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Yearly Archives: 2019

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Obsessed with Working Memory: Resources
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August-22-2019

Obsessed with Working Memory: Resources

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We’ve taken the summer to explore working memory together.

You know how to define it.

You know key facts about it.

You can anticipate and recognize working memory overload.

And, you can solve those WM problems.

To conclude this series, I’d like to give you a few extra WM resources to draw upon.

The Book, and The Web

I’ve written a book about working memory called Learning Begins. In fact, the articles from this summer draw heavily on the structure of that book. If you have enjoyed this overview, I hope you’ll enjoy its fuller exploration as well.

This post by Efrat Furst explores the relationship between working memory and long-term memory.

This gif by Nick Harvey Smith prompted GREAT discussions at a recent presentation on WM.

Adam Boxer summarizes Cognitive Load Theory here. As Boxer explains, CLT wasn’t created with teachers in mind. I myself find it a) really interesting and b) more jargony than is useful for most teachers. But, if you want a deep dive, this is a great place to dig. (More CTL resources here.)

You can test out your own working memory — and experience WM overload — here.

The Research and the Researchers

Unsurprisingly, psychologists and neuroscientists have published thousands of research studies on the subject of working memory. This list gives a brisk introduction to the topics, opinions, and approaches you can find once you start exploring.

 

What, exactly, are the differences between short-term, long-term, and working memory? Nelson Cowan has some answers.

Alan Baddeley offers the best known model of WM. He summarizes his research and opinions here.

How does WM develop during school years? Susan Gathercole has data.

Nope. WM training does not work. Really, just, no.

WM works more efficiently with information we already know well than with new information (like the information students get because “they can just look it up on the internet”).

Too many instructions tax working memory.

Frederique Autin and colleagues explain that we can free up WM by reducing students’ stress levels. The specific strategy: have them think differently about the cognitive challenge they face.

The relationship between WM and creativity? Shelley Carson has you covered.

We can free up WM capacity by using the right teaching strategies.

If you’re interested in a technical exploration of WM, executive attention, and the prefrontal cortex, check out Michael Kane’s work here.

And Finally, An Offer…

I love thinking about and talking about working memory. If you have a question or a crazy idea, feel free to email me: [email protected].

Clarity for Learning: Five Essential Practices That Empower Students and Teachers by John Almarode and Kara Vandas
Rebecca Gotlieb
Rebecca Gotlieb
August-19-2019

Clarity for Learning: Five Essential Practices That Empower Students and Teachers by John Almarode and Kara Vandas

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One of the most effective ways to enhance students’ learning is by clarifying what the students should know and modeling how they can come to know those things. John Almarode, a former K-12 teacher and current associate professor at James Madison University, and Kara Vandas, a teacher, author, and educational consultant, recently published Clarity for Learning: Five Essential Practices that Empower Students and Teachers. Those five practices for promoting clarity in the classroom include: 1) crafting learning intention and success criteria; 2) co-constructing those criteria with learners; 3) offering opportunities for students to demonstrate comprehension; 4) giving and receiving feedback about students’ learning; and 5) collaborating with students and other educators to continue to improve teaching and learning.

Almarode and Vandas argue that, when classroom decisions are made with intentionality to promote learning, students should be able to identify what they are learning, why they are learning it, and how they will know that they have learned it. The authors are clear in their writing to promote teachers’ learning. For example, they begin each chapter with a statement of what readers can learn from it. They include guiding questions, reflection exercises, and detailed real-world models of successful clarity interventions.

Almarode and Vandas explain there are multiple ways that teachers are commonly unclear. They may craft learning experiences that are disconnected from the learning outcomes or where a fun activity takes precedence over the larger message the activity is intended to communicate. Teachers may use strategies that are poorly aligned with students’ needs. They may fail to monitor students’ learning or fail to use assessment data to inform how to modify their teaching or enhance their students’ learning.

The first step to gaining clarity is explicating what students are expected to learn. These learning intentions should be communicated to students in age-appropriate language. Doing so may make students more willing to engage with the learning process and develop a greater sense of ownership of their learning. Teachers should also help students monitor their progress and the effectiveness of their learning strategies, appreciate why that progress matters, and understand what else they might learn next. Modeling, demonstrating expectations for success, or offering examples, are effective way of providing clarity. Apprenticeships can make the thinking process visible while gradually and with practice and reflection bestowing more responsibility on the student. As students progress, the initial expectations of what they should learn and how they will demonstrate learning will need to be modified.

Giving students purposefully designed opportunities, whether formal or informal, to demonstrate their learning and make visible their thinking is an important tool for teaching with clarity. These opportunities to demonstrate learning should draw on students’ personal experiences, offer options of different ways to demonstrate learning, feel important to the students, and matter for a purpose beyond a good grade. They should be an authentic, engaging, active learning experience and a safe place to make mistakes. These opportunities to demonstrate learning help teachers see the learning experience from their students’ perspective. Indeed, students, perhaps more than anyone else, can provide teachers with insights into how to enhance the students’ learning.

Almarode and Vandas show that feedback is an important part of the learning process for teachers and students. To be most effective, feedback should be given in a timely manner, it should explicate what needs to be improved, and it should be delivered in a constructive tone. Too much feedback can stymie students. Teachers should recognize that students provide one another extensive feedback. Teachers can become involved in this process to make that feedback most helpful for students’ learning.

Although teachers are the final actors creating clarity in the classroom, that clarity is most likely to be achieved—and learning accelerated—when students, teachers, and school leaders all collaborate. Teachers can reflect about their teaching practices, look for signs of a lack of clarity, discuss with their colleagues about how to support learning, and request help and feedback from school leadership about the clarity of their teaching.

Almarode and Vandas offer a clear and compelling guide for educators to promote clarity in the classroom. With the school year starting soon, this book can help teachers set themselves up for a year of effective teaching.

Almarode, J., & Vandas, K. (2018). Clarity for learning: Five essential practices that empower students and teachers. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Teens Who Recognize Their Emotions Manage Stress Better. We Can Help (Maybe).
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August-15-2019

Teens Who Recognize Their Emotions Manage Stress Better. We Can Help (Maybe).

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Why are teens so adolescent?

Why are they so infuriatingly wonderful? So wonderfully infuriating?

Researchers have offered an intriguing suggestion:

Children can tell you what they’re feeling with confidence. They believe they can experience only one emotion at a time, and so they label it with certainty.

Adults can also tell you what they’re feeling with confidence. They know they can experience many emotions at once, and they have lots of experience figuring out the combination that they feel right now.

Adolescents — sometimes — don’t really know what they’re feeling. Like adults, they know they can experience many emotions. But unlike adults, they don’t yet have much experience describing combinations. And so, unlike children, they’re uncertain what they’re feeling.

We’ve blogged about this research here.

Individual Differences Matter

So, adolescents don’t distinguish among complex emotions as well as adults do.

Of course: individual teens develop along different paths. Some differentiate among emotions better than others.

Researchers at Emory wanted to know: do those differences have meaningful effects?

In particular, they asked this intricate question: does a teen’s ability to distinguish among negative emotions have an effect on their experience of depression?

In other words: do the hassles and stresses of life lead to depression more often among teens who distinguish among negative emotions less skillfully?

To answer this question, Dr. Lisa Starr and her team interviewed 225+ teens, and then had them fill out online diaries for several days. They then followed up with those teens up to a year-and-a-half later.

In other words, they got LOTS of data spread out over LONG periods of time.

Given all the variables at play, it’s not surprising that the results here are complex: probably too complex to explore in detail. (Click the link if you want the nitty-gritty.)

But the headline is clear: teens who distinguish among negative emotions effectively can manage life stress better than those who don’t.

To say that the other way around: teens who struggle to distinguish among negative emotions are likelier to experience depression as result of life’s hassles and stresses.

What Can We Do?

Students benefit from skill in distinguishing among negative emotions. In fact, those who lack those skills face a higher chance of depression.

So: what can we do to promote those skills?

I’ve asked lead researcher Dr. Starr that question. She pointed me to this study, which suggests that mindfulness training might have some benefits.

That suggestion lines up with this recent meta-analysis, showing that mindfulness can indeed help people manage depression.

Of course: we shouldn’t rely too heavily on just one study. I hope this question leads to greater exploration soon.

Given the scary numbers about adolescent depression, we should do all we can to manage this problem.

Obsessed with Working Memory: SOLUTIONS!
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August-08-2019

Obsessed with Working Memory: SOLUTIONS!

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At the beginning of July, we started an in-depth series of posts about working memory.

For starters, we learned how to define it: “a short-term memory capacity that selects, holds, reorganizes, and combines relevant information.” (Handy acronym: SHREK.)

We then focused on its key features. It’s essential for classroom learning. It’s alarmingly small. And we can’t make it bigger (artificially).

For all those reasons, teachers need to be experts at anticipating WM overload. For example: look out for these Dark Sides of the Force.

And, we need recognize WM overload when it happens. (That student who forgot his question while his hand was in the air? That was probably a working memory problem.)

Today’s task: start SOLVING all those problems that we anticipated and recognized.

Solutions, Part I: Rely on Long-Term Memory

First: connect new information to information that students already have in their long-term memory.

Why does this strategy work? Because ideas and facts in LTM require much less working-memory processing than information coming in from the outside world.

And so: if a new idea resembles something in LTM, then that pre-existing knowledge acts as a kind of cognitive crutch.

For example, whenever I teach my students about gerunds, I teach them the Beyoncé rule:

If you like it then you should have put an -ing on it.

My students already have that catchy tune in their heads. By attaching a new grammatical rule (“all gerunds end with ‘-ing’ “) to that catchy tune, I reduce its WM demands.

As a bonus, I also make them laugh.

Second: explicitly teach core facts and processes.

“Rote memorization” of “random facts” has gotten a bad reputation. It seems so not-21st-century.

Alas, we can’t think without knowledge.* If our students have already learned the foundational ideas, definitions, dates, and processes before they start grappling with complex cognitive work, they’re much more likely to succeed.

Why? Because all that prior knowledge in long-term memory reduces WM load.

Solutions, Part II: Spread Cognitive Work Over Time

This solution is so helpfully straightforward.

If a lesson plan overwhelms WM because it includes too much information RIGHT NOW, then don’t include all of it right now. Spread it out.

In some cases, that simply means reorganizing the lesson plan. Let students practice the first topic they learned before they move on to the next one.

Once they’re comfortable with a particular mental process, they’re ready to take more ideas on board. (Barak Rosenshine, I’m looking at you.)

In other cases, you might reconsider if this information needs to be included immediately.

Are you students struggling with several instructions? Spread them out.

Here’s a handy strategy: give one instruction, and wait for all students to complete it before giving the next. (I got this advice at the very first Learning and the Brain conference I attended. Pure magic.)

Note, too, how exceptions can be postponed.

In French, “all nouns that end in -ette are feminine.” Knowing that rule reduces students’ WM load: they have fewer variables to juggle as they tinker with adjectives and pronouns.

That rule, however, has an exception: “squelette” is masculine. But — this is crucial — my students don’t need to know that right now. Why would they need the word “skeleton”?They’re not watching CSI Paris.

So, I can reduce WM load by leading with the rule and postponing exceptions until they’re necessary. (You can alert your students that exceptions might show up later, so they don’t lose faith in your expertise.)

If you anticipate or recognize WM overload, ask yourself if you can put off some of this cognitive work until later in the lesson plan…or, later in the syllabus.

Solutions, Part III: Make Cognitive Work Auditory AND Visual

Schools rely a great deal on auditory processing. That is: students listen to us — and to each other — talking.

However, working memory has both auditory and visual processing capacity. If we use only half of it, we’re leaving substantial cognitive resources untapped. It’s like asking students to carry a heavy box using only one arm. Two arms would be So Much Easier.

This approach leads to some very straightforward strategies. Verbal instructions take up lots of working memory capacity. Written instructions take up less — because students don’t have to “select” or “hold” them.

Oliver Caviglioli has just written a genre-defining book on combining visual and verbal information: Dual Coding with Teachers. If you want to focus on this teaching strategy to reduce WM load, you should get your copy ASAP.

Solutions, Part IV: CUT

Let’s take this hypothetical:

You look at your lesson plan, and anticipate a great deal of working-memory overload. So, you start using these strategies.

You find ways to connect new information to ideas students already know (solutions, part I).

You find ways to spread information out over time (part  II).

You move lots of WM labor into the visual realm (part III).

And yet, you still worry the working-memory load might be too high. What can you do?

You’ve really got only one choice: take stuff out of the lesson plan — and maybe the syllabus. You’ve got to cut.

That’s a troubling answer. We don’t want to cut, because we want our students to learn it all. (And, we might be required to cover lots of things.)

But, here’s the reality: if my lesson plan/syllabus overwhelms my students’ working memory, then their cognitive processes will shut down. That is: their brains will cut stuff out automatically.

If I know that’s going to happen, the only responsible course of action is to make those cutting decisions for them. After all, because I’m the teacher, I know better which parts can be cut without long-term harm.

The Good News about Part IV

By the way: there is some hidden good news in this strategy. If we cut material from an overstuffed syllabus today, then our students are much likelier to learn the remaining ideas than they were before.

As a result, they’ll be better positioned to learn the ideas that come later in the curriculum.

As is so often the case: less might be more. That is, less information early in the curriculum might lead to more learning by the end of the year. Why? Because “less” allowed students to use their working memory more effectively, and hence create more long-term memories.

Concluding Thoughts

I’ve named several strategies here, and given quick examples.

However, to get the most from these ideas, you will adapt them to your own circumstances. As you’ve heard me say before: “don’t just do this thing; instead, think this way.”

That is: once you’ve started THINKING about working memory in your classroom with your students and your curriculum, you’ll see your own way to apply each strategy most effectively.

No one else can tell us exactly how to do it. Using our teacherly insight, wisdom, and experience, we will shape those ideas to fit the world in which we teach.

In sum: once we anticipate and recognize working memory overload, we’ve got many (MANY!) strategies to reduce that load. And, those strategies are flexible enough to work in every classroom. The result: our students learn more.

* If you’re skeptical about the importance of prior factual knowledge, you’re not alone. But, the research here is compelling. Check out

Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel Willingham

Seven Myths of Education by Daisy Christodoulou

Making Kids Cleverer by David Didau

Good Dog! Goodbye, Dog…
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July-29-2019

Good Dog! Goodbye, Dog…

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The New York Times is reporting the death of Chaser, a dog who changed the way we think about canine cognition.

We used to think that dogs could learn a handful of words, especially if they got treats afterwards.

Chaser learned over 1000 words — yes, 1000. And, she learned them not because she got treats, but because she enjoyed playing.

Importantly, Chaser learned not only nouns, but verbs. Even prepositions!

The video below shows one of Chaser’s most impressive challenges. In it, Neil DeGrasse Tyson lays down several toys that Chaser already knows. He also adds a new toy: a stuffed image of Charles Darwin.

What will Chaser do when Tyson asks her to “get Darwin”? Will she be able to figure out that the name she hasn’t heard before goes with the toy she hasn’t seen before?

Check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omaHv5sxiFI

 

When Parents Teach Reading, Do They Also Promote Math Skills?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July-28-2019

When Parents Teach Reading, Do They Also Promote Math Skills?

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Parents begin teaching children well before schooling starts. Obviously.

In fact, parents often teach children topics that we might consider “academic”: say, how to read, or, how to count.

Researchers might investigate this parental pre-school teaching with some reasonable hypotheses.

For instance:

Presumably, the way that parents teach reading influences the reading skills that their children develop.

Likewise, presumably, the way parents teach numbers and counting influences the math skills that their children develop.

Let’s ask a more counter-intuitive question:

Does the way that parents teach reading influence their children’s math skills?

In other words, does early teaching in one discipline influence understand in a different discipline?

That question might raise skeptical eyebrows, for a number of reasons. In particular, most research that asks this kind of transfer question comes back with a negative answer.

That is: learning in one discipline (say: playing piano) doesn’t usually make you better at another discipline (say: doing calculus).

Today’s Study

Researchers in England wanted to explore this surprising hypothesis. They had hundreds of parents fill out questionnaires. Some questions focused on parental approaches to reading:

How often does the child discuss the meaning of a story with an adult?

or

How often is the child encouraged to name letters or sound out words?

Other questions focused on parental approaches to numbers:

How often is the child encouraged to identify numbers in books or the environment?

They then tested the children on a variety of number and math skills.

Can you put two ducks in the pond?

Can you point to the number 5?

If two horses are on the path, and another joins them, how many horses are on the path?

So, what did they find? Did either of the reading approaches predict number and math skill? Did they predict those skills better than the parents’ direct focus on numbers and math?

The Results

Yes, and yes.

The parents’ approach to reading predicted math success better than the parents’ focus on numbers.

And, when comparing the two approaches to reading,

A focus on letters and sounds led to better math performance than did a focus on the meaning of the story.

In the dry language of research:

Only letter-sound interactions could predict statistically significant unique variance in counting, number transcoding and calculation.

What Should Parents Do?

This research pool is deep and complicated, and — as far as I can see — we’re not yet able to offer definitive parenting advice.

So, this study found that parental focus on letter-sound interactions improved later math skills.

But:

Self-reports aren’t always reliable (although they’re very common in this field), and

The differences weren’t all that great, and

We have many different goals when we teach children to read.

That is: if our only goal were to help students understand numbers, then this study would encourage parents to focus substantially on letter-sound relationships.

But, of course, we want our children to think about the meaning of stories too. That’s one way they learn important developmental lessons. That’s how they think about meaning in their own lives.

This study — especially if it’s confirmed by later research — encourages us to use several strategies to teach our children about words and reading.

And, it gives us reason to think that those multiple approaches will help them with books, and with numbers too.

The Mindset Controversy: Carol Dweck Speaks…
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July-26-2019

The Mindset Controversy: Carol Dweck Speaks…

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We’ve posted frequently about the Mindset Controversy in recent months.

The short version goes like this:

After several decades of enthusiastic reception, Dweck’s work on fixed and growth mindset has come under increasingly skeptical scrutiny.

A well-publicized meta-analysis showed only small effects — both of mindset itself, and of growth mindset interventions.

And, some non-replications have recently added new voices to the mindset-skeptical chorus. At the beginning of this month, for example, I wrote about a non-replication in Argentina.

During these months, I’ve been wondering: when would Dweck herself respond? And, what would she say?

The TES Interview

Dweck recently gave an interview to TES in which she started to answer some of these questions.

The article they’ve published is worth reading in its entirety, and I encourage you to give it a look.

I’ll mention two highlights.

First — unsurprisingly, to me — Dweck is open to the criticism she’s reading:

We have produced a body of evidence that says under these conditions this is what happened. We have not explored all the conditions that are possible.

Teacher feedback on what is working and not working is hugely valuable to us to tell us what we have not done and what we need to do. [emphasis added]

In other words: if people are trying mindset interventions and they’re not working, she wants to know about that. She’s not pretending those concerns aren’t real.

What Should Teachers Do?

Second, Dweck emphasizes that mindset interventions should not be one-time events.

Anything that happens just once — “a chart at the front of the room, a lecture where you define the two mindsets” — isn’t likely to work.

Instead, we should focus on “the policies and practices in the classroom. It is not about teaching the concept alone, it is much more about implementing practices that focus on growth and learning.” [emphasis added]

That is: if we tell students about the perils of fixed mindsets and the benefits of growth mindsets, we might feel like we’ve set them on the right path.

But: if our own language, classroom methods, and grading policies imply fixed mindsets, then that mindset mini-lesson won’t help very much.

A Brainy Analogy

Regular readers know that I’m writing several posts about working memory: what it is, why it’s important, how to use that information.

I do NOT think that teachers should tell students about working memory. If we do — ironically — we’re just using up their scarce working-memory resources.

Instead, we should use our knowledge of WM to modify and hone our teaching practices.

So, too, with mindset. Our students don’t need us to tell them the theory. They need us to act on our own knowledge of the theory — to modify and hone our teaching practices.

That approach will take more sustained effort. It might not have a dramatic, immediate effect. But, given Dweck’s four decades of research, it’s much likelier to yield the subtle, long-term benefits that enhance learning.

Full disclosure: I’m not a neutral observer in this debate. I’ve just published a book on Mindset. Your opinion about my opinion might reasonably be swayed by that knowledge.

If you’re interested in such a book, you can see Rebecca Gotlieb’s review here.

Obsessed with Working Memory: Identifying Overload
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July-24-2019

Obsessed with Working Memory: Identifying Overload

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To review earlier posts in this series:

You can define working memory.

You can explain why it’s so important.

You can anticipate WM overload even before it happens.

In this post, we’ll see how you can identify WM overload when it does happen.

“Wait…Back Up A Step…”

Why should you even want to identify WM overload when it happens?

After all, the last post was about anticipating it. If teachers can predict when WM overload might happen, shouldn’t we just prevent it every time?

That’s a reasonable question. The answer is: not exactly.

First: students have different levels of WM capacity. So, you might anticipate overload for most of your students. But you might not get the level of WM challenge exactly right every time.

Second: you want to nudge up against WM boundaries from time to time. Remember (as we’ve discussed in MANY posts), some level of desirable difficulty improves learning.

One way to raise difficulty is to increase the WM challenge. If you don’t test WM boundaries every now and then, you might not be challenging your students enough.

And, when you do test those boundaries, you’re likely to edge over that boundary from time to time.

Going beyond WM limits is a normal part of teaching. Doing so isn’t a terrible thing.

But: doing so without a) realizing it, and b) fixing it right away — now THAT’S a terrible thing.

“Okay, How Do I Identify WM Overload?”

The easy method. Look at the student’s face. If you see a desolately blank stare, you know what just happened: WM crash.

For fun, watch this video. Unless you’re a biology teacher, you’ll feel your WM curl up like a tiny helpless rodent. You might hear it whimper. Go look in the mirror. THAT’S the face you’re looking for.

“Are There Harder Methods?”

Sure.

Working memory is a cognitive system that holds and processes information. When students struggle to do both at the same time, THAT’S WM overload.

Some examples will clarify.

If I tell students to follow these 6 instructions, they have to a) HOLD all six instructions, and b) PROCESS them one-at-a-time. If they can’t do that, that’s WM overload.

Or,

If students can’t gather information from several websites into one Word document, they’re struggling to a) PROCESS the logic of the work their doing, while b) HOLDING their place in that logic.

Or, here’s one you see almost every day.

A student raises her hand. I say: “wait just a moment,” and finish a sentence or two. When I come back to her and say “what’s your question,” she looks abashed. Sheepishly, she admits: “I forgot.”

In this case, my student had to HOLD her question. And, she had to PROCESS new information: the sentence or two that I spoke. That combination went beyond her WM limits.

Or, this one used to make me CRAZY:

A student raises his hand. I say: “wait just a moment,” and remind the class that the paper is due Friday at 3 pm, in the box outside my office.

When I come back to that student and say “what’s your question,” he earnestly asks: “When is the paper due, and where should I turn it in?”

I used to get SO MAD at that student.

But now I know, I overloaded his WM. He was HOLDING his question so hard that he couldn’t PROCESS the information I was giving. (Joseph, if you’re reading this blog, I apologize.)

Once you start looking for them, you’ll see holding while processing problems all the time.

When you see those problems, you know that your students have run out of WM.

“Got It. Anything Else?”

Let’s do one more.

Human working memory systems necessarily interact with our attention systems.

If your students are not paying attention in a way that surprises you, you might have a WM problem, not an attention problem.

That is: if you think to yourself, “They’re usually so focused during 2nd period. I wonder what’s going on today? They’re kinda off the wall… ,” stop and consider the WM demands of the work they’re doing.

They might be exhibiting an attentional symptom of a working memory problem.

Up Next: SOLUTIONS

We’ve spent lots of time ANTICIPATING and IDENTIFYING working memory problems.

In the next two posts, I’ll FINALLY talk about solving those problems.

Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning by Linda Darling-Hammond and Jennie Oakes
Rebecca Gotlieb
Rebecca Gotlieb
July-22-2019

Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning by Linda Darling-Hammond and Jennie Oakes

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Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning by renowned education scholars, Linda Darling-Hammond and Jeannie Oakes, shows that it is possible to promote equitable education and deeper learning. While honoring the complexity of teaching, Darling-Hammond and Oakes suggest several ways to teach for deeper learning. Teachers can personalize their practice based on developmental and contextual factors, pair academic rigor with engaging experiences, and create productive learning communities that apply knowledge.

The book profiles seven teacher preparation programs that differ in size, geography, and type of institutional home, but which are all extremely successful in preparing teachers to teach diverse learners. It concludes by discussing institutional supports and policy changes that could be implemented affordably to support better teacher education. There is a growing need for teachers equipped to prepare children for the societal challenges and increasingly knowledge-based economy children will face. As such, this incisive and sophisticated book is essential for individuals interested in building or improving teacher training programs and may be of interest to researchers or educators thinking about how to support teacher development.

Darling-Hammond and Oakes are past presidents of the American Educational Research Association, authors of multiple books, and professors emeriti at Stanford University and University of California, Los Angeles, respectively. Darling-Hammond currently serves as President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute and as President of the California State Board of Education; Oakes is a senior policy fellow at the Learning Policy Institute. They, with 8 additional authors, state that skilled teachers support students in developing cognitive, social-emotional, and moral/ethical capacities. Skilled teachers help students build critical thinking skills by drawing on prior knowledge and organizing and applying new knowledge. Great teachers teach students how to manage their own thinking and learning.

Each of the profiled teacher preparation programs has a clear mission that guides every aspect of what they do.  Through interviews, observations, surveys, and document reviews, the authors determined that the programs make the student-teachers’ preparation process an exercise that itself involves deeper learning. The teacher preparation programs they profile integrate coursework and clinical work, require action research, build collaborative learning communities, provide school-based mentors, and assess progress authentically. The programs require their student-teachers to learn about the children they teach, learn the content and curriculum that they teach, and learn to teach considering both their curricular goals and their learners’ developmental and social contexts.

Darling-Hammond and Oakes draw on great theorists’ ideas (e.g., Rousseau, Dewey, Montessori, Vygotsky) to discuss several dimensions of deeper learning and implications for how teachers teach. They argue that learning should be developmentally appropriate. Teachers should recognize students’ varying needs and strengths, build strong relationships, and make students feel secure and valued.  They urge also that, given that people learn by connecting new information with existing knowledge, curricula should be designed to connect to students’ lived experiences. Teachers can do this through project-based learning experiences, for example.

For students to transfer what they learn they need to build conceptual understanding. Teachers should assess students’ attempts at authentic transfer to contexts that matter to the students. Because people learn through their interactions with others, students should build understanding with peers.  Teachers can guide these collaborative learning exchanges rather than merely delivering knowledge to students.

Given that the majority of public-school students come from low-income homes and that there is great inequality in society, schools have become the frontline for defending democracy. Strengths-based deeper learning can help correct societal inequities. To support teachers in teaching for deeper learning preparation programs should have a clear equity focused mission. The institutions that house teacher preparation programs should prioritize teacher preparation by dedicating resources to staffing, so that student-teachers can build strong relations with mentor-teachers and partnering schools. States can implement policies to improve teacher preparation and student learning with minimal long-term cost. Darling-Hammond and Oakes suggest that such policies might include offering funding to improve teacher preparation programs and basing teacher preparation program accreditation on student-teachers’ performance. Federal policies like scholarships or loan forgiveness for teacher candidates could also improve the pipeline of new teachers. Additionally, strengthening teaching standards, investing in clinical training opportunities for teachers, and placing strong teachers in high-need communities would improve significantly students’ learning.

This book illustrates with vivid examples that we know how to provide high-quality education and how to train teachers to deliver it. Nonetheless, few students are engaged in deeper learning. Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learningoffers a critical guide for policymakers, educators, and researchers about how to improve the way we prepare teachers, and in turn students, in our country.

Darling-Hammond, L. & Oakes, J. (2019). Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press

Naps In Schools (Just Might) Improve Classroom Learning
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July-20-2019

Naps In Schools (Just Might) Improve Classroom Learning

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I like a good nap. I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a bad nap.

But for this blog we must ask: can naps benefit learning?

We’ve written often about the importance of a good night’s sleep for learning. But, nap sleep might not have the same benefits as nighttime sleep.

Of course, we do have suggestive studies from the sleep lab. This study, for instance, shows that naps including both slow-wave sleep and REM sleep do boost learning.

But, what happens when we test naps in school? Do we show benefits there?

In other words: do actual students learning actual school stuff from actual teachers benefit from naps at school?

A Promising Start

This study from Brazil answers those questions with a resounding YES.

Researchers had 5th graders study either history or science during the first period of the day. Some napped during the 2nd period, while others studied another topic.

Over the course of six weeks, students learned more on the days that they napped compared to the days they didn’t. On average, they scored 10% higher on the content taught pre-nap.

This finding held true for longer naps (between 30 and 60 minutes), but not shorter naps (less than 30 minutes).

Slight Hesitations

Long-time readers know that I try to be especially skeptical about research findings that I want to be true. Because I like naps so much, I’m pushing myself to be skeptical here. For that reason, I raise these questions:

First: the study includes 24 students. That’s 24 better than 0, but it’s still quite a small study. I hope researchers follow this up with a few hundred students.

Second: I wonder about cultural influences. Does napping have a role in Brazilian culture that differs from its role others? I’m not sure why cultural influences would change the benefits of napping, but I’d like to see this research replicated in other cultures.

Third: This “nap” comes quite early in the morning: from 8:10 to 9:20 AM. I would have thought post-lunch naps to be more beneficial. The researchers explain that school begins quite early in Brazil — but, the timing of naps should clearly be studied.

School Implications

Despite my attempts at skepticism, I do think we should seriously consider investigating this question at scale. If students could in fact learn information better by sleeping at school, the benefits to both health and cognition could be dramatic.

After all, I’ve been “studying” naps on my own for years, and can report highly positive results.

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