July 2017 – Education & Teacher Conferences

Helping Students Study Well: The Missing Plank in the Bridge?

Andrew Watson

July-30-2017

Helping Students Study Well: The Missing Plank in the Bridge?

Ok: you’ve taught your students a particular topic, and you’ve provided them with lots of ways to review and practice for the upcoming test. But, will they do so?

How can you ensure that they prepare most effectively?

Patricia Chen’s research team studied a surprisingly simple answer to this question. You might help your students study by asking them to think about the approaches that they will use–and, to make specific plans.

Chen & Co. asked students to follow a four step process:

Step 1: students wrote about the kind of questions they expected on the test.

Step 2: they then chose the resources they wanted to use to prepare for those questions. The checklist from which they chose included 15 options, such as “go over practice exam questions,” “go to professor’s office hours,” and “work with a peer study group.”

Step 3: they wrote why and how they thought each of the resources they selected might be helpful.

Step 4: they made specific and realistic plans about where and when they would use those resources.

Compared to a control group–who were simply reminded that they should study for the upcoming exam–students in this group averaged 1/3 of a letter grade higher.

For example, students in the control group had an average class grade of 79.23. Those who went through these 4 steps had an average grade of 83.44.

That’s a lot of extra learning from asking four basic questions.

What Should We Do?

Chen’s research team worked with college students studying statistics. Do their conclusions apply to–say–5th graders studying history? Or, 10th graders learning chemistry?

As is so often the case, individual teachers will make this judgment call on their own. Now that you’ve got a good study suggesting that this method might work, you can think over your own teaching world–your students, your curriculum, your approach to teaching–and see if this technique fits.

In case you decide to do so, I will offer three additional suggestions.

First: check out Gollwizer’s work on “implementation intentions.” His idea overlaps with Chen’s work, and would pair with it nicely.

Second: I’m a little concerned that Chen’s list of proposed study strategies included two options we know don’t help–reviewing notes and rereading the text. (If my skepticism about those two methods surprises you, check out Ian Kelleher’s post here.) Your list of study strategies should NOT include those suggestions.

Third: as always, keep working memory limitations in mind. The kind of meta-cognition that Chen outlines can clearly benefit students, but it also might overwhelm their ability to keep many ideas in mind at the same time.

However, if we can prevent working memory overload, this strategy just might help bridge the gap between “I taught it” and “they learned it.” As is so often the case, a key plank in that bridge is: asking students to think just a little bit more..

Andrew Watson

July-27-2017

How to Lie with Graphs

A handy video from Ted Education gives some pointers on spotting misleading graphs. Pay close attention to their warnings about meddling with the y-axis. Believe it or not, this sort of thing happens frequently in the world of science publishing.

(If you’re interested in visual representation of data, I encourage you to look up the work of Edward Tufte. He’s written some amazing books, and is a fun and provocative thinker.)

One note about the Ted Ed video: its has clear political leanings–so clear, in fact, that I’ve hesitated in linking to it. I hope that you will watch it, because its suggestions are both both important and useful. Rest assured: my goal is not to sway your political views, but to give you a helpful tool in analyzing scientific information.

Andrew Watson

July-24-2017

“One Size Fits All” Rarely Fits

If you attend Learning and the Brain conferences, or read this blog regularly, you know all about the well-researched benefits of retrieval practice. (You can read earlier articles on this subject here and here.)

The short version of the story: if we ask students to recall ideas or processes that they have learned, they are likelier to learn those ideas/processes deeply than if we simply go over them again.

But, does retrieval practice always work?

The question answers itself: almost nothing always works. (The exception: in my experience, donuts always work.)

Over at The Learning Scientists, Cindy Wooldridge writes about her attempt to use retrieval practice in her class–and the dismaying results.

From her attempt, Wooldridge reaches several wise conclusions. Here are two of them:

Another very important take-away is that learning science is not one size fits all. Just because we say retrieval practice works, doesn’t mean it works in all scenarios and under all circumstances.

This is why it’s so important to be skeptical. Use objective measures to assess whether and how a teaching strategy is working for your students and take time to do some reflection on how and why it worked (or didn’t). This is another great example of a time when my intuition said that this absolutely should work, but we should follow the evidence and not just intuition.

To learn more about her effort and her conclusions, click here.

Rates of ADHD Diagnosis: Age, Gender, and Race

Andrew Watson

July-21-2017

Rates of ADHD Diagnosis: Age, Gender, and Race

Dr. David Rabiner offers a helpful summary of trends in ADHD diagnoses.

The short version: rates of diagnosis continue to increase.

The longer version: depending how you analyze the categories, you get very different results. For children younger than 5, the rates are — in fact — falling. For adults over 65, however, the rate rose 348% from 2008-9 to 2012-13.

(That is not a typo: 348%).

One important point as you review these data: percentages are interesting, but so too are the absolute numbers. Diagnoses among those over 65 can increase so much as a percentage because the absolute numbers are relatively low.

By the way: analysis by gender shows an interesting pattern. Among adults, both diagnosis and medication are increasing faster for men than women. Among children, however, that pattern is reversed.

Chocolate and Cocoa Help You Learn, Right?

Andrew Watson

July-19-2017

Chocolate and Cocoa Help You Learn, Right?

What’s not to love? The photo shows a mug of cocoa, with an already-nibbled chocolate bar in the background. Even better, the headline alerts us that both the cocoa and the chocolate “enhance cognitive abilities and memory.”

For once, this headline is not overselling the scientific article. In the abstract, the authors really do say

Although still at a preliminary stage, research investigating the relations between cocoa and cognition shows dose-dependent improvements in general cognition, attention, processing speed, and working memory.

WOW.

The authors even use the word “nutraceutical”–new to me–to emphasize that chocolate is both nutritious and pharmaceutically beneficial.

New that sounds this good can’t be true. Can it?

Maybe the News Really Is That Good

For their review, Valentina Socci’s team assembles a solid list of articles touting the physical benefits of cocoa flavanols: compared to control groups, those who have chocolate or cocoa over several days/weeks show better blood pressure, insulin resistance, and brain blood flow.

They also show exciting changes in various kinds of brain activity. One study, looking at a particular measure of brain activity (SSVEP), showed

changes in SSVEP average amplitude and phase across several posterior parietal and centro-frontal sites that indicated an increased neural efficiency in response to the working memory task.

Increased neural efficiency on a working memory task! Now you’ve got my attention…

Then Again, Maybe Not…

All that chocolate may have changed SSVEP average amplitude and phase. However, as teachers, we don’t really care about that: we care about learning. Did this “increase in neural efficiency” actually improve working memory?

Nope.

Similarly, another study showed that chocolate improved neural activity “in various brain regions in response to an attention switching task.”

But, that improved neural activity didn’t make them any better at switching attention.

In fact, of the six studies that focus specifically on one-time doses (not weeks-long doses), two showed no meaningful cognitive differences for those who had chocolate/cocoa, and the others showed differences in some measures or some participants–but not in all.

In other words, the research is suggestive and interesting, but hardly persuasive.

Who Is Learning?

I suspect that most of the people reading this blog are in the world of PK-12 education. How many of the people being studied were PK-12 students?

None.

For the studies looking at one-time doses of cocoa, most were in college.

For the studies looking at daily shots, many (most?) of the participants were older than 55.

In fact, many of these studies focused on people with some kind of cognitive impairment: typically dementia.

Reasonable Conclusions

Based on the data gathered here, I think we can reasonably say that for older people–especially those with some cognitive problems–cocoa flavanols might have some physiological benefits (blood pressure, insulin levels), and might even offer some cognitive boosts as well.

That’s exciting and helpful if you teach people, and especially if you are taking care of someone, in that group. (If you’re looking after someone with dementia, by the way, don’t rely on a blog for medical advice: talk with a doctor.)

However, we have no good reason to think that chocolate offers cognitive benefits for PK-12 students. Perhaps it does–but this article simply doesn’t present direct evidence to support that conclusion.

At the same time, I am entirely willing to hypothesize that chocolate offers substantial emotional benefits. For this reason, S’mores will be served at the upcoming Learning and the Brain Conference…

Memory Training That Really (Sort of) Works

Andrew Watson

July-16-2017

Memory Training That Really (Sort of) Works

Imagine yourself following a route that you know quite well: perhaps your morning commute. You take your car out of your garage; drive past the Dunkin’ Donuts, past the old movie theater, past the grocery store; you park in your favorite spot, walk through the lobby, down the library corridor…

You can easily think of these places in order because you’ve followed this same path hundreds of times. Well, an ancient memory trick takes advantage of your well-rehearsed visual memory.

If you have–say–a list of words to memorize, you can take some time to associate each word with those places. For example, if you have to memorize the words “tomato, airplane, tuba,” you can create a vivid picture of a tomato splatted on your garage door, an airplane flying over the Dunkin’ Donuts, and a tuba band marching in front of the movie theater.

You can then recall those words simply by mentally following your morning commute to work.

Even if you have a very long list of words, this method still works; you can, after all, visualize many, many places along this familiar route.

The Research Questions:

This memory trick–called “the method of loci”–has been around for centuries. Memory champions typically win memory contests by using it. But, can just anyone do it? Do you need to be born with a special memory talent?

Martin Dresler’s research team answers some of these questions. He started by scanning the brains of memory champions while they did some memory feats, hoping to discern neural patterns associated with excellent memory.

He also scanned some non-memory experts as a baseline for comparison.

Sure enough, he found connectivity patterns that helped distinguish between these two groups.

Next, he trained those non-memory experts in two memory techniques. One group practiced the method-of-loci approach for 40 days, 30 minutes each day.

The other group used a well-established short-term memory exercise. (Perhaps you’ve heard of the n-back test.)

What did the researchers find?

The Research Answers:

First, the method of loci really helped. Those trained in this method more than doubled their ability to remember words on a list. (Those who did short-term memory training saw little more improvement than control subjects.)

Equally interesting: the method of loci training created the neural patterns that Dresler had found in the memory experts.

That is: this training paradigm BOTH helped participants remember more words AND changed their brain connectivity patterns.*

In other words: we have two really good reasons to believe that method of loci training helps people remember word lists.

The Inevitable Caveat

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know I’m going to point out a downside sooner or later. That moment has arrived.

First, the method of loci helps students do something we don’t often ask them to do: remember lists of unrelated words. It’s a cool party trick, sure. But, at what point do we care if our students can do such things?

For example: I suspect the method of loci could be used to help students learn all the elements in the periodic table in order. But–why would we want them to do that? Would such knowledge meaningfully improve their understanding of chemistry?

Second, notice the extraordinary about of time the training took: 30 minutes a day for 40 days! Imagine what else you could do with those twenty hours.

So, I’m not exactly opposed to teaching the method of loci; I’m just unimpressed by it. The method requires lots of training time, and creates a benefit that doesn’t help very much.

If, by the way, you have a good use for this method, please let me know. I’d love to hear about its practical classroom uses.

_______________________________________________________

Although it’s true that this training changed the brains of those who participated in it, it’s also true–as I’ve written before–that any activity repeated at length changes your brain. This finding is interesting, but not exactly surprising.

Bold Moves for Schools: How We Create Remarkable Learning Environments by Heidi Hayes Jacob and Marie Hubley Alcock

Rebecca Gotlieb

July-14-2017

Bold Moves for Schools: How We Create Remarkable Learning Environments by Heidi Hayes Jacob and Marie Hubley Alcock

Today’s learners have different needs than those of yesterday. Educators and policy makers, therefore, need to rethink optimal learning environments. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, founder and president of Curriculum Designers, and Marie Hubley Alcock, president of the education consulting company Learning System Associates, help educators and policy makers contemporize education spaces, curriculum, and pedagogical practices with their new book Bold Moves for Schools: How We Create Remarkable Learning Environments.

The authors argue for the need for updated learning principles, enumerate and explain skills of the effective contemporary teacher, and explain options that have emerged recently for expanding learning environments. Jacobs and Alcock offer guidance about selecting and updating curricula and assessments, especially in light of the significant problems associated with current standardized assessments. They advocate for the benefits of more shared leadership in educational settings. Jacobs and Alcock offer a realistic and progressive vision for how the skilled educators of today can push education practice forward to help prepare students for tomorrow. They urge educators to learn and develop themselves always. With the recommended readings and study guide questions in Bold Moves for Schools, this book can help educators do exactly that.

The authors argue that reformers can begin to affect change by considering education practices that are antiquated and should be eliminated, classical and ought to be preserved, and contemporary and ought to be formulated and expanded. For example, while we should discontinue thinking of students as empty vessels and teachers as disseminators of knowledge, we should think of students as budding creative and critical thinkers whom teachers are responsible for nurturing. Today’s learners need to develop skill in directing their own learning process, building social contracts, critiquing and producing media, innovating, and acting as global citizens. Teachers need to model these skills for their students and advocate for effective, contemporary learning practices. The authors offer bulleted lists of action steps to help teachers develop each of these skills.

In addition to changes in the teaching profession, there must be changes made also to the content taught. Experimental learning, learning that takes place outside the classroom, and learning that is organized around a topic or issue rather than an academic subject can help energize students’ learning by allowing them to feel a sense of ownership and offering opportunities for personalization based on students’ needs.

Schools can update the way they think about learning space, teaching time, the grouping of learners, and the group of teachers to improve learning. For example, rather than grouping students based on age, students could be grouped by interest. Similarly, rather than grouping teachers based on the subjects they teach, groupings ought to be more dynamic, multi-dimensional, and collegial. The benefits of strong professional learning communities should be stressed to teachers. A lateral, collaborative leadership structure within schools and the education system might help make it possible for more innovation. Making major changes in schools can be difficult. Jacobs and Alcock suggest setting up planning teams to help with changes, clarifying a school’s mission, and seeking feedback at multiple levels, including from students before implementing changes.

According to the authors one major issue that has stymied learning in a major way is our accountability system. The exaggerated focus on high stakes tests makes teachers feel a lack of trust and respect, diminishes the appeal of the teaching profession, and discourages collaboration among teachers. It leads to untested, but valuable, subjects being eliminated or whittled down, and it stifles creative and critical thinking. Testing and accountability matter, but we need a radical shift in what assessments look like. They should be authentic, based in performance of real-world tasks and skills, based on measuring innovation and student growth and development, take place over an extended period of time, and include input from students.

We are departing from the industrial age for the information age. Learning environments need to change to keep up. With the help of Bold Moves for Schools Educators and policy makers can use the objective of improving learning as the starting point for the modernization of learning environments.

Jacobs, H. H., & Alcock, M. H. (2017). Bold Moves for Schools: How We Create Remarkable Learning Environments. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Andrew Watson

July-13-2017

Interrupting Skilled Students

Here’s a sentence that won’t surprise you: practice typically makes us more skilled at the activity we’re practicing.

Here’s a sentence that might surprise you: practice makes us more vulnerable to mistakes after an interruption.

So, for example, if my students have just learned how to solve for three variables with three equations, then an interruption will have some effect on them when they get back to work.

If, however, they have spent some time getting familiar with the process of solving for three variables with three equations, then an interruption will distract them even more.

Said a different way: an interruption may distract your relatively advanced students more than your less advanced students.

Counter-intuitive?

My first response to this research finding was straightforward puzzlement. Why are experienced students more distractible than neophytes?

As I’ve thought more about this study, I’ve had an idea. If I’m experienced at a step-by-step activity, then I’m probably not paying full attention to each step as I go through the process. After all, my experience lets me work almost by rote. In this case, an interruption is quite a problem, because I wasn’t really focused on my place in the list of steps.

However, if I’m a newbie, I’m likely to be focusing quite keenly on each step, and so–after a distraction–am likelier to remember where I left off.

Teaching Implications

In the first place, this study by Altmann and Hambrick is the only one I know of that reaches this conclusion. Until their results are replicated, we ought to be interested in, but not obsessed by, their findings.

Second, we should note that relative expertise does have occasional disadvantages. We shouldn’t assume that our accomplished students won’t be fuddled by a classroom interruption–in fact, they might be more so than their still-struggling peers.

Third, I for one will be on the lookout for this pattern in my own work. In theory at least, I’m the expert in my classroom, and so I might be more discombobulated than my students by a distraction during a rote task.

Given this research, I now know to turn to my least confident students for a reminder of where were were.

Lindsay Clements

July-10-2017

A Tale of Two Analyses

For researchers and research-readers alike, the data analysis portion of a study is many things: complex, exciting, frustrating, intriguing, and sometimes even befuddling.

And, analytics are always on the move. With each new study, researchers are developing increasingly intricate and elegant ways to make meaning of their data. At the same time, powerful statistical software, like SPSS or Stata, is continuously expanding its capability to process such sophisticated research designs.

Certainly, many long hours go into choosing a study’s analytic approach. Researchers must develop and refine their hypotheses; organize their data in such a way that statistical software can read it; and choose a statistical method (i.e., a mathematical approach) to test their research questions.

That last part about choosing a statistical method is where things can get tricky. In general, different statistical methods are not simply multiple ways of doing the same thing. Whereas something like a division problem may use different techniques (e.g., long division, trial- and-error) to get the same result, different statistical methods can analyze the same data yet produce differing, and even contradictory, results.

Differences in design: A little goes a long way

Just as French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre liked to say “we are our choices,” in many ways our research results are our choices, too.

A study conducted by Burchinal & Clarke-Stewart illustrates this well. [1] These authors noticed that two different research teams had analyzed the same longitudinal data set, yet found (and published) substantially different results.

These two research teams analyzed data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care: a large, national study that followed the development of 1,364 children from six months of age. Both teams were also interested in the same question: what is the impact of mothers’ employment, and children’s subsequent nonmaternal child care, on children’s early cognitive growth?

The NICHD Early Child Care Researchers (Team 1) were first in line to test this question. After a series of analyses, this team concluded that the age at which children entered nonmaternal care, and the amount of time spent in such care, showed no relation to children’s cognitive performance up to age three. [2]

Next, Team 2 (Brooks-Gunn, Han, & Waldfogel, 2002) tested this same question. However, in contrast to the Team 1, they concluded that mothers’ full-time employment during children’s first nine months was indeed associated with impaired cognitive functioning when the children were three years of age. [3]

Speaking different analytic languages

The contradictory findings between these two research teams were not only curious, but also important to reconcile. After all, the difference between advising mothers of young children to work or not work is a big one. And, such a recommendation has implications for state and federal programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, that assist young mothers in finding employment.

Burchinal & Clarke-Stewart therefore conducted a new, third study investigating how each team’s analytic design may have engendered the contradictory results.

Two approaches

First, Team 1 team used a conservative, top-down analytic approach. This approach:

uses all available information, such as multiple outcome variables and data from all participants
begins with a general test of significant relations between variables and works its way down to more specific comparisons
helps researchers avoid exaggerating the significance of associations found when working with large data sets

Team 2, on the other hand, used an a priori comparison approach. This technique:

examines hypotheses and variable relations chosen by researchers before (a priori) data exploration
utilizes a small subset of participants and/or variables in order to conduct a small set of comparisons between explicitly chosen participants and/or variables
is helpful when theory or previous research strongly implies a relation between specific variables or constructs

Thus, it seemed likely that investigating a smaller group of participants, and analyzing a smaller set of outcome data, contributed to Team 2’s finding of a relation between maternal employment and children’s cognitive growth. On the other hand, utilizing the full set of study participants, and analyzing all possible child outcome data, seemed to result in Team 1’s lack of such a finding.

To confirm this hypothesis, Burchinal & Clarke-Stewart analyzed the same participants and variables that Team 2 did; but, they used the top-down approach this time. The result of these new analyses? No significant findings.

The authors therefore reported Team 1’s findings—that is: it doesn’t hurt young children for their mothers to get a job—as being a more reliable take-away.

A cautionary tale

It is important to note that both the top-down approach and the a priori comparison approach are well-respected and well-established analytic techniques. And, as with all analytic techniques, each has strengths, weaknesses, and research questions for which its use is optimal.

But a study such as the one conducted by Burchinal & Clarke-Stewart provides an important cautionary tale. That is, when we, as consumers of research findings, draw conclusions from empirical work, it is important to remain attentive to the type of analyses that were used to engender such claims.

Of course, we probably won’t all end up being experts in all areas of analytic approach. But perhaps a good rule of thumb is that when we see a small amount of data being used to make big claims, it’s best to take a second look, get a second opinion, or see if the study has been replicated a second time.

References

[1] Burchinal, M.R. & Clarke-Stewart, K.A. (2007). Maternal employment and child cognitive outcomes: The importance of analytic approach. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1140-1155.

[2] Brooks-Gunn, J., Han, W.J., & Waldfogel, J. (2002). Maternal employment and child cognitive outcomes in the first three years of life: The NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Child Development, 73, 1052–1072.

[3] National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network. (2000). The relation of child care to cognitive and language development. Child Development, 71, 960–980.

Andrew Watson

July-07-2017

Dangerous Authenticity?

Here’s an odd question: is it ever a bad idea for teachers to be authentic?

In a recent study, Johnson and LaBelle surveyed students to discover the teacher behaviors that struck them as “authentic.”

By closely analyzing the students’ descriptions of “authentic” teachers, they came up with four broad categories. According to their findings, authentic teachers are…

… Approachable (for example: they tell appropriate personal stories and jokes)

… Passionate (they’re excited about their subject matter)

… Attentive (they know their students’ names)

… Capable (they stay on top of assignments)

Unsurprisingly, “inauthentic” teachers do the opposite (and, are Disrespectful to boot).

Johnson and LaBelle acknowledge that this research includes some methodological quirks.

In particular, paradoxically, the fact that students describe these behaviors as “authentic” doesn’t mean that they are authentically “authentic” for all teachers.

For example: “authentic” teachers are approachable, and approachable teachers tell jokes. But, what if you’re not a joker? Maybe your sense of humor is quieter than that. Or maybe, while you appreciate a good joke told by others, you’re just not comfortable telling them yourself.

Should you adopt “authentic” teacher behaviors even if they’re not authentic to you?

Zooming Out

This question–which Johnson and LaBelle raise but don’t answer–hovers over much of the research you’ll hear about at Learning and the Brain Conferences.

Let’s imagine that you come to the November LatB conference, which will focus on the intersection of teaching and technology. You might attend a session that warns about the distractions that technology creates, and the attentional benefits that movement can provide.

On the one hand, this argument might make good sense to you. You know of several computer programs that might help your students, and you’re happy to know that they’ll be less distracted by technology if they’ve had a chance to move about recently.

On the other hand, as you listen to the speaker’s list of movement strategies (Have them move into small groups! Require students to change their seats every 20 minutes! Ask 5 students to write their answers on the board!), you might feel a growing dread.

Those strategies might seem like a good fit for the speaker. And, based on the fact that everyone around you is nodding energetically, you conclude they’re eager to give them a go.

But here’s the thing: that’s just not you. You simply can’t imagine directing your students about in some elaborate traffic-control exercise. You’re feeling a little embarrassed just thinking about it.

We’ve got good research showing the benefits of this particular teaching behavior. And, alas, that beneficial teaching behavior just doesn’t mesh with the persona you bring to the classroom.

So, what should you do?

Hard Questions, Tentative Answers

For starters, I think you should be suspicious of anyone who thinks this is an easy question.

On the one had, research has powerful answers to lots of questions about good and bad teaching. On the other hand, research mostly looks at AVERAGES.

And here’s the thing: you are not average. Your students aren’t average either. Your school isn’t average.

You are an agglomeration of unique particulars, and some research-established average might not apply to you.

That hard truth goes double when the teaching practice under discussion runs counter to something deep in your personality.

Here’s the best answer I got. In my view, you can decline particular teaching practices, but you shouldn’t ignore the broader topic within which those practices reside.

To go back to my “attention and movement” example: you can decide that you won’t rely on movement to focus your students. After all, that’s just not you.

But, you can’t overlook the topic of attention itself. There are MANY other teaching strategies you can use to foster attention, and–especially if you’re going to set this one strategy aside-you’ll need to be even more attentive and thoughtful about the other strategies that you have at hand.

Imagine a Venn diagram. Once circle represents all the teaching practices that have research support. A second represents those that students find “authentic.” A third represents those that are, in fact, authentic to you.

Find the teaching practices that fit in all three of those circles–you’ve found the best place to be.

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