Monthly Archives: February 2016

Recently, my sister and I were watching a TV show that explored the minds and brains of geniuses through history. One particular point in the program caught my attention: a man considered a genius was found to have a higher than average number of glial cells – “glue” cells, also thought of as helper cells, that typically support and protect nerve cells – in his brain.

This fact was interesting, yes, but when used as the reason for why this person could be considered a genius, my gut reaction said that this oversimplified claim doesn’t stick. A lot of people have above average numbers of glial cells, but their brains may function quite differently from one another.

That said, it is truly an incredible time: we can tap into electronic newsfeeds to find various interpretations and translations of the latest research related to education, health, and more. In the sphere of mindfulness – an area of personal interest and study – I see intriguing presentations of new findings every day that could be useful in self-development and supporting our next generation as teachers and parents. As consumers of media-disseminated research, however, it’s also important to recognize gaps in and the boldness of causal claims. In other words, just because things are correlated, that doesn’t mean they directly affect each other.

As we continue exploring the world of mindfulness and yoga research and education – an area showing a lot of promise for executive functioning and socioemotional development in youth and throughout adulthood- let’s pause to evaluate a few common claims.

Claim 1: Mindfulness leads to healthy brain development in kids.

So far, mindfulness meditation research has shown neural benefits in studies with primarily adult participants. In particular, mindfulness meditation has been associated with increased activation in areas of the prefrontal cortex of the brain related to executive functioning, or planning and problem-solving, as well as significantly reduced levels of stress.¹

Presently, brain-imaging research on the effects of mindfulness is lacking in younger populations due to high cost of money and time (usually 30-45 minutes for a child brain MRI). As touched upon in the Young Meditators article , however, we do know that childhood adversity such as stress, neglect, and substance abuse can significantly hinder healthy development of a young brain, which can lead to complications later in life.

Over the last few years, more studies using cognitive tasks, surveys, and observations as data support the potential benefit of yoga and mindfulness on child self-regulation – a type of executive functioning.² Executive functioning, sometimes referred to as “EF” in the science community, is defined as the cognitive self-regulation skills required for planning and the completion of complex tasks.³

To know for sure how mindfulness can impact development of a child’s actual brain, particularly those related to executive functioning in the prefrontal cortex, technology like fMRI is required. Existing qualitative research, while somewhat limited by survey and observation bias, is required as initial steps to pave the way toward neuroimaging research in mindfulness practice’s impact on the brain.

Claim 2: Mindfulness triggers better test scores.

While practicing a few minutes of mindfulness meditation doesn’t necessarily guarantee that 100% on an English final, mindfulness practice may indirectly influence school performance. As previously mentioned, present qualitative research suggests that mindfulness in elementary and early childhood populations may enhance EF. Given that EF is an established predictor of a number of performance indicators, including math and language gains from pre-k through kindergarten,⁴ mindfulness may indirectly influence school achievement through its impact on EF.

Practicing mindfulness may also support the “Spacing Effect,” a phenomenon crisply explained in a recent article by Learning and the Brain contributor, Andrew Watson. In the Spacing Effect, ample time (space) to forget content or a skill in order to remember it again can lead to stronger retention. One of many forms of mindfulness practice includes drawing attention away from surroundings in order to focus on the breath, more or less giving the mind a “break.” Allowing the mind to focus on the physiology and sensations of breathing might offer space to the brain to forget learned content or skill, requiring concerted effort to “remember anew” and leading to stronger long-term memory.⁵

Claim 3: Mindfulness is only effective in high-needs populations

Mindfulness and yoga practices can offer benefits for all, but a few recent studies have revealed stronger improvements in children who tend to struggle with self-regulation. In a study led by Lisa Flook, elementary students either received 30 minutes twice a week of Mindful Awareness Practice – breath, body, and thinking awareness – or received no training in a control group. Overall, teachers and parents reported improvement of all children in the mindfulness program. Interestingly, children who showed difficulty in executive functioning in the mindfulness group showed much stronger improvement across the eight weeks of training as compared to children struggling with executive functioning in the control group. These results suggest that while mindfulness practice may be helpful for all children in managing daily demands, mindfulness could intentionally be used as an intervention for children struggling specifically with EF.⁶

Additionally, Karen Bluthe and colleagues found improved perception of stress and life satisfaction overall in a community sample of teens following participation in a six-week BREATHE mindfulness program. Bluthe also identified especially strong reductions of perceived stress and depression symptoms in at-risk adolescents.⁷ These findings suggest that mindfulness programs may not only support students managing high-poverty circumstances, but general adolescent populations.

As research in mindfulness continues, more patterns will certainly be found allowing us to make more generalized, sturdy claims – shifts in executive functioning in children may be seen in the prefrontal cortex through fMRIs, mindfulness curriculum may offer similar results when replicated across various student populations.

For now, our role as educators and parents is not to dismiss a practice right away, but to consume with care to best support our children.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Lazar, S. W., Bush, G. L., Gollub, R., Fricchione, G., Khalsa, G., & Benson, H. (2000). Functional brain mapping of the relaxation response and meditation. NeuroReport, 11(7), 1581-1585. [Article]
2. Flook, L., et al. (2010). Effects of mindful awareness practices on executive functions in elementary school children. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 26(1), 70-95. [Article]
3. S.K. Thurman, C.A. Fiorello (Eds.), Applied cognitive research in K-3 classrooms, Routledge, New York, NY (2008), pp. 41–84 [Book]
4. Fuhs, M., Nesbitt, K., Farran, D., Dong, N., & Eccles, Jacquelynne S. (2014). Longitudinal Associations Between Executive Functioning and Academic Skills Across Content Areas. Developmental Psychology, 50(6), 1698-1709. [Article]
5. Watson, A. The Science of Homework: Why Timing is Everything. [Blog]
6. Flook, L., et al. (2010). Effects of mindful awareness practices on executive functions in elementary school children. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 26(1), 70-95. [Article]
7. Bluth, Roberson, & Gaylord. (2015). A Pilot Study of a Mindfulness Intervention for Adolescents and the Potential Role of Self-Compassion in Reducing Stress. Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. [Article]

Whether you want to learn to tie a tie or you want to learn about galaxies and cosmology, the Internet can be a gateway to knowledge. This is exciting, but comes with a huge caveat: most of the world does not have Internet access¹. This problem fuels the nonprofit Learning Equality², whose focus is on “bringing the online learning revolution offline.” In order to do this, they’ve created a platform called KA Lite³, an offline version of material from Khan Academy that is downloaded onto tablets.

The goals of KA Lite and Learning Equality more generally extend beyond increasing access to existing resources. Although at first glance it may seem that they make teachers less relevant, they in fact include functionality that facilitate teachers and help them to become even more effective. Although many teachers may want to give thorough feedback on students’ work as often as necessary, their time is limited. Resources like Khan Academy and KA Lite alleviate some of this difficulty by giving students immediate feedback, as well as relaying this information to teachers who can use it to identify each students’ progress much more efficiently.

Another pervasive struggle not only with online educational content but also with in-person content is maintaining students’ motivation to learn. By implementing a points system, in particular a system that is both consistent and includes elements of randomness, learning takes on a game-like quality. In effect, the point system allows students to become engaged in a “game” tailored to their level. If doing math problems for the sake of improving math skills feels tedious to many students, doing the problems in order to advance in a game is likely to be much less so.

I had the opportunity to talk to Richard Tibbles, a fellow grad student in UC San Diego’s Cognitive Science department and a cofounder of Learning Equality. We discussed KA Lite, the organization’s offline version of Khan Academy, which has been downloaded onto tablets and distributed throughout the world. Throughout our conversation, I learned what KA Lite offers students, how it capitalizes on what we know about human users and learners, and the organization’s goals for continuing to bridge the global digital divide.

After speaking with Richard, I felt optimistic about the future of global education, as Learning Equality (and many others) increase access to high-quality materials and improve our understanding of how to best teach – both at home and around the world. I hope this piece similarly inspires you!

Check out the interview below:

 

References & Further Reading

1. Rodriguez, S. (2014). 60% of the world’s population still won’t have Internet by the end of 2014. The Los Angeles Times. [Article]

2. Learning Equality [Organization]

3. KA Lite [Initiative]

• Wang, D. (2015). Beyond the edge of the internet: Learning equality crowdsources funding for offline education. UC San Diego News Center. [Article]

If you teach middle or high school—or if you parent teens—you have no doubt wondered at the chaotic muddle of teenage lives. How can adolescents possibly be so…adolescent?

As you stare in bafflement and awe, dread and bemusement, you may occasionally wish for a wise, insightful, humorous guide: a Virgil who can talk your Dante through the wild experience around you.

Well, let me introduce you to your Virgil: her name is Lisa Damour.

Introductions

Dr. Lisa Damour directs Laurel School’s Center for Research on Girls. (If you don’t subscribe to their newsletter, you should: https://www.laurelschool.org/page.cfm?p=625&LockSSL=true.)

With this experience—combined with her private psychotherapy practice, and her work at Case Western Reserve University—she knows not only the research on adolescence and adolescents, but also their daily school reality.

She understands teens, she understands teachers, and she understands schools—and, she knows from the research. How’s that for a guide?

To help make sense of adolescent muddle, Dr. Damour describes seven predictable and healthy transitions that teens must undertake to arrive at successful adulthood. In her view, many of the puzzles of adolescent behavior—and many of the questions on how to help teens effectively—become manageable and even plausible when understood within this transition framework.

No More Peter Pan

In Damour’s transitional framework, adolescents must first “Part with Childhood” to arrive at adult maturity. As teachers, we don’t always know our students before they come to our classrooms, and so it can be difficult to know their younger selves—and how hard they must work to shuck those selves.

Many of the surprising behaviors of adolescence aren’t so surprising when understood as our students’ fierce attempts—either knowing or unknowing—to put aside childish parts of their past. Feisty rejection of adult authority, indifference to helpful guidance, abrupt swerves between competence and incompetence: all of these dramatic, teenly behaviors make sense when seen as their awkward attempts to negotiate this treacherous first transition.

Deep Pools

One of Damour’s strengths as a writer is her ability to conjure vivid analogies—analogies that both clarify a situation and suggest how to manage it well.

For example: when thinking of your role in a teen’s attempt to part with childhood, consider a swimming pool. (Yes, a swimming pool.)

The water represents the mature, grown up experience in which teens want to swim. And you—the teacher, the parent—are the edge of the pool. You establish the boundaries within which the teens take on their mature experiences. And, crucially, you provide a reliable handhold when they need to hang on to something solid.

In this way, Damour explains one of the most puzzling and painful parts of working with adolescents: “the push off.” After exhausting themselves trying out mature experiences, teens may need to swim back over and hang on to the pool’s edge for a while. That is, they stay close to us, relying on our strength and support. And then, the need to part with childhood strongly reasserts itself, and the teen pushes off. Hard. Suddenly, adult support and experience are as foolish and useless as they were dependable and necessary just a moment ago.

Although Damour does not say so, I think this “pool” analogy helps explain some difficult teacher/parent dynamics as well. Sometimes, teens can hang on to “edge-of-the-pool” teachers in place of “edge-of-the-pool” parents: a hurtful vision for any parent already missing the close connection of years past.

Behind the Lines

Many years ago, I relied on a wonderful school counselor for guidance and advice. During one of our conversations, she said: “I’m not trying to give you a script here…”

I interrupted her: “Why not? I really like your scripts!”

It turns out, her husband hated it when she scripted conversations for him, so she was avoiding providing me with lines.

This counselor’s husband would like Untangled as much as I do, because Damour provides both sample scripts to follow and the logic behind them.

Here’s an example (lightly edited with ellipses) on the topic of sexting:

Find an opportunity to say something such as, “I’ve heard that some boys think it’s okay to text a girl…to ask her to send nude photos or do sexual things. This goes without saying, but just to say it, that’s totally inappropriate behavior on the guy’s part…” Your daughter might brush you off with, “Geez, of course I know that it’s wrong!” but your breath wasn’t wasted…Your daughter will be glad to hear that she’s not the one acting crazy.

For me, knowing both the lines and the reasons behind them makes her suggested words especially helpful.

“More Alike Than Different”

If you didn’t look closely at the subtitle to Untangled, then I may have succeeded in keeping a small secret up to now: Damour centers her book on the experience of adolescent girls. (Perhaps Damour’s next book will focus on boys. Potential title: emBATtled MAN)

I’ve postponed mentioning this focus for a simple reason: much of Damour’s analysis and guidance applies equally well to girls and boys. And—although she pauses every now and then to note gendered differences in adolescent experience—Damour is refreshingly non-doctrinaire about those differences. As she writes in her introduction, “Fundamentally, girls and boys are more alike than they are different, so don’t be surprised to discover that some of the stories and advice that follow speak to your experience of knowing or raising [or, I would add, teaching] a teenage boy.”

In short, while Untangled is informed by the experience of an all-girls school, it will benefit teachers of boys as well. (In fact, in her section on LGBTQ identity, Damour talks briefly about students who identify as transgender. In other words: gender is important in her analysis, but not absolute.)

Final Thoughts 

Given my enthusiasm for Untangled, you may wonder if Damour is a relative, or a creditor. (For the record, she is neither. My niece did attend Laurel School, but they never met.) Although this is one of the most helpful books about adolescents I’ve read in a while, I do think that teachers should approach it ready to make two kinds of translations.

First, Damour focuses on families: adolescent girls and their parents (and, to a lesser degree, siblings). Little of her advice is framed specifically for teachers. As a high school teacher, I do think that the “Seven Transitions” framework is greatly helpful in understanding our students’ behavior. Translating this framework to a teacher’s perspective, in other words, should be easy to do.

Second, teachers will necessarily balance Damour’s experience with their own; in some cases, we may simply disagree. I myself was surprised to read that—in extreme circumstances—she believes that paying students for grades is a least-bad option. For me, the other options would need to be dire indeed to resort to such a strategy.

Damour writes not only about a teen’s need to part with childhood, but also about several other key transitions: joining a “new tribe,” managing emotions, sexual discovery, and so forth. In each of these chapters, her insight, knowledge of research, humor, and empathy all make this tumultuous time seem familiar and manageable to the adults who teach and parent them.

Untangled was released February 2, 2016 and is available here.

Accepting The Need to Belong

Last fall, we heard about highly charged situations arising across countless college campuses. ^{1 2 3} Some people reacted strongly by name-calling and spreading accusations of “bad parenting” or “lack of discipline” to explain these students’ actions.⁴ As a student of education and psychology, I asked myself:

What are these students really asking for? Why are they protesting?

Of course, I’m not the first person to examine these questions. Annie Murphy Paul, a psychology journalist, answered these questions in her recent article in Time Magazine.⁵ What these students really want, she concludes, is a “sense of belonging.”

Over the years, students have repeatedly asserted their desire to belong. Two years ago at Harvard, for example, students of color started the “I too am Harvard” movement to increase representation of marginalized communities on campus.⁶ Again, they are sending the same message: I am here, and I want to feel that I belong here too.

What does it mean to “belong?” And what impact might it have on students’ academic achievement and motivation? After spending four years of their lives on a campus, what factors help students to reach a level of ease and comfort, where they can feel as much at home as their peers? What factors prevent them from feeling comfortable?

Perhaps it’s easier to start with what doesn’t make students feel like they belong. It may be a lack of teachers from minority groups. It might also be a lack of representation of students’ minority group in the books they read and the movies they watch in class. It may be that there are few role models for them to follow. It may be the normalization of the majority culture in education while marginalized communities subject areas are referred to as “ethnic studies”. It may be the exclusion of minority students in student government or groups. The list goes on and on.

Students are speaking up because they seem to feel that they are stuck in the “out-group”, and politics aside, from a psychological perspective, I hope we can all agree that’s not how our campuses should be making any student feel.

The Science of Belonging

When we find ourselves in situations where we are the “out- group” or in an environment in which we feel like an outsider, we use our mental energy to monitor for threats, leaving fewer resources for higher cognitive processes. When students feel as if they don’t belong in a school setting, the cognitive energy that should be used on social engagement and learning is being used to scan for group barriers, discrimination and stereotypes.

As adults, we rarely acknowledge the importance of fun. Being part of a social group in school encourages us and motivates us to go to class. As Lev Vygotsky put it, we are “social learners.”⁷ School is a time when you are finding your sense of identity, and this is largely determined through who we hang out with. It is important that students’ conceptions of their identities allow them to believe that academic work holds value for them. If they believe that speakers of their language and members of their gender, racial, and ethnic groups do not have the ability to attain certain academic standards, they will act according to that belief. This belief can sometimes lead to what Claude Steele refers to as “stereotype threat.” Stereotype threat is feeling “at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype” about their race, gender, ethnicity etc.⁸

Claude Steele, a social psychologist, posits that when a group’s stereotypes are emphasized, their academic performance tends to deteriorate. In one experiment, when Black college students’ race was emphasized, they performed worse on standardized tests than their White counterparts. When race was not mentioned, they performed on par and sometimes better than the White students. These results, along with others focusing on stereotypes pertaining to other groups, such as his experiments on female mathematicians, showed the harmful effects of being aware that you are being viewed through the lens of a stereotype.⁸ Several factors seem to cause this decrease in academic performance triggered by stereotype threat: anxiety, physiological stress, and reduced capacity of our working memory.⁹

For a person facing a stereotype threat, the process of thinking through the possibility of confirming a stereotype by performing badly on a test causes a great deal of anxiety. In turn, this anxiety places a drain on a student’s energy and cognitive resources. As a result, the capacity of working memory is diminished, and performance is impaired.

Working memory is the ability we have to mentally manipulate information over short periods of time. Working memory can be thought of as your scratch pad, or your personal search engine, or as a mental workspace that we can use to store important information in the course of our mental activities. You can see how having an impaired working memory could affect your ability to mentally search through vast quantities of information. Even if you did manage to remember the necessary information, your mental workspace may still be in disarray.

Stereotype threat has physiological, as well as cognitive, effects. Social threat or disconnection seems to be processed in the brain in the same way as the threat of physical harm.¹⁰ When the threat is detected, a range of neurophysiological processes are set in motion. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) goes into overdrive, releasing a hormone called cortisol. Not surprisingly, cortisol is often called the stress hormone. High levels of cortisol seem to decrease neural connections the hippocampus, part of the brain associated with learning and memory and stress control. ¹⁰ Cortisol can negatively impact the prefrontal cortex, an area associated with high-order cognitive abilities.

For more details watch this short clip from TEDEd on How Stress Affects the Brain.

As educators, we need to make it a priority to create an environment where our students strive and can learn to their full potential.

Why Belonging Matters in the Classroom 

Research has also shown that academic outcomes, such as motivation, dropout rates and academic performance, were correlated with feelings of belonging.¹¹ A study demonstrated that college students’ self-reported of level of school belonging in high school positively corresponded with academic achievement in college.¹²

Walton and Cohen studied what happened when minority students and white students were made aware of the percentage of people in their chosen field of study who belonged to their ethnic or racial group. They compared how this knowledge affected minority and white students’ performance in their chosen field. An intervention that mitigated any doubts of belonging in a specific field had a positive effect on academic achievement. ¹³

This finding is consistent with Ladson-Billing’s research, which found that having role models to look up to, whether through literature or a teacher, has an impact on students and how they define what is attainable.¹⁴

In this country there is a very clear image of what success looks like. These ideals of success apply to all domains of life, not just the academic aspects. If we are in the majority culture, then it may appear that the system works well – but that’s not always the case for marginalized students.

Often, it is not only in school that minority students do not feel they belong – it is in every facet of society. The problems faced in schools is the effect of bias in society at large. However, the school is one place where we should be able to completely control whether students’ voices can be heard and their opinions can be of value. The classroom has the unique opportunity to provide equal support and equitable opportunities to all students.

Will our students end up feeling the same when they reach college? What are we doing in our classrooms, in our cafeterias, on our playgrounds, to ensure that our students, staff and leadership feel as if they belong. Are we being intentional about how we structure our classrooms to encourage a sense of belonging?

Like earlier research, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also found that students who had a greater sense of belonging were more inclined to have a higher level of engagement in class and tended to have high levels of academic performance. ¹⁵ The report posits that student engagement has “more to do with the culture of the school, and teachers and principals can play a strong role in creating a positive culture.”

Other studies underscore the importance of the role of teachers and administrators, who have the power to enforce policies and practices that promote social inclusion for the enhancement of students’ engagement and overall academic performance.¹⁶

Moving Forward with Intention

Research has shown that having academic material mirror student’s’ home life and culture helps them relate to the curriculum and take ownership in learning, improving academic achievement in a significant way. ¹⁷ Culturally Responsive Teaching(CRT) aims to address these challenges. It makes an effort to legitimize all cultures. It gives students the space to take ownership of their cultural heritage. It shows them the value of maintaining this heritage and to do so with pride. There is an effort to create an environment where there are no subtle or overt pressures for students to disavow their own culture and assimilate to the majority culture.

Policies, practices of inclusion and CRT are a start, but I think that even before implementing these solutions, the first step needs to be a self- awareness. For our students to be accepting of one another the attitude shift must start at the adult level. If we, as the leadership, staff, or teachers, do not display an attitude of inclusiveness and celebrate differences, how can we expect our students to act any differently?

Change must start with us, the role models that students follow. We must be introspective and honest with ourselves, recognizing our own biases and assumptions. Do we expect less from the Hispanic student than we do from others? Do we quickly punish our black students and take time to listen to others? Can we empathize with our students? Do we want to make an effort to change how to run things in our classrooms?

This article is not intended to provide easy answers. It is merely raising awareness about important issues that are affecting our students right now. When we’re ready, we can start looking for some practical answers.

Let’s not be one of the teachers and school leaders who tell are students that they are still welcome, even if they “don’t fit the mould” of our institution.¹⁸ Let’s break that mould. There should be no mould based on race, ethnicity or socio economic status. We all should be welcome with our own individualized moulds. For it is in diversity that we truly flourish.

Belonging is important. Our social interactions greatly impact our ability to learn and excel academically. Our students need to feel they belong. From a young age, they need to feel they belong. I hope that our students won’t be fighting this same battle that college students are fighting today.

Let’s not put our students in the same place.

References & Further Reading

1. Kennedy, R. (2015). Black Tape at Harvard Law. The New York Times, November 27 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/opinion/black-tape-at-harvard-law.html?_r=0
2. Gebreyes, R. (2015). Yale Student Explains Why Students Were Offended By Halloween Costumes Email. HuffPost College, November 12 2015 Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yale-student-halloween-costumes-christakis_5644baa8e4b045bf3dedfe1e
3. Eligon, J. (2015). At University of Missouri, Black Students See a Campus Riven by Race. The New York Times, November 12 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/us/university-of-missouri-protests.html?_r=0
4. Kimball, R. (2015). Rise of the College Crybullies. The WallStreet Journal, November 13 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-the-college-crybullies-1447458587
5. Murphy Paul, A. (2015). The Yale Controversy is Really About Belonging. Time Magazine, November 11 2015. Retrieved from: http://time.com/4108632/yale-controversy-belonging/
6. Butler, B. (2014).‘I, Too, Am Harvard’: Black students show they belong. The Washington Post, March 5 2014. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/03/05/i-too-am-harvard-black-students-show-they-belong/
7. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society:The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press.
8. Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 797-811. doi:10.1037/0022- 3514.69.5.797
9. Schmader, T., Johns, M., & Forbes, C. (2008). An integrated process model of stereotype threat effects on performance. Psychological Review, 115, 336-356. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.115.2.336
10. Eisenberger N. & Cole S.W. (2012). Social neuroscience and health: neurophysiological mechanisms linking social ties with physical health. Nature neuroscience, 15 (5), 669-74
11. Osterman, K. F. (2000). Students’ need for belonging in the school community. Review of Educational Research, 70, 323-367. doi:10.3102/00346543070003323
12. Pittman, L. D. & Richmond, A. (2007). Academic and psychological functioning in late adolescence: The importance of school belonging. The Journal of Experimental Education, 75, 270-290. doi:10.3200/JEXE.75.4.270-292
13. Walton, G. M. & Cohen, G.L. (2007). A question of belonging: race, social fit, and achievement. J Pers. Soc. Psychology, 92(1), 82-96.
14. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995a).  Multicultural teacher education: Research, practice, and policy.  In J.A. Banks & C.A.M. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education(pp. 747-759). New York: Macmillan.
15. Willms J.D. (2000). Student Engagement At School and A Sense of Belonging and Participation. Retrieved from:http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/programmeforinternationalstudentassessmentpisa/33689437.pdf
16. Reichl, C. J. (2000). The principal’s role in creating inclusive schools for diverse students: A review of normative, empirical, and critical literature on the practice of educational administration. Review of Educational Research 70 (1): 55–81.
17. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995b). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy.  Theory Into Practice, 34(3), 159-165.
18. Zeilinger, J. (2015).These Students Were Told They Don’t Fit Their College’s Mold But They’re Fighting Back. November 13 2015. Retrieved from: http://mic.com/articles/128453/these-students-were-told-they-don-t-fit-their-college-s-mold-but-they-re-fighting-back#.44mUgwf7Q
19. Bidgood, J. (2016). Students Say Racial Hostilities Simmered at Historic Boston Latin School. The New York Times, January 30th 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/education/students-say-racial-hostilities-simmered-at-historic-boston-latin-school.html

• Faircloth, B. S., & Hamm, J. V. (2005). Sense of belonging among high school students representing 4 ethnic groups. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 34(4), 293-309. 10.1007/s10964-005-5752-7
• Schmader, T. (2010). Stereotype threat deconstructed. Cur- rent Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 14-18. doi: 10.1177/0963721409359292
• During the course of writing this article news emerged from Boston Latin School of similar issues. Read more here

My first year of teaching, I was all about bribery; I had no problem stocking an endless supply of bulk mixed candy bags, so long as I thought it could help my students learn.

Though the Starburst and Twix caught their attention, I had mixed feelings about using rewards in my classroom. Like many teachers and parents, I wanted my students to take the right steps—like completing their homework, answering review questions, and organizing their notebooks—for themselves. But if my 9^th graders were having trouble linking their short term actions to their long term goals, I reasoned, what was the harm in using a couple of fun-sized treats to ease the way? Was I sending the wrong messages about the reasons for doing work? What about healthy eating? And weren’t grades in themselves a kind of reward system, anyway?

Soon enough, bribery fell by the wayside. Instead of relying on tangible rewards to get things done, I could count on my classroom culture and partnerships with families. Still, the occasional promise of getting to pick a prize did make for more riveting review days.

What I didn’t know was that there is rich knowledge on motivation and learning that can tell us when rewards are most useful, and when they’re a distraction or waste of effort. Of course, science isn’t designed to tell us exactly what rewards are appropriate in the classroom, but there’s now enough evidence for teachers, schools, and communities to make an informed decision.

Here’s what we know about how offering concrete, tangible rewards tends to affect behavior:

1. To make rewards more enticing, offer them ASAP.

Rewards can be effective at changing decision-making and behavior, and it’s a no-brainer that rewards are more effective when they have a high value.

However, a surprisingly important part of this value calculation is when a reward is delivered. The phenomenon of assigning less value to future rewards is called “delay discounting.” Some research suggests that rewards offered immediately are processed using a separate neural system than those involving a time delay.¹

So if a powerful reward system is what you’re after, choose something students want and minimize the time between the effort and the gain. The promise of an end-of-year pizza party may be too distant to convince students to work harder now.

2. When it comes to rewards, be careful what you wish for.

Because rewards are generally effective at producing more of what’s being rewarded, it’s important to be thoughtful about deciding what to reward.

Cognitive scientist and popular book author Daniel Willingham uses this example:

When I was in fourth grade, my class was offered a small prize for each book we read. Many of us quickly developed a love for short books with large print, certainly not the teacher’s intent.²

A reward system based on producing a quantity of work may do little to improve the quality of work,³ and some suggest that it may even incentivize students to sacrifice quality.

3. Need to learn something boring? Rewards can help.

In one study, offering money improved people’s memory for the answers to trivia questions—but only for uninteresting questions.⁴ Also, this was only the case after a time delay. On average, people remembered the answers to interesting trivia questions at a similar rate whether or not they were offered money.

This suggests that tangible rewards may be valuable in boosting performance when it comes to learning boring items—but not if the learner is cramming.

Though this hypothesis remains untested, the authors of the study suggest that this may be due to the time it takes to complete a well-known memory stabilizing process. This process requires communication between the midbrain, a part of the brain where reward-related neurotransmitter dopamine is produced, and the hippocampus, an area of the brain often involved in learning and encoding new information). The authors propose that communication between these reward and learning regions might explain their results.⁴ 

4. In some cases, offering rewards for doing something can reduce the likelihood of it recurring.

We’ve known for decades that in some circumstances, receiving rewards can lower intrinsic motivation, or how much you’re driven to do something based on internal factors (like preference or passion). In a 1973 study, some 3-5 year old children were told that they would receive a certificate for drawing, others received a surprise certificate after drawing, and a third group received no certificate at all.⁵

Later, when given free access to drawing materials, the children who were told beforehand about the reward spent less time drawing than the others.

Surprisingly, when an anticipated reward goes away, people don’t just revert back to whatever they were doing before. In some cases, they’ll perform the rewarded behavior even less.

This is called sometimes called the “undermining effect” (or sometimes the “overjustification hypothesis”). And it’s particularly true for behaviors that people were motivated to do in the first place. Basically, it suggests that if there’s something you like doing and want to do anyway, working for a reward might reduce how much you do it. 

Recently, researchers have examined this phenomenon in the brain using fMRI.⁶ In one study, participants played an enjoyable game in the scanner. One group was told they’d be rewarded with money for playing well, while another group was told they’d receive a bonus based on how well someone else played.

Later, both groups played the game in the scanner a second time without bonuses. When scoring in this round, the group whose own performance was previously tied to money had decreased blood flow (suggesting less neural activity) in the striatum and midbrain as compared to the control group. The striatum and midbrain are both thought to be involved in processing reward feedback. Based on these findings, the researchers suggest that initially playing for money decreased the perceived value of scoring in the game.

5. It’s possible to “undermine the undermining effect” ⁷

How does the undermining effect work?

Some scientists think that being rewarded for a behavior partially “overwrites” our original motivation. This would suggest that the 3-5 year old children in the study (described in #4) started out believing “Drawing is something I do for fun”. Working for a reward then partially overwrote that motivation with “Drawing is something I do for certificates.” Changes in underlying motivation are thought to be partially responsible for changing how people behave.

One strategy for protecting against the undermining effect might be to actively “overwrite” the motivation with something durable to encourage students to persist even when rewards have vanished.

In one study, giving 3^rd-5^th grade students a personally-relevant reason to do a tedious handwriting activity (without the promise of a reward) was associated with greater time spent on the activity when they were no longer rewarded.⁷ This personal reason came in the form of complimenting the students with a trait label either before or after the reward. The researchers said to the students,

You know, I thought you’d say you wanted to do this handwriting activity because you look like the kind of [girl/boy] who understands how important it is to write correctly, and who really wants to be good at it.⁷

While the limitations of this approach are still unknown, the researchers noted that this was a bit ironic: instead of undermining motivation with a reward, they were able to undermine the reward with motivation!

How should we use rewards in the classroom?

Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham makes three suggestions for educators when it comes to using rewards in the classroom²:

1) Consider possible alternatives.

2) Use rewards for a specific reason, like conquering the times tables or motivating a student who is no longer willing to try.

3) Have a defined ending that limits how long the incentive system is in play.

Willingham suggests that it makes sense to develop tangible reward structures toward concrete learning goals, like learning the multiplication tables, the elements of the periodic tables, or the events on a historical timeline. When the reward system ends, students might stop engaging in the rewarded behavior—but if it comes at a point when they’re ready to move on anyway, it’s not a problem. When they’ve learned the material and the reward structure ends, the class can move on to more complex, interesting questions that rely on this basic knowledge.²

On the other hand, it might not make sense to use tangible reward structures for teaching lifelong habits. Willingham points out that implementing long-term reward structures cost a lot of time and energy, and the rewarded behaviors tend to stop when the rewards stop. This is not to recommend against responding to positive habits, but to find other ways to do so, like praise.²

In the end, rewards are a complicated and much-debated topic. They can be effective at shaping behavior. But some find their use to be deeply problematic. And, as Education Week teacher and author Justin Minkel points out, rewards are a lousy substitute for cultivating a profound love of learning.

That said, science adds a perspective that can help educators reflecting on how and when they’d like to use rewards—if at all.

 

References & Further Reading

1. McClure, S. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). Separate Neural Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary Rewards. Science, 306, 503–507. [Paper]
2. Willingham, D. T. (2007). Should Learning Be Its Own Reward? [Link]
3. Jenkins, G. D. J., Gupta, N., Mitra, A., & Shaw, J. D. (1998). Are financial incentives related to performance? A meta-analytic review of empirical research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(5), 777–787. [Paper]
4. Murayama, K., & Kuhbandner, C. (2011). Money enhances memory consolidation–but only for boring material. Cognition, 119(1), 120–4. [Paper]
5. Lepper, M. R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1973). Undermining children’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the “overjustification” hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(1), 129–137. [Paper]
6. Murayama, K., Matsumoto, M., Izuma, K., & Matsumoto, K. (2010). Neural basis of the undermining effect of monetary reward on intrinsic motivation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(49), 20911–6. [Paper]
7. Cialdini, R. B., Eisenberg, N., Green, B. L., Rhoads, K., & Bator, R. (1998). Undermining the Undermining Effect of Reward on Sustained Interest. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28(3), 249–263. [Paper]

• Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M.. (2001). Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation in Education: Reconsidered Once Again. Review of Educational Research, 71(1), 1–27. [Paper]