure road to defeat. Do I model resilience? Do I help my students develop resilience?
Do I recognize that what I think will be easy may be a challenge for students? Do I plan sufficient practice and feedback to support students as they move toward mastery?
Do I celebrate students’ success? Do I create conditions that give students a feeling of accomplishment? or am I so preoccupied with the next thing that celebrations get left out? How motivating do I allow accomplishment—true accomplishment—to be?

These aren’t new ideas or the roadmap for major educational reform, but their potential power and influence are more significant to me than ever before. I may not have raced to the top (I finished 203rd), but running my own race proved to be an effective dose of professional development.

Authors, Illustrators, and Teaching: Part 1

2009-10-01T14:44:00.003-04:00

Authors and illustrators recently challenged my thinking about teaching.

The National Book Festival is an annual event held on the Mall in Washington, D.C. This year my wife and I attended for the first time. As I listened to various children’s authors and illustrators, I was struck by how much relevance the ideas they communicated had for educators.

First up was Charles Santore. Mr. Santore has illustrated several well-known children’s books, including The Camel’s Lament and versions of classics, such as the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” and the fantasy The Wizard of Oz. He also illustrated this year’s National Book Festival poster.

Because he moved from advertising illustration to children’s literature, many of Mr. Santore’s comments contrasted the two. For example, in illustration, Santore explained, you have to synthesize all the ideas into one, attention-grabbing illustration. However, in illustrating children’s literature, the artist can attend to pacing, even drawing “quiet” pictures that allow the reader to pause and ponder.

This pacing, giving the reader time to imagine and think, mirrors a pace the brain needs for optimal learning. Often called “down-time,” the brain needs to process new content in manageable chunks.1 A teacher who lectures for 45 minutes straight promotes less learning than a teacher who presents information for 10 minutes, engages students in processing new material, and then resumes presenting information for another brief period. To learn, the brain needs to pause and ponder—it needs the story of learning to include “quiet” illustrations.

Up next was one of my favorites: Nikki Grimes. Miss Grimes has authored several of my favorite children’s books, including The Road to Paris. With gifts in both poetry and prose, Miss Grimes captivated the audience with a colorful, poetic journey through several of her works. I cannot explain this sufficiently to help you appreciate it. She used poetry to introduce a color and its affective associations, then illustrated the concepts with passages from her writings. She created a hush in the tent and no one wanted her to stop.

What does this have to do with teaching? It made me think about how little thought I often give to my actual presentation of information. Sure, I think long and seriously about the activities I use to introduce or engage students in processing new information, but Nikki Grimes put that kind of thought into how she actually presented the information.

Hmm, how could I simulate this? Could I combine communication forms to better articulate critical concepts for students? Would a poetic journey through the Pythagorean theorem promote better understanding? One thing is certain: by challenging myself to consider the approach, I’d think more deeply about how I would actually explain the concept, and that would likely improve the words and phrases I used to teach it.

Finally, for this first of two posts, we heard and observed illustrator Kadir Nelson. Without exaggeration, Mr. Nelson is an artistic genius as evidenced in all his books, including the recent Testing the Ice.

A quiet individual, Mr. Nelson let his pens do most of the “talking.” He called two children up to the stage and recreated one of his illustrations with the children filling the roles of the original characters. Two young girls became Jackie Robinson and Yogi Berra, and their faces lit up with excitement and recognition. He actively involved the children, taking their minds to the scene he wanted them to imagine. Wow! In one illustration, he captured an entire narrative—a narrative to which two young girls could emotionally connect.

Narrative is a powerful teaching tool. Stories frame experience. Mark Turner suggests stories are actually fundamental, organizing structures: “Parable is the root of the human mind—of thinking, knowing, acting, creating, and plausibly even of speaking.”2 Neurologist and author Alice W. Flaherty agrees, suggesting metaphors, such as stories, contribute to memory formation and understanding:

…metaphors are cognitively useful because they rephrase an abstract concept in more physical terms. This engages the cortex with its visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory maps, and the limbic system with its emotional charge…[Metaphors] create a sense of understanding by an analogous mechanism. By giving abstract concepts tastes, colors, smells, and emotional resonance, metaphors fix them in our minds and make us feel like we understand them.3

The human mind frequently thinks in terms of stories, communicates in stories, and converts new learning into stories. By framing experience, stories provide a structure for exploring and making sense of experience. Can I structure any of my teaching as narrative? Again, just challenging myself to try will likely improve my teaching.

Pondering pauses, poetic presentations, and narrative frames can inspire and inform my teaching. What I learn from authors and illustrators can become personal professional development if I’m willing to accept the challenges their ideas present.

In Part 2, insights from authors Sharon Creech, Kate DiCamillo, and illustrator Jerry Pinkney.

Sousa, D., How the Brain Learns, 2nd ed., (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc., 2001).
Turner, M., The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), i.
Flaherty, A. W., The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 230.

Making the Shift, Part 4: From "Target Future" to Teaching

2009-09-22T10:29:00.004-04:00

In this series of posts, I’ve tried to raise awareness of executive function processes, examine their role in successful learning and thinking, and begin exploring how they can receive greater emphasis in education. In this final post, I want to investigate these ideas within the framework of a commonly taught topic. I’m choosing my verbs carefully, and I’m using investigate because I hope the results spark input from others. I’m still incubating all this material, very much in the learning stage of understanding and the novice stage of application. The thoughts that follow merely represent one way of engaging student learning that also engages and develops executive function processes.

Working with the story from the previous post, one “target future”1 pictures a current student capable of recognizing what needs to be accomplished and what is needed to accomplish it, of formulating a plan and prioritizing and executing its steps, of evaluating the results and of shifting focus as needed, and of presenting the information and conclusions with confidence.

With that target future in mind, a teacher may turn to the required content for the American History class she teaches and note colonial America’s movement toward revolution as a topic. She has a focus.

The teacher reviews the focus with a critical question in mind: What form will engage students in interacting with and acting on this content? Keeping in mind the “target future,” the teacher decides to require students to demonstrate their learning as collections of evidence for a pending trial. Who’s on trial? The Sons of Liberty—visionary revolutionaries or radical extremists? Students will build cases for both conclusions, collecting facts, first-person accounts, expert insights, and anything else that may support either extreme. Thus, the form takes shape; students will develop convincing but opposing arguments.

While this challenge directs attention to several critical concepts, it may not address all the required content. Since this is a high school class, she decides to list the few other elements that must be addressed and take suggestions from the class about how to integrate them into the given form.

The teacher also decides to work with the students to develop a rubric for the form. She has some ideas, but to engage student thinking and motivation, she decides to involve them in defining what a complete project will look like, what elements will be assessed, and what will define achievement for each element.

With a focus and form established, the teacher consider the frame. What timeframe will enable the students to produce excellent results and be appropriate for the content’s importance in the year’s study? She teacher selects ten class sessions as the frame.

Focus: The Sons of Liberty within colonial/pre-Revolution America Form: Presentation of arguments for Sons of Liberty to be considered visionary revolutionaries and, in opposition, as radical extremists. Frame: 10 class sessions.

A rough outline begins to form:

Session 1: Presentation of focus and discussion of form. Discussion of what completing the arguments will require. Initial discussion of steps for planning. Homework, complete list of steps needed to complete the challenge.

Session 2: Discussion of planning steps. Discussion and formation of rubric. Homework: Students complete plans, assigning timeframes to each step. Teacher puts rubric into a distributable form.

Session 3: Review of plans. Mini-presentation by librarian and ed-tech specialist on potential resources. Initial research begins.

Session 4-7: Review of findings, continued monitoring of plans and execution of identified steps, mini-presentations by teacher on key concepts or research tools. Throughout, the teacher monitors student progress and provides instructive feedback, referencing the rubric to help students improve their work and attain the highest possible level of achievement.

Session 8: Discussion of findings and potential tools for presentation. Final steps of plan executed.

Session 9: Rubric review and presentation refinement.

Session 10: Presentations.

The presentations may be electronic “portfolios,” in-person presentations, “hard copy” portfolios, dramatic role-plays (the prosecution vs. the defense?) or whatever form the teacher and students agree as being effective. Also, the teacher and students may determine together whether the form will be completed as individuals, groups, or some combination. The more the teacher can engage the students in active planning and executing of the work required for learning, the more experience the students gain in successfully applying executive function processes. And the more successfully they learn to apply executive function processes, the closer the teacher moves them toward the “target future.”

Answering Some Objections

I know, it sounds idealistic and our classrooms are firmly grounded in the realistic. Can a teacher “give up” that much control and maintain an instructional environment? I’d say that depends on your definition of instructional environment. If you think students taking notes from one designated expert constitutes learning, then no, you can’t even consider such an approach. But if you recognize that authentic understanding is constructed by the brain, and that executive function processes play critical roles in working memory’s constructing of understanding, then you may see this ideal as representing a potentially real instructional, or better yet, an effective learning environment. Students are still accountable for their work and learning, but they get a say in how that work and learning will develop. They become participants in the learning, not merely recipients.

Some may think this sounds great for upper high school classrooms but not for lower levels of education. I agree that not everything can be taught in this way, but I disagree with the age-limit argument, and so do researchers. A 2004 study of students as young as third grade found that children could grasp the concept of experimental design, design experiments, differentiate cause and effect, and even make models and symbols.2 With the proper scaffolding and active formative assessment and instructive feedback, even young students can learn to engage executive function processes while learning.

Wait, you may be thinking, what about my master’s degree in history, or science, or literature, or…? You still will have opportunities to share your knowledge, but the delivery will be different. You may present mini-sessions on some key elements, share your knowledge with individuals or small groups, and use it to guide students to discover some of the same concepts. Your content expertise will need to be accompanied with expertise in guiding student LEARNING. Think “coach,” not “talking head.” A coach still has expertise, but the players master the skills, and actually play the game. The coach is not diminished by the players but serves as the guide who empowers their success. Likewise, the teacher empowers students to learn.

In conclusion, I recognize that not everything can be taught this way. But I challenge readers to consider how much of this approach could be effectively used within what they teach. If you teaching something that is heavily skill-focused, could an occasional focus, form, and frame that engages students in applying several of those skills help them connect what you are teaching with the executive function processes they’ll use to determine when and where to use the learned skills? Could similar approaches with far narrower foci and greater teacher scaffolding be effective in early childhood education? All I’m asking is this: consider the possibilities before dismissing the idea.

You may discover that a “target future,” a focus, a form, and a frame are all you need to supercharge student learning.

1. Hurson, T., Think Better, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008), 127-141.
2. McGinnis, J. R., & Roberts-Harris, D., "A New Vision for Teaching Science," Scientific American Mind, 20 (5), 62-67.

Making the Shift, Part 3: A Focus, a Form, and a Frame

2009-09-07T15:38:00.003-04:00

Let’s begin with a story.

Once upon a time, twenty years in the future, Jaime works in the office of an influential nonprofit. The organization is regularly consulted by local and state officials on matters related to the nonprofit’s focus. One day the organization’s leader explains that the governor just called to request an analysis of legislation being considered by the state legislature. Not aware of the issues and implications, the leader promises the governor a return call in three days and gives Jaime the task of identifying and presenting the organization’s analysis of the legislation's pros and cons.

Confidently, Jaime tackles the task, first recognizing what needs to be accomplished and what is needed to accomplish it. Jaime formulates a plan, prioritizes and executes its steps, evaluates the results and shifts focus as needed, and progresses toward a presentation. Three days later, Jaime informs the governor and impresses the nonprofit’s leader with a confident and thorough command of the legislation, its issues, and the implications of both passage and rejection of it. In fact, Jaime is well-informed enough to even offer suggested improvements to the legislation that would overcome the negatives associated with its passage.

What will the issue be? We have no way of knowing. What organization or business will Jaime work for (or start)? We can’t know yet. Will Jaime be able to accomplish the task? That depends, in part, on you. Why? Because Jaime is currently a student in your class.

Even with these unknowns, the story provides a “target future,” an “imagined future” so “powerful and compelling” that it generates motivation to achieve it.1 But what, exactly, should we be developing in students to make this “target future” a reality, or at least a possibility? Jaime’s success was not powered by typical school subjects but by executive function processes.

Executive function processes that researchers describe as “core” include:

planning and goal setting
organizing
prioritizing
self-monitoring/assessing
shifting flexibly2

All of these are evident in Jaime’s success, but few, if any, appear in school curriculum guides. How can the target future represented in our story become reality if we overlook the very capacities students need for success? And how can we develop those capacities if we need to teach what is in the curriculum guides? The answer: instructional design. How we teach may be more important than what we teach, or, stated better, how we engage students in learning may be more important than the material they learn in the process. For possible guidance, let’s examine Jaime’s journey from not knowing to confident command of material.

Jaime was given three essential pieces of information: a focus (the pending legislation), a form for communicating knowledge (the presentation), and a frame of time between assignment and presentation.

A focus: Jaime was given something to learn. This is what we typically find in curriculum guides—the what, the facts, the specifics. However, it’s worth noting that Jaime was not given a textbook and a schedule of lectures to attend. These frequent and unfortunate shortcuts between not knowing and recalling long enough to pass a multiple choice test too often compose our instructional methodology.

A form: Jaime had to act to move from not knowing to confident command of the material. As I mentioned in Part 2, simply knowing, that is merely recalling material, does not require the level of executive function activation that doing does. Again, note what Jaime had to do: plan in accordance with the goal; identify, organize, and prioritize action steps; self-assess the success of each completed action; shift flexibly to improve incomplete or ineffective actions and move forward to next actions; and organize an effective presentation, the evidence of a confident command of the material. All this activity engaged executive function processes. It’s worth noting that Jaime was given no resources except whatever was available to the organization. Jaime could use technology, printed material, interviews with experts—anything that would provide the necessary information. If a textbook existed, it could have been used as one among many resources. If a teacher with expertise were available, she could have been one among many human resources. Any portal to information was open for Jaime’s use, but Jaime had to select and exploit those resources in accordance with the focus, form, and frame that had been given. Likewise, in developing the presentation, Jaime could use any resources that were available and make decisions based on what would communicate what had been learned most effectively.

A frame: As is often the case in the real world, things have to be done on a schedule. Jaime’s task had to be completed by a set time or the organization risked losing influence and damaging its reputation for reliability.

Could we design learning similarly? Could we provide students with a focus, a form, and a frame and provide whatever coaching they needed to engage their executive function processes sufficiently to accomplish the learning? What would such instructional design involve? What would it look like? How would it be assessed?

In the final post of this series, we’ll apply these ideas to an actual discipline and topic and deal with these remaining questions.

As always, comments and insights are welcome!

1. Hurson, T., Think Better, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008), 127-141.
2. Meltzer, L. & Krishnan, K. “Executive Functions Difficulties and Learning Disabilities,” in Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), 81.

Making the Shift, Part 2: Toolboxes not Suitcases

2009-08-17T14:15:00.003-04:00

Ever go through a turnstile and realize something you needed was left on the other side of the gateway? During my first encounter with a public transit system, I tried to take a rolling suitcase through a subway turnstile. Of course I ended up on one side of the gateway with my luggage on the other. Fortunately a friendly New Yorker (They do exist!) saw my dilemma and hoisted my suitcase over the turnstile.

Such gateways are one-way by design; they promote lawful movement in single directions. However, a similar design for teaching, learning, and thinking limits student learning and its usefulness. Much of what we should emphasize ends up like my suitcase—on the wrong side of the turnstile.

For example, we may teach a biology unit on cell construction and emphasize new terminology and locations of various cell parts. Then, after students seem to have absorbed the information and can recite it back, we may engage them in “critical thinking” by asking questions that represent various “levels” of a taxonomy. Like my suitcase, thinking gets pulled along behind and occasionally doesn’t make it through the gate. It gets left behind because of pressures to cover the curriculum or because the assessment will only involve the memorization elements of the unit. If time allows, if the gateway stays open, we might pull in some thinking.

But what if thinking were not a wheeled suitcase but a toolbox, something we carry in-hand and set in a central place to enable our work, our learning? What if instead of thinking of ourselves as teaching content, we viewed ourselves as teaching thinking?

That doesn’t mean students would not learn any content. In fact, content would be exactly what they’d gain by making thinking the force that “pulls in” new understandings. After all, students need to learn how to learn to function successfully once a teacher is no longer telling them what to know.

Activating executive function (EF) offers a potential gateway for developing both understanding of new content and strategic abilities for future learning and success. Executive function comprises “complex cognitive processes that serve ongoing, goal-directed behaviors,”1 including goal setting and planning, self-regulation and metacognition, and working memory processes, such as organizing and patterning data. Executive function serves both as “infrastructure” and “overseer” of other cognitive functions.2 By itself, EF lacks purpose, but when infused with ideas and concepts, it illustrates the brain working at its best. Perhaps most importantly for us as teachers, EF enables intention, the transfer of new learning to novel situations. Teaching only to know—that is, to repeat on demand—does not engage the cognitive processes that promote intention. Martha Bridge Denkla describes such knowing as being able to recall a strategy without the capacity to be strategic.3 Simply knowing does not require the level of EF activation that doing does.

Philip David Zelazo suggests that the EF processes of solving problems and attaining goals reveal EF “subfunctions.” These subfunctions can be easily understood by viewing their roles through the questions they attempt to answer:

representation: “What do I need to accomplish? What is preventing me from accomplishing it?”
planning: How can I get from the current state to the desired state?
execution: What’s next? Check. What’s next?
evaluation: Did that action accomplish its intended result? What do I need to change to make progress toward the desired state?4

Teaching students to successfully engage these subfunctions equips them to learn independently. Engaging these subfunctions as a means of learning new content equips students to use their learning beyond the classroom. This brief look at executive functions reveals some principles that provide guidance for making thinking more of a toolbox and less of a rolling suitcase. An emphasis on teaching for action, or on teaching for knowing how, is more likely to produce transferable learning. Since doing requires greater executive function engagement than simply knowing, teaching that engages students in doing better equips students to transfer their learning to new situations.

Knowing that should become more of a by-product of applying know-how. Rather than just asking, “What do students need to know?” we need to ask “What can students do/produce to foster learning of what they need to know?” (This has additional implications for what and how we teach. I’ll explore these in a future post.)

Increasing an emphasis on executive function is better education for life. It’s impossible to know what knowledge and skills will be essential in the future, but it is certain that EF will continue to enable successful living.

Before concluding, allow me to attempt to prevent some potential misunderstandings. First, I am not advocating abandonment of the disciplines. As the Purview Project states, the disciplines “have contributed to man’s construction of knowledge for ages.” I believe the disciplines will continue to form much of the content schools teach. What I am suggesting is that how we teach the disciplines needs to change. Others have recently suggested similar ideas—e.g., Jose Bowen’s “Teach Naked” approach, which advocates increased thinking in the classroom. But an implication of changing the “how” is changing the “what.” If we’re going to engage students in more thinking, we need to equip and strengthen them to think optimally. I’ll explore this more in future posts.

Second, the ideas expressed here are easier to envision in content-heavy disciplines, such as social studies than in skill-heavy disciplines such as reading and math. I’ll explore these differences in future posts and suggest ways these principles can be applied in both types of material.

In conclusion, I have a confession. I’m writing this post as much to process these ideas as I am to communicate them. I’m in the learning process, which means I have more questions than answers, vague ideas than concrete specifics, and swirling concepts than guiding frameworks. Over the weekend I was asked what was “going on” in my head. In reply, I listed at least seven different major elements. This post is a very initial attempt to sort through some of them. I hope to explore and clarify these ideas in future posts. Stay tuned!

Meltzer, L. “Executive Function: Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks,” in Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), 1-2.
Denckla, M. B. “Executive Functions: Binding Together the Definitions of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Learning Disabilities,” in Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), 7.
Ibid, 11.
Zelazo, P. D., “Executive Function Part One: What is executive function?” http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/News/Executive-Function-Part-One-What-is-executive-function.aspx?articleID=8024&categoryID=news-type

Making the Shift, Part 1: No More Objectives

2009-08-06T13:51:00.001-04:00

The following statement preoccupied my thoughts for several hours: “As a result, a large gap separates the skills and strategies taught in school from the executive function processes needed for success there and in the workplace.” The basis for this conclusion, the cause, is education’s focus “on the content, or the what, rather than the process, or the how, of learning.” Our teaching frequently fails to emphasize executive functions—the cognitive processes that enable goal setting, problem solving, organizing, attention shifting, and metacognition.1

In introducing the Purview Project, I wrote about the shift to a more thinking-centric emphasis in education, and in a recent post focused on thinking within the disciplines, I described how researchers illustrated the difference between knowing what and knowing how by contrasting AP social studies’ students and practicing historians results on differing types of assessment. Despite the recent discussion of national standards in the US, I believe this shift is underway, necessary, and inevitable.

A shift in what we emphasize requires shifts in our own thinking about teaching and learning. If we teach more process and less content, textbooks will either change or become obsolete. If we emphasize how rather than what, assessment will need to engage students in demonstrating how to do rather than what to memorize. If we want to develop students’ executive functions, we need to reexamine every aspect of our practice. We need to close the “large gap,” beginning with one of our most ingrained ideas: objectives.

What we know and believe about objectives depends somewhat on how long we’ve been educators. I was trained to develop “behavioral” objectives that specified what students would specifically do and to what percentage of accuracy they would do it. Wording was a major concern and everything had to be measurable. (You can still see this philosophy being emphasized in current discussions.) Researchers then divided behavioral objectives into three types: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. We were told to display the objectives for students to see. Then, for a time, behaviorism and its objectives became “yesterday’s news” and "outcomes" became the focus. These were followed by objectives addressing student “emotional quotient” or “EQ.” Next came different objectives for each of the learning styles and/or multiple intelligences, and objectives based on various taxonomies of thinking. In many schools, more emphasis was placed on form and wording than imagination.

That’s right, imagination. Einstein famously said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”2 School-based learning happens as a teacher’s envisioned future becomes a student’s reality. If we are shifting to a greater focus on developing students’ executive functions, our notions of objectives need to be replaced with something more imaginative, something more forward looking than what we can measure tomorrow.

But what? What can provide a guiding vision that will focus our teaching?

In his book Think Better, Tim Hurson introduces the concept of “Target Future,” an “imagined future” so “powerful and compelling” that it generates motivation to achieve it. It generates “Future Pull.”3

That sounds great, but how do you develop one? Hurson suggests an act of imagination; he suggests telling yourself a story. Before you succumb to the temptation to write this off as too involved or requiring too much time, allow me ask a simple question: When you envision your students using the thinking processes you’ve taught them, when they’re applying such thinking on their own, what do you see? Stretch that vision, seeing your students utilizing the thinking they’ve learned in multiple scenarios outside of the classroom. Hurson suggests making this vision, this story as “vivid and sensory” as possible. How would your students feel? How would their use of the thinking influence their work and their interactions with others? Imagine all this as reality. That’s a “Target Future.” That’s what you’re teaching for—what you work to make real.

What’s the difference? Objectives tie us to schools, to classrooms, to limited contexts for our students to put their learning to use. “Each student will be able to answer two-digit addition problems with 85% accuracy.” See how that pulls you into the classroom. We feel like we are teaching for a classroom-based assessment that features an easily determined rate of accuracy. The problem is that we are not educating students to live successful lives in a classroom. We’re trying to close the “large gap” between school and successful living in the real world.

Wording a “Target Future” so that it satisfies those who insist on objectives may be a challenge. (Something for which you can offer suggestions in the comments!) However, we won’t educate for the real world until we envision our students operating within it, using the executive functions we’ve helped them develop.

In future posts, I hope to explore additional shifts we as teachers can make that will aid the inevitable shift to more thinking-centric education. For now, consider opening your next lesson with, “Students, let me tell you a story, a story in which you are the main characters…” Then use all your teaching ability to make that story their reality.

Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), xi-xiii.
Einstein, A. Albert Einstein Quotes, http://thinkexist.com/quotation/imagination_is_more_important_than_knowledge-for/260230.html
Hurson, T., Think Better, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008), 127-141.

Thinking in the Seams: Engaging Interdisciplinary Thinking

2009-07-29T11:49:00.004-04:00

It was ingenious. So much so that some listeners wished to be high school history teachers so they could “borrow” the analogy. Even though my first listen was is in a semi-awake state, I understood enough to be informed, entertained, and left wanting to hear it all again. What caught my ear and interest was an NPR interview with Marc Lynch, author of an article that explained world politics through the analogy of a rappers’ feud. The clarity the analogy brought to the more complex issue of foreign policy and “rogue” nations amazed me. It truly was ingenious.

Such analogies are products of what I call “thinking in the seams,” thinking that merges ideas from different disciplines to generate something novel and beneficial. Researchers use varying terms for such thinking—cross-disciplinary thinking, multi-disciplinary thinking, and interdisciplinary thinking—and define it as the use of frameworks from one discipline as “points of departure for discovering or confirming similar structures and relations in other disciplines.”1 It stitches together perspectives or modes of inquiry from two or more disciplines to explore ideas. It is thinking “in the seams.”

Creativity, innovation, and deepened understanding can result from interdisciplinary thinking. Despite these potential benefits, schools rarely cultivate the “mental dexterity” required for thinking in the seams.2

Many education systems emphasize departmentalization, especially as students progress through the grade levels. Each subject is taught by an “expert” who specializes in the discipline and who rarely, if ever, designs instruction that engages students in interdisciplinary thinking. Specialization, while valuable in some contexts, prevents interdisciplinary thinking.

However, specialization should not be confused with deep understanding of a discipline. In fact, deep disciplinary understanding can foster interdisciplinary thinking if the understanding includes the recognition of patterns within the discipline. Patterns play a critical role in enabling interdisciplinary thinking.

According to researchers, interdisciplinary thinking often follows a sequence of mental actions: relationships between ideas within a discipline are recognized→the relationships are recognized as forming pattern(s)→the pattern(s) are decontextualized/generalized→examples of the same pattern(s) are recognized in other disciplines→ideas from one discipline “overlay” with another, generating new ideas.3

How can we foster such thinking?

First, teach the disciplines through patterns. By using patterns as entry-points to material, teachers can connect students’ prior experiences to new content. This helps students construct deeper understanding of the content and alerts them to associations between major ideas.

Second, teach to understanding. Moving from simple recall to understanding is moving from being able to answer a trivia question to possessing “usable knowledge”—knowledge that “is connected and organized around important concepts” and “supports transfer (to other contexts) rather than only the ability to remember.”4 Engaging students in connecting new content and patterns fosters understanding.

Third, challenge students to recognize other patterns within new content. Challenge students to explore how else the major ideas may be organized, identify the new patterns that result, and to generalize those patterns so cross-disciplinary possibilities can be explored. (This is a process of thinking that will need to be delineated and modeled for students.)

Fourth, engage in interdisciplinary thinking with colleagues. Explore patterns within the material you will be teaching and see if any possesses potential for engaging students in interdisciplinary thinking. Work collaboratively to design instruction in which patterns from both disciplines can be used to encourage interdisciplinary thinking.

Finally, encourage interdisciplinary thinking by designing time for thinking “in the seams.” Designate a period of time (daily? weekly?) in which students reexamine material to identify potential overlays of two or more disciplines. One relatively easy way to engage such thinking is to identify analogies, explaining Concept A from Discipline A by referencing Concept B from Discipline B. As students develop and express such analogies, they reprocess the content from both disciplines, deepening their understanding of both. By structuring time for it, students recognize that you value such thinking. That understanding may motivate additional interdisciplinary thinking throughout the school day.

Several teachers have expanded their own capacity for interdisciplinary thinking and for designing instruction that fosters thinking “in the seams” through instructional design models, such as the Architecture of Learning, that emphasize patterns. Teachers find their own thinking about teaching and material changes as they work with such models. Changing our approaches to material can lead to improvements in our teaching. Personal growth and professional growth are not mutually exclusive.

Do rappers and foreign policy elements share significant similarities? Yes, and examining one can truly enlighten thinking about the other. Interdisciplinary thinking is an effective tool for understanding and interacting effectively with our world. And isn’t that part of what we seek to equip students to do?

van Leer, O. in Perkins, D. N. (ed), Thinking: the Second International Conference (Philadelphia: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1987), 405.
Ibid.
Ibid., 407.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R., eds., How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), 9.

Beyond Ovals and Pencils: Thinking in the Disciplines

2009-07-22T14:40:00.006-04:00

Only the sound of #2 pencils carefully blackening tiny ovals could be heard. On one side of the room sat high school seniors, AP history students. On the other, working historians. All were taking the same test—an assessment that demanded typical school-oriented items: names, dates, events.

When the #2 pencils were put down and the answer sheets were scored, the results surprised the researchers. Many AP history students outscored the historians. In fact, some of the practicing historians knew answers to only a third of the questions!

Round one: students!

The second half of the assessment didn’t require #2 pencils. Researchers presented a collection of historical documents to the two groups. The documents made competing claims that had to be identified, sorted, and interpreted. The historians dove in, excelling at the task and even energized by it. The students were stumped, unaware of how to even start. Though they knew their facts, the students could not form interpretations or reach conclusions when given historical material.1

Round two: historians!

The second half of the assessment required thinking within the discipline. It required historical thinking, not factual recall. Faced with this challenge, the students were stumped. According to Howard Gardner, such results are not surprising: “Most students, including those who attend our best schools and receive the highest grades, are not able to explain the phenomenon about which they are being questioned. Even more alarmingly, many give precisely the same answer as those who have never taken the relevant courses and…never encountered the concepts relevant to a proper explanation…[they] have accumulated plenty of factual or subject matter knowledge, but they have not learned to think in a disciplined manner.”2

If we’re not equipping students to function beyond a multiple choice test, are we really educating them within the disciplines? I realize I’m not the first to ask this question, and I do recognize that factual knowledge plays a role in constructing understanding.

I’ve sat in numerous conference session where presenters admonished us to “engage students in thinking,” and then offered their preferred “tool” for making such activity happen in the classroom.

I always leave these sessions feeling like I am missing something. The generic approach to thinking seems to fit in some disciplines much more naturally than in others, and it seems like I often just ask for more information rather than engaging students in different ways of thinking. I never feel like I know what to teach so my students will know how to think.

So, what are the general characteristics of successful thinking within a discipline? While not intended to be exhaustive, allow me to suggest four possible traits.

First, thinking successfully within a discipline requires deep familiarity with the discipline’s major concepts. Ever seen a commercial where an individual is surrounded, 360°, by words? That’s how I envision the successful thinker within a discipline, surrounded by concepts that are so familiar he can reach out and grab those needed within the moment. He owns the concepts and can use them beneficially. He can illustrate major ideas with examples drawn from the discipline. For example, when a decision requires a careful consideration of structure and function, the scientist may recall and consider cell anatomy, the historian—forms of government, the writer—nonfiction paragraphs. Each would not only understand the decision to be made but also relate it to discipline-based concepts. These concepts can then inform their thinking, possibly leading to better decisions.

Second, thinking successfully within a discipline includes the ability to organize ideas in a wide variety of ways, and in so doing, discover new connections between concepts. For example, we’ve all experienced history taught sequentially. Every textbook I’ve ever used, both as teacher and student, presented history with sequence as its primary structure. But what would happen if we thought of major eras or movements (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement) in different schemes, such as organizing events from most to least influential? or those that involved the greatest number of participants to those that involved the least? Would we find correlations between number of people involved and influence? Would we return to the sequential organization and notice an ebb and flow of significant and common events? What new patterns would we discover? Such thinking empowers new perspectives that can initiate breakthroughs in understanding and generate new knowledge within the discipline.

Third, thinking successfully within a discipline is demonstrated by responding to circumstances with relevant ideas. For example, a historian may raise a simple question: “How did we get here?” She may then attempt to retrace the events that led to the current situation. However, this look back involves more than picking and ordering obvious happenings. Influences will be recognized, entrances and exits of critical contributors will be noted, causes and effects—even indirect examples—will be identified. The historical thinker looks broadly at the past, knowing that influences may never appear in the actual events. Recognizing such influences can illuminate solutions to problems, guidance for decisions, and effective ways to proceed through the current circumstances.

Finally, thinking successfully within a discipline includes recognizing limits of the discipline. Jonah Lehrer makes this point in his book How We Decide. An understanding of basic economics can help us make many choices, such as which of two potato peelers is the better value. However, it cannot help us choose the strawberry jam that tastes the best. In fact, trying to apply numerical reasoning to select the best-tasting jam often results in choices that are ultimately unsatisfying.3 Economics is a valuable discipline, but its usefulness does have limits. Every other discipline possesses the same characteristic, and successful thinking will not try to force the discipline into arenas where it lacks utility.

Obviously, knowing facts, no matter how numerous, does not equal successful thinking within a discipline. If we’re committed to equipping students to function within the disciplines and to use the valuable thinking represented in the disciplines, we have to do more than prepare them for tests requiring #2 pencils.

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R., eds., How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), 146.
Gardner, H. Five Minds for the Future (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2006), 21.
Lehrer, J. How We Decide (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009).

Conspiracy Theories: Patterns, Teaching, and Thinking

2009-07-17T15:11:00.006-04:00

The human brain loves patterns so much it can take random puzzle pieces and construct seemingly coherent, if wildly implausible, pictures. “The CIA stockpiled lederhosen in case of an Alpine leg virus epidemic, causing the severe shortage of appropriate menswear for high school productions of The Sound of Music.” See? Random pieces strewn together to create a wild yet coherent picture—a conspiracy theory.

While interesting and entertaining, conspiracy theories reveal important principles for teaching, learning, and thinking.

The brain constructs meaning via patterns, even occasionally imposing patterns to make meaning from random data. As John Medina explains, “We…are terrific pattern matchers, constantly assessing our environment for similarities, and we tend to remember things if we think we have seen them before.”1 Patterns provide a gateway to prior experience, and prior experience provides reference points for constructing new understanding. “Patterns are paths for memories to follow,”2 explains Judy Willis. When patterns fail to emerge from sorted data, the brain either ignores the data or imposes a pattern on it—hence, conspiracy theories.

Researchers suggest teachers should develop students’ pattern-recognition capacities: “The idea that experts recognize features and patterns that are not noticed by novices is potentially important for improving instruction…One dimension of acquiring greater competence appears to be the increased ability to segment the perceptual field (learning how to see). Research on expertise suggests the importance of providing students with learning experiences that specifically enhance their abilities to recognize meaningful patterns of information.”3 Judy WIllis agrees: “Education is about increasing the patterns that students can use, recognize, and communicate. As the ability to see and work with patterns expands, the executive functions are enhanced. Whenever new material is presented in such a way that students see relationships, they generate greater brain cell activity (forming new neural connections) and achieve more successful long-term memory storage and retrieval.”4

By using patterns, the brain is able to connect ideas from disparate disciplines. The conspiracy theory in the opening paragraph features ideas from government, virology, economics, and musical theatre. Sure, the example is ludicrously wild, but it demonstrates the brain’s capacity to weave tapestries with threads from different spools. As the mind perceives patterns within a discipline’s content, it can seek, and often find, the same pattern within other disciplines. This enables the overlaying of one discipline with another, the identifying of connections between the disciplines, and the emergence of new ideas that combine concepts from multiple disciplines. A new tapestry is woven with thread from different spools.

According to Howard Gardner, such a “synthesizing mind” is now a “core competence”: “The ability to knit together information from disparate sources into a coherent whole is vital today. The amount of accumulated knowledge is reportedly doubling every 2-3 years. Sources of information are vast and disparate, and individuals crave coherence and integration.”5

Students who do not perceive patterns miss opportunities for beneficial interdisciplinary thinking: “In their English classes, young persons may learn how to write effective prose; but if they fail to transport at least part of those lessons across the hallway to history class or to biology lab assignments, then they have missed an opportunity to link compositional strategies. Adolescents may be exposed to causal reasoning in their physics classes; but if they draw no lessons about argumentation in history or geometry class, then this form of thinking needs to be retaught.”6

How, then, do we teach to foster multi-disciplinary thinking? I hesitate to suggest thinking like a conspiracy theorist, but to a degree, that’s part of the answer.

Consider an earth science unit—volcanoes, earthquakes, mountain formation, etc. As the teacher explores the content’s details, a few “conspiratorial” questions can help:

What are the major ideas in this unit?
How can I “connect the dots”—what are the relationships between those ideas?
What succinct, general statement communicates the relationships?

With the previously mentioned unit, the teacher may notice that internal forces/changes and external forces/changes are prominent ideas. How are these dots connected? Internal forces can influence external changes; external forces can influence internal changes. Succinctly? The internal (or inside) can affect the external (or outside), and the external can affect the internal.

Now, as the teacher teaches the material, she frequently references the pattern and engages students in thinking about how the material illustrates it.

Take another look at the pattern. Can you think of other places, other disciplines where the same pattern can be seen? How about characters in literature? Do internal forces (beliefs, values, motives) affect external elements (actions, dialogue)? Do external forces (character, events) affect internal elements (beliefs, values, motives)? Do the internal and external ever mingle and cause mutual change in other disciplines?

Instruction that emphasizes patterns creates opportunities for cross-discipline thinking. Concepts and skills get transferred (Constructing a geometric proof can help me write that persuasive essay), ideas merge to enable critical thinking (The inner turmoil at Company X seems like the pressure build-up along a fault line, which leads me to predict…), and new analogies empower “well-motivated leaps” (If I envision the website as a real estate agent’s showing of a new house…).7 With access to information on a constant and meteoric increase, knowing how connect data from disparate sources and disciplines—how to use patterns to recognize and use interdisciplinary connections—becomes equally constant and meteoric in its increasing necessity. Thinking a bit like a conspiracy theorist, connecting concepts into coherent patterns, can help us structure our teaching in ways that increase student ability and potential for interdisciplinary thinking.

Medina, J., Brain Rules (Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2008), 82.
Willis, J., Research Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2006), 15.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R., eds., How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), 24.
Willis, 15.
Gardner, H., Five Minds for the Future (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006), 46.
Ibid., 64-65.
Ibid., 66.

TMI! Information Overload and Learning

2009-07-06T12:53:00.004-04:00

“Too much information—TMI!”

More than just a retort when conversations turn personal, TMI also describes a common student experience. When one period of steady information flow follows another, the rising data tide does not lift all boats. It overwhelms them.

We can maintain a quick and steady pace when we enter information into a database or spreadsheet, simply pushing “return” or “tab” to move to the next entry, but the brain is not a computer. It has limits. Data funneled endlessly through the senses prevents the processing required for learning.

What do students’ brains need to do to construct new learning? Let’s listen in as the neural “Data Manager” oversees the processing…

Okay, we got incoming data here. Everyone look alive!

Get that bit there and put it with the other that’s like it. Those two bits there, move them to the right. Move those others across the room to that grouping there.

Is that it? Do we have all the data? Okay, let me get up to the observation platform to see what we’ve got here. Hmm, okay. Put this label on that grouping there. And give that group to the right this label. That last group needs this label.

Okay, let’s see what’s really going on here. Seeing some patterns! Get the librarians searching for past records with these patterns.

Got something? Great. Let’s overlay it with this new data.

A-ha! The new data is like this past experience in some ways. Get the insights to the consciousness office and tell them to hit the “Give a lift” button! We’re constructing understanding right now!

Obviously no such director exists for cognitive activity, but the processing illustrated by the imagined “Data Manager’s” actions do reflect the brain’s approach to constructing new learning. Incoming data gets sorted and labeled as the brain engages in comprehension. The sorted and labeled data reveals emerging patterns that trigger recall of similar past experiences as the brain engages in elaboration. These cognitive processes empower learning.

But TMI floods the brain with data, preventing comprehension and elaboration, and thus, preventing learning. Jonah Lehrer suggests the danger of too much information is “it can actually interfere with understanding.” Why? Because the brain has a do-it-yourself attitude toward learning.

As teachers, we think through material when we plan its delivery. But students’ brains need to engage in that same process to learn for themselves. In short, we process the new material to teach it. Students must process the information similarly to learn it. As Daniel Willingham, author of Why Don't Students Like School?, explains, “Good teachers design lessons in which students unavoidably think about the meaning or central point” [emphasis added]. Thinking cannot overcome TMI, but TMI quickly overwhelms thinking. In short, TMI prevents learning while unavoidable thinking promotes it.

When you stop informing and engage students in thinking, you empower learning. In other words, you truly teach.

Growing Personally and Professionally Produces Meaningful Results

2009-06-21T19:07:00.006-04:00

A few times every year, I get to lead a professional development event known as “Writer’s Stylus.” Each time, including just last week, it proves to be an exciting experience. We begin the week thinking we already teach writing. We end the week as writers, producing an essay that has undergone multiple waves of revision. We end the week as writing teachers with a vision for developing young writers, not just students with good writing skills. We end the week as different individuals and professionals, and as a different community than when we started.

The week of training illustrates three principles that transfer to any area: personal growth aids professional growth, professional growth often requires re-evaluating long-held beliefs and practices, and when combined, personal and professional growth produce meaningful results.

Personal growth aids professional growth.
“At the beginning of the week, I would never have worded this sentence like this,” the teacher explained. “But by learning how to revise my own writing, I can see the difference structuring it this way and using the stronger verb, ambushed, makes.”

“I needed someone to tell me to make it personal—that it was okay to write in my own voice,” explained another teacher. “That turned what was a very direct and didactic essay into something that makes its points through simply relating my experience.”

For all of us, the first noticeable growth was personal. We learned how to revise our own writing. We examined texts crafted by master writers. We noticed things in good writing that we’d never seen before, and we implemented those ideas into our own drafts. We grew as writers.

Our ideas, first either overwhelming or overly sketchy, developed into clear and clever expressions of ourselves. As a group, we got to know each other through rough drafts, coaching sessions, and moving final versions of our essays. The process of writing created a community of writers.

But we also grew as teachers. Because we knew what characterized and went in to crafting good writing, we recognized the weaknesses of our instructional approaches. We began to identify skills we needed to teach our students, but teaching in new and more effective ways means letting go of less effective habits.

Professional growth often requires re-evaluating long-held beliefs and practices.
Our growth as writers changed how we examined our instruction. In looking through writers’ eyes, we recognized much of what we call writing instruction fails to teach writing at all. We have students do too much drafting and not nearly enough revising. We spend too much time having students mark up pre-printed sentences and not nearly enough time crafting original ones. And we get hung up on students forming diagrams for other people’s sentences to the point that we value a correct diagram over a well-constructed original sentence.

Our old ways of thinking argued with us. What would our teaching friends who love diagramming say if they knew we were not going to overemphasize it? If we spent more time in writing and revising, what would happen to the dozens of practice activities and worksheets our textbooks provided? Would coaching young writers as individuals mean that our classes would cover fewer uses of quotation marks than we had in years past?

We asked these questions, and often we ended up laughing at ourselves. Wait, we kept reminding each other, we’re teaching writing. To learn to write, students must write. They must revise. They most journey through the full process. No one ever expressed themselves clearly and in ways that deserve attention by diagramming or underlining preprinted sentences.

Re-evaluation told us the truth. Yet, even with our new eyes, the results astonished us.

Personal and professional growth produce meaningful results.
“I felt like I was trying to hug an elephant.” We worked all week on the essays, and what started as “hugging an elephant” ended up a piece of writing that would rival anything Erma Bombeck ever wrote. “I called my essay, ‘Lettuce. Rejoice!’” she explained. Then she read, “I relished walking the rows of my neighbor’s garden…”

Look at that. Just look at the verb choice in that first sentence! Relished! Would any other verb have brought gardening and vegetables to mind nearly as well?

Several volunteers shared their revised essays, and the quality of each one surprised and delighted us. From essays on adopting and raising children to those detailing personal mission experiences, the results were meaningful—valued, important, significant—both to the writer as an individual and to us, the community, as writers.

Growth is a beautiful and productive process. We need to seek it for ourselves, both personally and professionally, and we need to let it influence our educational practices. When we do, the results may allow us to stand back an say, “Lettuce. Rejoice!”

Learning from Mistakes Takes the Right Feedback

2009-06-09T12:13:00.011-04:00

I slammed my foot and, to my surprise, picked up speed. The lawn mower headed straight for the newly planted apple tree in our backyard. The sound of mower blades slicing through a thin tree trunk caught my father’s attention. He strode across the lawn, and I prepared to be banished from the riding lawn mower. But my father laughed.

“Do you know what you did?” I nodded and explained I had stepped on the clutch rather than the brake, freeing the mower to roll downhill and over the sapling. “Okay,” he said, “where’s the brake?” I showed him which was the brake and which was the clutch. Chuckling, he explained, “You’ve got it. Don’t worry about the tree. It was dead anyway. Now we won’t have to look at it. Keep going.”

Mistakes, claims Jonah Lehrer, “should be cultivated and carefully investigated.” To the brain, “Disappointment is educational.”1

Dopamine, a neurotransmitter that influences emotion, provides a sense of pleasure when what we anticipate happening matches reality, but when our expectations are not met—when our actions do not produce the desired result—we feel disappointment. Through disappointment, we gain an opportunity to literally rewire neuronal connections, to learn, but only if we attend to our mistake: “Self-criticism is the secret to self-improvement.”2

Since we learn, in part, by attending to our errors, what kind of feedback should we, as teachers, give to our students?

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck contrasted the results of two different types of feedback. One group of students were praised for their intelligence: “You are smart at this.” A second group of students was praised for their efforts: “You worked hard and look at the results.”

The findings? Students praised for their intelligence became easily discouraged when they encountered difficult tasks and lost 20% of their achievement between pre- and post-testing. These students were only content when they could compare their results with students who preformed worse on tasks or tests. In contrast, students praised for their efforts sought challenge, welcomed mistakes, and increased achievement an average of 30% between pre- and post-testing. Lehrer explains:

The problem with praising kids for their innate intelligence—the “smart” compliment—is that it misrepresents the neural reality of education. It encourages kids to avoid the most useful kind of learning activities, which is learning from mistakes. Unless you experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models.3

Dweck’s findings mirrors those of Dr. Jennifer Mangels: individuals who believe intelligence is a fixed entity (i.e., you get the intelligence you’re born with) focus on performance and respond to negative feedback (i.e., the identification of an error) by withdrawing and extending little effort. In contrast, individuals who believe intelligence is malleable (i.e., smart is something you become not something you possess) respond to negative feedback with a mastery-orientation, seeking means of correction and learning. Such learners are resilient, responding to set-backs with renewed energy directed toward learning.4

How can we direct student response to feedback so that the mastery-orientation overcomes the performance-orientation? How can we guide student disappointment to careful investigation of mistakes?

Dr. Robert Brooks (2007) suggests couching feedback in “we” statements. For example, rather than telling a student that a response is incorrect and to “try harder,” Brooks suggests, in one-on-one conversation, saying, “This strategy you're using doesn’t seem to be working. Let's figure out why and how we can change the strategy so that you are successful.” Such a response invites a careful investigation of the mistake and makes the interaction a problem-solving experience. A classroom environment that welcomes error as a gateway to learning contributes to better feedback responses.5

My dad responded in a way that kept me moving forward in my learning and mowing the lawn successfully for several years. Disappointment led to reflection and investigation, correction, and renewed interest in getting it right. Guess I learned more than where to find the brake that day.

Lehrer, J., How We Decide (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009), 51, 48.
Ibid., 51.
Ibid., 53-54.
Brooks, R., Mindsets for School Success: Effective Educators and Resilient, Motivated Learners. Presented at Learning and the Brain: Using Brain Research to Enhance Cognitive Abilities and Achievement (Nov. 2007).
Mangels, J. A., Motivating Minds: How Student Beliefs Impact Learning and Academic Achievement. Presented at Learning and the Brain: Using Brain Research to Enhance Cognitive Abilities and Achievement (Nov. 2007).

"What" and "Where" Enable Learning and Higher Thinking

2009-06-02T14:24:00.007-04:00

While their research and associated technology can be complicated, the discoveries of neuroscientists often reveal simple principles of brain functioning.

For example, neuroscientists recently traced the flow of auditory data through the brain. As sound waves spark our nervous system into action, auditory data gets sent from lower functioning areas of the brain to higher functioning areas via two “routes.” One route, the “low road,” carries data through the temporal lobe and enables us to identify what we are hearing. Simultaneously, data traveling the other route, the “high road,” moves through the parietal lobe and enables us to identify where the sound was produced.1

Visual data follows very similar routes. The “low road” flows through the temporal lobe and extracts information about what is being seen. The “high road” flows through the parietal lobe and extracts information about where objects are located.2 What and where precede deeper thinking about new data.

What does this have to do with learning? If students are asked to think critically about or apply new information without an opportunity to establish what and where, their efforts will likely yield poor results.

For example, I often observe teachers presenting a sequence of steps that students need to follow to achieve some result. As students practice, the teacher roams the room and checks student work. A student with an incorrect result is often reminded that the steps “are listed on the white board,” and directed to look there to find his mistake. But whose brain processed what and where as the teacher wrote the steps in order on the board? The teacher’s. The student’s brain focused on the what and where of the teacher’s movement and voice, not the material. As a result, the student still lacks the processing of the material necessary to enable higher functioning, such as using the sequence of steps to achieve a result.

However, if the teacher has the students write the steps of the sequence onto index cards and then arrange them in the correct order, the students process the what and where of the new material. Additionally, the teacher can assess the students’ knowledge before they begin making application. Instructive feedback at this point prevents incorrect practice.

Professional literature often refers to this processing of what and where as comprehension (not to be confused with reading comprehension), and some instructional design models recognize its role in effective teaching. Including opportunities for students to identify and sort new instructional material—to identify what and where—enables the higher functioning, such as constructing understanding and engaging in critical thinking, that we’re pursuing.

A simple principle of brain functioning; a necessary element of learning.

1. How Brain Processes Speech. ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/05/090526140733.htm
2. Berns, G., Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2008).

Self-Regulation Supports Student Learning and Achievement

2009-05-26T16:15:00.005-04:00

You sit in a room with almost nothing in it. It’s just you, a table, and a single cookie. The researcher who left a moment ago said you could eat the cookie—two chocolate wafers connected by a cream filling. Or, you can wait until he returns in a few minutes and have two cookies. You sit, thinking, “One now? or two later?”

Oh, one more detail: you are four-years-old, and whether you eat one cookie now or wait for two later may predict many aspects of your future.

Thanks to recent Radio Lab episodes, coverage on news programs, and attention from bloggers such as writer Jonah Lehrer and educator Aaron Eyler, self-regulation has become a hot topic. Much of the attention has focused on the original study, often called the “Marshmallow Test,” conducted by Walter Mischel in the 1960’s. (The researchers switched to cookies shortly after launching the experiment.) But more recent research provides insights into the relationship of self-regulation and academic achievement.

Also known as self-discipline, researchers describe self-regulation as the ability to consciously suppress or delay responses in order to work for a higher goal. Examples include “deliberately modulating one’s anger rather than having a temper tantrum, reading test instructions before proceeding to the questions, paying attention to a teacher rather than daydreaming, saving money so that it can accumulate interest in the bank, choosing homework over TV, and persisting on long-term assignments despite boredom and frustration.” Self-regulation predicts academic success better than IQ. It also better predicts GPA, standardized test achievement, homework completion, the potential for GPA gains during the course of a year, and even SAT scores.

Because it significantly influences student achievement, it makes sense to develop students’ self-regulation capacities. But how? How can teachers and schools aid their students’ strengthening of self-regulation? Self-regulation is much like a muscle. It can be exercised and strengthened. Any task that requires ignoring and delaying reward or that requires persistence through boredom or challenge exercises the self-regulation “muscle.” For example:

Exercise students’ “muscles” of self-regulation. By engaging students in activities that require delayed gratification or perseverance, we provide a self-regulation workout. Just like exercising yields slow but steady results, gradually increasing the amount of self-regulation required for tasks slowly builds capacity. As Aaron Eyler suggests, engage students in complex assignments that require time spent thinking about how ideas connect instead of separate, quickly-completed assignments focused on individual ideas.
Teach students stick-to-it and wait-for-it strategies, such as self-talk. The messages we consciously “speak” to ourselves influence our thinking, and our thinking influences our actions. In several recent studies, researchers have found that “mental tricks,” motivational and instructional self-talk has “small but significant effects” on “physical exertion…[and] performance” and help us stay “focused.”
Teach students “cognitive transformation.” Cognitive transformation involves distracting the mind by shifting the focus. For example, in the famous “marshmallow test,” some children managed to avoid eating the marshmallow by imagining it as something else—a cloud, a table, a chef’s hat. This “distraction” prolonged their ability to resist eating the marshmallow.
Engage students in attention training, such as listening for details, observing closely, and solving complex puzzles. Again, increasing the level and duration of attention required for success can strengthen the self-regulation “muscle.” Reading aloud to students is one of the best ways of accomplishing this. Throughout a school year, increase the amount of time you read to children and the complexity of the texts you read.
Implement a school FITNESS program. The emphasis needs to be on fitness, not on competition or learning a specific sport. Students engaged in regular physical activity score higher on self-regulation measures.

Some may argue that because self-regulation is non-academic it should not be addressed in school. This perspective fails to recognize the strong connection between self-regulation and learning. Perhaps a metaphor can help. Imagine a suspension bridge, such as San Francisco’s Golden Gate or the Bristol Channel’s Severn. If the road, carrying travelers from one shore to another, represents a student’s learning, the cables, the roadway’s essential support, represent self-regulation. Weak cables limit the roadway’s depth and distance. Strengthening students’ self-regulation capacities supports the academic learning we’re seeking through our teaching.

Duckworth, A. L. (2008). Self-discipline, IQ, and academic achievement. Presented at Learning & the Brain: Using Emotions Research to Enhance Learning. Boston (Fall 2008).

Duckworth, A. L., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological Science 16(12), 939-944.

Duckworth, A. L., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2006). Self-discipline gives girls the edge: Gender in self-discipline, grades, and achievement test scores. Journal of Educational Psychology 98(1), 198-208.

Eyler, A. (2009). Hybridizing education. Stretch our minds (May 22, 2009): http://stretchourminds.blogspot.com.

Who Should Coach? Three Essential Traits for Professional Development Coaches

2009-05-19T10:51:00.004-04:00

“Who do you think should be our coach?” I get this question from administrators in schools that invite me to lead professional development events. There is an assumption that after a few days of working with teachers I’ll have a good sense of who could coach colleagues effectively. Sometimes I do, but often I don’t feel confident in making a recommendation. I’ve had teachers in these events who seemed resistant but on a return visit had become a new initiative’s supporter and best practitioner. Conversely, I’ve experienced teachers who seemed receptive and motivated during training but who resisted actually making changes to their practice. The training event is not the best setting for identifying potential coaches.

What, then, should we look for? What traits does a successful coach possess? While a lengthy list could easily be developed, let’s examine three that are critical.

First, an effective coach possesses a passion for and a deep understanding of the new initiative. Genuine passion is contagious. It acts like a magnet, drawing others to its energy, but it rarely manifests itself as a cheerleader. A quiet dedication to doing something right, to working with excellence even while learning, marks the teacher who attracts others to a new initiative. An effective coach will help colleagues see the value of new ideas through actions more than words. Does the teacher take an initiative to make changes to her practice? Does she seem concerned about getting it right, about trying out the initiative as designed? Does the teacher pursue more knowledge and better ways of implementation?

Implementing a new initiative is an act of transfer—the applying of new ideas and methods to actual classroom practice. Coaching others is a step beyond that: equipping and enabling others to be successful in their transfer of new ideas and methods to their classrooms. “The first factor that influences successful transfer is degree of mastery of the original subject,” conclude Bransford, Brown, and Cocking. “Without an adequate level of initial learning, transfer cannot be expected. This point seems obvious, but it is often overlooked…Transfer is affected by the degree to which people learn with understanding rather than merely memorize sets of facts or follow a fixed set of procedures [italics added].”1

Just attending the same training event everyone else attended does not equip someone to coach colleagues successfully. Deeper understanding must be constructed so that the coach can adapt the initiative to various teachers, various classrooms, and to best serve various students. An effective coach seeks additional learning and, if available, additional training in the new initiative.

Second, an effective coach knows how to strategically handle difficult conversations. If the training event went well and the administration has been open with teachers prior to it, difficult conversations may be few in number, but they will still happen. At some point, the coach encounters a colleague who is overwhelmed and feels stressed and defensive about making changes, or a colleague who feels threatened by the idea of having a coach in the classroom, or even a colleague who would like to be left alone to use the same approaches that have been used before. All these conversations occur in every type of school.

After explaining the importance of self-respect and respect for one’s counterpart, Holly Weeks, author of Failure to Communicate, explains how a successful coach perceives difficult conversations:

Self-respect and respect help us frame the problem between us and figure out how to talk about it. Meanwhile, respecting the landscape of a tough conversation assumes there will be problems ahead. Rather than put our heads down and start to plow through, we will do better to step back, take a satellite view, and think about the lay of the land. That is, think about the problems we are likely to encounter and look for a good path through them.2

A good coach will approach difficult conversations with such a “satellite view,” rather than a perspective of “the problem is you.” A good coach stays focused on solving problems and supporting progress, avoiding and ignoring personal attacks.

Finally, a good coach focuses on improving thinking. The goal with any major professional development initiative should not be to produce robots who follow formulas to plan teaching. The goal should be to help teachers understand what works and why it works, to deepen teacher thinking about teaching and to increase teacher intentionality. A good coach aids colleagues’ thinking, often using questions to support teacher thinking rather than short-circuiting thinking by always giving answers. Questioning helps others discover insights for themselves. David Rock, author of Quiet Leadership, explains:

…it’s time to give up second guessing what people’s brains need and become masters of helping others think for themselves. The best way to do that is by defining solutions rather than problems, and helping people identify for themselves new habits they could develop to bring those solutions closer. Pivotal to all this is the art of enabling other people to have their own insights. Once people have had new insights for themselves, our job as quiet leaders is to provide the encouragement, ongoing support and belief in people, over time, to ensure they develop the new habits that are possible. Then we will be truly bringing out the best in others.3

Certainly more contributes to successful coaching, but these three traits are where I’d begin my search, either for a coach or to determine my potential as a coach. Here are some guiding questions based on these thoughts:

With whom does the new initiative seem to resonate? Who holds the same values as those advocated by the new approach? Who shows an authentic dedication to the new ideas?
Who is skilled at navigating difficult conversations? Who can calm others in the midst of heated interaction? Who maintains a focus on finding solutions? Who seems capable of equipping and encouraging colleagues?
Who is skilled at engaging others in thinking? Who asks great questions? Who can use questioning to help others think things through for themselves? Who works with colleagues to think things through rather than assigning blame or taking resistance personally?

The professional development event may be great. The presenter may be dynamic, engaging, and informative. But after the event, the real work begins. The coach plays a pivotal role and directly influences the success of a new initiative. Effective coaches know the program, know the people, and know the processes that will optimize success. When asked for my recommendations, the best advice I can offer administrators is, “Choose wisely.”

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.), How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press, 1999), 41, 43.
Weeks, H., Failure to Communicate: How Conversations Go Wrong and What You Can Do to Right Them (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008), 45.
Rock, D., Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 27.