In This Issue:

1. Dealing with feedback that seems totally off base

2. Key principles of student learning

3. Preventing cheating by shaping the motivational climate of classrooms

4. Insights for working with students with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia

5. Do the positive effects of Reading Recovery endure?

6. Does merit pay work?

7. When principals should delegate and when they should get involved

 

Quotes of the Week

“Shame and isolation are common side effects of students’ difficulty in learning to read, but they don’t have to be.”

Barb Rentenbach, Lois Prislovsky, and Rachael Gabriel (see item #4)

 

“Faced with dozens of students, each with their own needs and interests, teachers may not see every child’s intellectual gifts, especially when those gifts are obscured by a physical or social appearance that the teacher views as abnormal or undesirable.”

Barb Rentenbach, Lois Prislovsky, and Rachael Gabriel (ibid.)

 

“When you treat someone as their highest self, you help them become that person… One has nothing to lose by treating another person with respect.”

Barb Rentenbach, Lois Prislovsky, and Rachael Gabriel (ibid.)

 

“If students are learning in an environment in which they (a) are encouraged to master the material, and (b) have the opportunity to work on various tasks, activities, and assessments until they reach a point of mastery, then cheating serves little purpose and results in minimal benefits.”

            Eric Anderman and Alison Koenka (see item #3)

 

“For students, dawdling is an art form. No matter how much time you give them for a lesson transition, they will need more… Students know that as soon as the lesson transition is over, you will put them back to work. They have a vested interest in dawdling.”

            Fred Jones in “Eliminating Wasted Time,” Tools for Teaching, January 31, 2017,

            http://www.fredjones.com/single-post/2017/01/30/Eliminating-Wasted-Time;

see http://www.fredjones.com/pat-bank for an extensive bank of Preferred Activity Time incentive activities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Dealing with Feedback That Seems Totally Off Base

            “Getting feedback that seems just plain wrong can be isolating, painful, and maddening,” say Sheila Heen and Debbie Goldstein (Harvard Law School and Triad Consulting) in this Harvard Business Review article. “What should you do when this happens to you?” Their suggestions:

            • Take a deep breath. Don’t immediately reject the criticism. You need time to get past the tendency to “wrong-spot” everything that’s stupid about it.

            • Dig deeper. The feedback may be vague – You need to step it up. Show more leadership. Think more strategically. Be more creative. Watch your attitude. “It’s easy to jump to what these labels mean to us,” say Heen and Goldstein, “and assume we know what they mean to the feedback giver. Yet these labels are – at best – loose approximations of what they are trying to say.”

            • Probe for the back story. All feedback has a past – where it’s coming from – and often a future – where the boss wants you to go with it. And often feedback isn’t clearly articulated and needs to be fleshed out with some polite probes:

-   When you say “creative,” can you say more about what you mean?

-   Can you be a bit more specific about particular times or instances I wasn’t creative?

-   Can you give examples of what “creative” would look like to you? What specifically are you suggesting I do differently?

The boss might respond in surprising ways – for example, the boss is thinking of your team meetings and wants you to leave more air time for colleagues to talk and exercise creativity.

            • Check your blind spots. “Sometimes feedback doesn’t feel ‘true” to us because we’re simply unaware of it,” say Heen and Goldstein. “To get a clearer idea of what you might be missing, ask a friend.” First of all, ask what’s wrong with the feedback. Then ask what might be right about it. For example, a man who was criticized for showing “attitude” was enraged because he worked long hours and was tireless and devoted. But when pressed, a colleague said, “You do work a lot of hours, but every time you are asked to stay late, you sort of sigh and complain that you have no life. You actually do give off serious attitude.”

            “Receiving feedback well doesn’t mean you have to take the feedback,” conclude Heen and Goldstein. “Being good at receiving feedback means just that – that you receive it. That you hear it. That you work to understand it. That you share your perspective on it. That you reflect on it. That you sit with it. That you look for that (even tiny) bit that might be right and of value. Then you get to decide whether or not to act on it.”

“Responding to Feedback You Disagree With” by Sheila Heen and Debbie Goldstein in Harvard Business Review, April 14, 2017, http://bit.ly/2p35QFF; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

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2. Key Principles of Student Learning

            In this Deans for Impact white paper, education-school leaders summarize insights from cognitive science about optimal student learning in classrooms, with practical implications for day-to-day teaching.

How do students understand new content?

• Students learn new ideas by linking them to ideas they already know.

-   A well-thought-out K-12 curriculum sequence builds foundational knowledge.

-   Teachers should use analogies to link new learning to past knowledge, making the links explicit.

• To learn and remember important information, students need to transfer it from short-term memory (which has quite limited capacity) to long-term memory.

-   Teachers must be careful not to present too much information at once.

-   They also need to make content explicit and carefully pace explanations.

-   Worked examples are one way to avoid cognitive overload – displaying all the steps of a problem solution.

-   Teachers should use multiple modalities to convey an idea – e.g., showing a graphic while verbally describing the idea.

• The mastery of new concepts happens in fits and starts, not through a fixed sequence of age-related stages.

-   Teachers shouldn’t withhold information from students because it’s “developmentally inappropriate;” the most important consideration in deciding if students are ready to learn something is whether they have mastered the prerequisites.

How do students learn and retain new information?

• Information is often retrieved from memory as it was originally remembered, so students should focus on meaning as they learn.

-   Teachers should emphasize the meaning of important-to-remember material by having students explain it or organize information in helpful ways.

-   Teachers can help students store hard-to-remember content by using stories or mnemonics.

• Practice is important to retaining new material, and some kinds of practice are more effective than others.

-   Retrieving information from memory strengthens the memory, which means that low-stakes quizzes and self-tests build long-term retention.

-   Interleaving or mixing different types of material strengthens long-term memory – for example, doing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems together.

-   Spacing practice over weeks or months improves retention.

 

How do students solve problems?

• Each subject area has a set of facts that, if committed to long-term memory, aids problem-solving by freeing working memory and illuminating contexts in which existing knowledge and skills can be applied.

-   Teachers need to teach different sets of facts at different ages – for example, phonemic awareness and multiplication facts in the elementary grades

• Effective feedback is essential to acquiring new knowledge and skills.

-   Good feedback is specific and clear.

-   Good feedback is focused on the task rather than the student.

-   Good feedback is explanatory and focused on improvement, versus merely verifying performance.

How does learning transfer to new situations inside and outside the classroom?

• To transfer knowledge or skills, students need to understand the problem’s context and underlying structure.

-   Teachers must ensure that students have sufficient background knowledge to appreciate the context and structure of a problem.

• Examples help us understand new ideas, especially if we see the unifying underlying concepts.

-   Teachers can have students compare examples with different surface structures and identify the underlying similarities – for example, finding the area of a table top and a soccer field.

-   For multi-step problems, students can be asked to identify and label the steps required.

-   Teachers can alternate concrete examples (word problems) and abstract representations (mathematical formulas).

What motivates students to learn?

• Beliefs about intelligence are important predictors of student behavior in school.

-   Students are more motivated if they believe intelligence and ability can be improved through effective effort.

-   Teachers can shape students’ beliefs about ability and intelligence by praising productive effort and strategies and other processes that are under students’ control, versus praising for being “smart” or “talented.”

-   Teachers can prompt students to feel more in control of their learning by encouraging them to set specific learning improvement goals, versus performance goals.

• Self-determined motivation (intrinsic interest and values) leads to better long-term outcomes than controlled motivation (rewards, punishments, or perceptions of self-worth). Teachers control several factors related to reward and praise:

-   Whether a task is one the student is already motivated to perform;

-   Whether a reward is verbal or tangible;

-   Whether a reward is expected or unexpected;

-   Whether praise is offered for effort, completion, or quality of performance;

-   Whether praise or reward occurs immediately or after a delay.

• The ability to monitor their own thinking can help students identify what they do and don’t know, but people are often not the best judges of their own learning and understanding.

-   Teachers can engage students in tasks that allow them to reliably monitor their own learning – e.g., testing, self-testing, and explanation.

• Students will be more motivated and successful in classrooms when they believe that they belong and are accepted.

-   Teachers can reassure students that doubts about belonging are common and will diminish over time.

-   Teachers can encourage students to see critical feedback as a sign that others believe they are able to meet high standards.

What are common misconceptions about how students think and learn?

• Teachers need to communicate that cognitive science has debunked these erroneous beliefs:

-   Students have distinct learning styles.

-   People use either the right or the left side of their brains.

-   Humans use only 10 percent of their brains.

-   Novices and experts think in the same ways.

-   Cognitive development progresses in a fixed progression of age-related stages.

 

“The Science of Learning” by Deans for Impact, 2015; the full report is available at

http://deansforimpact.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/The_Science_of_Learning.pdf

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3. Preventing Cheating By Shaping the Motivational Climate of Classrooms

            “Academic cheating occurs frequently in schools,” say Eric Anderman and Alison Koenka (The Ohio State University) in this article in Theory Into Practice. “Cheating is a deliberative act, in that students make a conscious decision to engage in academic dishonesty.” Why is there so much cheating – 75 percent of students admit to it in high school or college – and what can be done about it? There are three questions students might ask themselves as they confront a situation where they might be tempted to cross the line:

            • What is my goal in this class? Among the possibilities: Getting a good grade; really learning and understanding the material; doing better than my classmates; not looking dumb. The key variable is whether the teacher and students are more focused on mastery (really learning the material) or performance (for extrinsic or intrinsic rewards).

            • Can I do this? This involves students’ beliefs about their skillset and ability to complete the task, their expectations for success, and whether the teacher will evaluate the work fairly. Research has shown that low self-efficacy is a key factor in students cheating.

            • What are the costs of cheating? Students consider the chances of being caught and punished, the effect of being a cheater on their self-concept, and guilt – and whether they’re willing to live with any or all of those outcomes.

            Anderman and Koenka say that classrooms focused on mastery and intrinsic motivation have much less cheating: “If students are learning in an environment in which they (a) are encouraged to master the material, and (b) have the opportunity to work on various tasks, activities, and assessments until they reach a point of mastery, then cheating serves little purpose and results in minimal benefits… In contrast, when students learn in environments that are highly competitive and stress relative ability and exam performance (i.e., extrinsic or performance goals), cheating will be a more viable option for students.” The same is true for situations where students are anxious to avoid appearing incompetent.

            Anderman and Koenka have the following suggestions for principals and teachers who want to minimize cheating in classrooms:

            • Emphasize mastery. One of the best ways is framing assessments as opportunities for students to improve understanding (through formative checks for understanding), enrich learning (through detailed feedback on attempts), and demonstrate proficiency (in summative tests). It’s especially helpful to allow students to re-take assessments until they demonstrate mastery. Teachers should also make parents aware of learning goals and assessments.

            • Orchestrate cooperative learning. Handled well, this can foster a mastery orientation and discourage cheating. The key conditions are that students in cooperative learning groups are interdependent, have a common goal, are individually accountable for learning, build interpersonal skills, and have their eye on the bigger picture of the curriculum unit.

            • Don’t stress students out about grades. Rather than saying, “Friday’s test is really big; if you fail it, you’re sunk for the semester,” say, “Friday’s test covers concepts that are fundamental building blocks for your understanding of more advanced material.”

            • Clearly communicate learning and assessment expectations. When students don’t know what will be covered on a test, aren’t clear on the criteria for a successful essay, or believe grading policies are unfair (e.g., grading on a curve), they’re more likely to cheat.

            • Don’t publicize students’ grades. Some teachers believe that displaying test results or hanging up A assignments is a motivator, but Anderman and Koenka say these practices convey a performance goal structure. Rather than public display of grades or papers, they recommend giving students private feedback on what’s effective and what needs to be improved, and not comparing work with that of other students. “In cases where providing exemplars is necessary,” say the authors, “we recommend aiming to provide specific ones from every individual’s or team’s assessments (e.g., a particularly strong topic sentence from one team and an especially creative approach to solving a problem from another team).”

            • Talk about cheating. Students and parents should be crystal clear on what constitutes cheating, the strong likelihood of being caught, and the serious consequences that will ensue. But the emphasis should be on how cheating undermines the real goal: mastering the material.

 

“The Relation Between Academic Motivation and Cheating” by Eric Anderman and Alison Koenka in Theory Into Practice, Spring 2017 (Vol. 56, #2, p. 95-102), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/2rygyWa; Anderman can be reached at [email protected].

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4. Insights for Working with Students with Autism, ADHD, and Dyslexia

            “Faced with dozens of students, each with their own needs and interests, teachers may not see every child’s intellectual gifts, especially when those gifts are obscured by a physical or social appearance that the teacher views as abnormal or undesirable,” say Barb Rentenbach and Lois Prislovsky (Mule & Muse Productions) and Rachael Gabriel (University of Connecticut/Storrs) in this Kappan article. “Small moments within everyday classroom interactions shape students’ understandings of school, of themselves, and of others.”

Rentenbach shares her own experience: an autistic mute, she was thought to be profoundly retarded until the age of 19, and learned little in a succession of special-education classrooms. Then she learned how to type, and with the help of expert teachers, she blossomed. Prislovsky, one of her teachers, is labeled ADHD and dyslexic. Because she works best in motion, she balances on a unicycle while running meetings with her employees, and when she’s out running, she listens to speeded-up podcasts. Gabriel was one of Prislovsky’s employees while Gabriel studied to become an educational researcher.

            How can schools do right by students with significant learning disabilities? “When you treat someone as their highest self, you help them become that person,” say the authors. “Yet, the challenges associated with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia do not magically melt away just because you affirm that these things also have some benefits.” Here are their practical suggestions:

Students with autism

            • Presume competence even when you don’t see or hear it yet. “Don’t assume mental retardation based on odd behavior and poor communication,” say Rentenbach, Prislovsky, and Gabriel. “One has nothing to lose by treating another person with respect. Give students the freedom to rise to expectations – surpassing them may come next.” Students are listening and understanding far more than most teachers know.

            • Smile. “We sense and often take on the affect of those around us,” say the authors. “People who are happy, confident, honest, and energetic – and who don’t take themselves too seriously – help make mentally external tasks appealing.” It’s also important to limit teachers’ contact time with students to short blocks to ensure “freshness.”

            • Be attentive. “To listen means to make an effort to hear, take notice of, or heed,” say the authors. “Find out about their past, their proclivities, how they spend their time, and what gives them joy.”

            • Wait. “Like well-seasoned Tibetan monks, we are in no rush,” say Rentenbach, Prislovsky, and Gabriel. “We understand the reality of impermanence. We understand the reality that nothing is as it appears to be, and having time to process, think, and just be is important in our daily routine…After all, autism is our prism, not our prison. We may think differently, but are still thinking.”

            • Make room for nonverbal communication. “It took me years to think in language,” says Rentenbach. “But prior to that, my thinking was not faulty; it was just not language-based. Typing makes it way easier because I can control the speed of each thought and break it down into smaller parts or, to be more precise, one letter at a time… For me, computers are objects that can be a bridge to interpersonal connection and growth.”

Students with ADHD

            • Let students know that human excellence comes in all packages. “If you cannot tell

what their individual strengths are, then watch and ask,” say the authors. “They may not yet know either, but watching them pursue their areas of interest is a good place to start, as is checking in with the other adults in their lives.” What part of the school day makes them happiest or calmest? When do they feel most competent and at ease? How and when can teachers help them play to their strengths?

            • Don’t make unrealistic restrictions on movement. Students with ADHD may think best when their bodies are active, so teachers should look for opportunities to get them moving. A rocking chair or exercise ball is helpful; so is tossing a ball back and forth.

            • Create routines. Predictable structures are critically important for students with ADHD. “By designating regular times for specific activities,” say the authors, “you can give them an opportunity to plan their attention and train their focus on one connection at a time.”

            • Understand that people with ADHD are drawn to intense experiences. They “often seek lots of stimulation, even extreme thrills,” say the authors, which explains why some people with ADHD have become outstanding explorers, athletes, and entrepreneurs. Teachers should build in an extra layer of physical challenge to routine tasks (for example, balancing on one foot while proofreading an essay) and involve students with ADHD in passing out materials, reorganizing spaces for group work, and carrying messages between groups.

            • Be patient with yourself as you learn more and do better. “This encourages students to do the same,” say Rentenbach, Prislovsky, and Gabriel, “giving all of us permission to take risks and make mistakes.”

Students with dyslexia

            • Understand hidden strengths. Although students with dyslexia will have frustration and difficulty in school settings, researchers have identified four distinct talents (acronym MIND): material reasoning, interconnected reasoning, narrative or story-based reasoning, and dynamic reasoning. “In short,” say the authors, “while the dyslexic brain may struggle with the foundational skills of word recognition and spelling, it appears to be uniquely suited to sophisticated forms of literacy… Being able to see the big picture and avoid getting lost in details helps many dyslexics flourish in the world of business…”

            • Make print worth it. “Given that it will take extra effort, skill, and courage for some students to consume printed texts independently,” say Rentenbach, Prislovsky, and Gabriel, “create reasons for reading that are truly compelling and linked to students’ goals and interests.”

            • Accommodate now. This might mean providing an audiobook, video, or oral presentation to give students access to high-level content while they gradually develop their literacy skills.

            • Invest in strategies that work. “Students are often the first to know whether an intervention or remedial program is working for them,” say the authors. Take cues from them to tailor the literacy program to the most effective approaches.

            • Communicate the strengths as well as the patterns of difficulty. “Shame and isolation are common side effects of students’ difficulty in learning to read,” say Rentenbach, Prislovsky, and Gabriel, “but they don’t have to be.” Make sure all students in the class know the strengths of students with dyslexia.

            • Structure classroom activities strategically. For example, a teacher might start off with small-group roles and activities that use reasoning and creativity, rather than having students independently read a text.

 

“Valuing Differences: Neurodiversity in the Classroom” by Barb Rentenbach, Lois Prislovsky, and Rachael Gabriel in Phi Delta Kappan, May 2017 (Vol. 98, #8, p. 59-63), http://bit.ly/2rcKZxS; Gabriel can be reached at [email protected].

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5. Do the Positive Effects of Reading Recovery Endure?

            In this JESPAR article, James D’Agostino and Robert Kelly (The Ohio State University) and Mary Lose (Oakland University) report on their study of the long-term effects of Reading Recovery, comparing 328 Michigan students who were in the program with a 264-student control group.

Developed in New Zealand in the 1970s by Marie Clay, Reading Recovery provides the lowest-performing first graders with 12-20 weeks of daily lessons with a highly trained teacher. Each half-hour tutorial consists of:

-   Rereading familiar books;

-   A running record assessment of the book introduced in the previous lesson;

-   Letter and word work in isolation;

-   Composing and constructing a written message;

-   Introducing and supporting the student in reading a new book at the appropriate level.

Reading Recovery aims to accelerate students’ literacy skills to the average reading and writing levels of their classmates, at which point they rejoin the regular-education class for literacy instruction. (Students who don’t reach the criterion level after 20 weeks of Reading Recovery are referred for supplemental or long-term support.)

What did the researchers find? First, that Reading Recovery is very effective at boosting the literacy proficiency of students who matriculate, especially students who started off with the lowest reading and writing levels. Following the students into second, third, and fourth grades, D’Agostino, Lose, and Kelly found that the impact of Reading Recovery faded somewhat, especially for students whose entering literacy levels were higher. In other words, the lasting effects of Reading Recovery were strongest for students who were initially the neediest. The authors qualify their findings by saying they were unable to locate around 30 percent of students in the upper grades (they’d moved to other schools), and the literacy assessments in third and fourth grade were different from the ones used in the primary grades.

            “The findings of this study,” they say, “point to the need to increase the overall expertise of Reading Recovery teachers in the complex decision-making that characterizes Reading Recovery instruction, particularly for students who enter the intervention, not performing at the lowest levels, but who have some print awareness and may have developed idiosyncratic ways of approaching print… Not all children leave the intervention with the same profile of achievement, and we need to better understand what students need to be able to do to maintain their literacy progress in future years and to be no more vulnerable to risk factors than the average student.”

            What’s also clear, the researchers conclude, is that Reading Recovery “is not an inoculation against social and educational factors that may impinge on students’ literacy development. Schools cannot expect to provide Reading Recovery in first grade and not concern themselves about the future learning trajectories of participating students. The results of this study support Clay’s (2005a) advice to educators that after the treatment, children should be monitored for multiple years, be provided with high-quality classroom instruction, and be provided supplemental support if their achievement rates start to decline. Reading Recovery probably is best offered within a more comprehensive school model in which instruction is better aligned between intensive and classroom practices, and where students are tracked continuously to best meet their needs.”

 

“Examining the Sustained Effects of Reading Recovery” by Jerome D’Agostino, Mary Lose, and Robert Kelly in Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, April-June 2017 (Vol. 22, # 2, p. 116-127), http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10824669.2017.1286591; D’Agostino can be reached at [email protected].

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6. Does Merit Pay Work?        

In this Teachers College Record article, Daniel Bowen (Texas A&M University) and Jonathan Mills (Tulane University) report on their study of the effect of performance pay on the composition of a school’s workforce and on student achievement. Looking at two schools implementing merit pay (salary boosts for higher student achievement), The researchers found:

• First, performance pay attracted teachers who were more inclined to take risks. This corroborates the theory of action behind merit pay and suggests that it “could attract fundamentally different employees to the teacher workforce,” say Bowen and Mills. What’s not clear, however, was whether risk-loving teachers would necessarily produce higher student achievement. More study is needed on that question, say the authors.

• Second, merit pay reduced the appeal of teaching in these schools for more intrinsically motivated professionals. What’s more, teachers in the study who were producing some of the best student-achievement results weren’t fans of merit pay. Bowen and Mills speculate that these teachers “have a strong sense of mission and a commitment to education that is independent of the provision of external rewards… Specifically, external rewards crowd out this intrinsic public service motivation in two ways. First, intrinsically motivated individuals are likely to perceive rewards as external controls. Second, external rewards can reduce self-esteem when employees perceive them as strategic approaches that disregard their intrinsically-driven motivations.”

“The crucial consideration for policymakers,” conclude Bowen and Mills, “is applying policy levers that optimize the recruitment and retention of highly effective teachers. The appeal of performance-based pay is that personnel recruitment and retention should improve as a result of increasing the lifetime earnings of effective teachers by tying wages to performance measures. However, these benefits come at a cost that has likely been overlooked by education reformers. In addition to the financial and political capital that policymakers need to expend in order to implement such policies, the findings from this study imply that the incorporation of explicit extrinsic rewards may not increase retention and possibly even dissuade current or potential, high-quality educators from the profession because they find intrinsic motivation crowding-out effects to outweigh the financial gains.”

That said, the authors aren’t in favor of continuing the current step-and-lane pay schemes used by most school districts. They call for further exploration of options that might be better, including praise and public recognition of effective teachers.

 

“Changing the Education Workforce? The Relationship Among Teacher Quality, Motivation, and Performance Pay” by Daniel Bowen and Jonathan Mills in Teachers College Record, April 2017 (Vol. 119, #4, p. 1-32), http://www.tcrecord.org/library/abstract.asp?contentid=21714; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

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7. When Principals Should Delegate and When They Should Get Involved

            In this Principal Center article, Justin Baeder suggests four questions for principals deciding whether to roll up their sleeves and engage in the myriad possible activities each day – greeting students when they enter school; hallway, cafeteria, and recess supervision; teacher team meetings; data analysis; sports events; chatting with parents at dismissal; and many more:

• Does it build relationships? “This is the redeeming value in any work that’s below your pay grade,” says Baeder.

• Does it develop skills in others? “For example, when principals teach model lessons, it’s not because the principal is necessarily the best teacher,” says Baeder. “It’s because when leaders go first, it’s hard not to follow.”

• Does it build systems? Sometimes the best way to learn the kind of system that’s needed is to do the work yourself for a spell.

• Does it provide key information? Classroom observations, for example, provide front-line insights into the day-to-day work of the school that inform any number of decisions.

 

“4 Ways to Decide What NOT to Delegate” by Justin Baeder in Principal Center, May 23, 2017, https://www.principalcenter.com/4-ways-to-decide-what-not-to-delegate/; Baeder can be reached at [email protected].

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