Tag: Pedagogy

The Adolescent Sleep Cycle

Bora Zivkovic compiles some information on how kids circadian rhythms change during adolescence, and advocates for later school starting hours.

He points out the interesting concept of chronotypes:

Everyone, from little children, through teens and young adults to elderly, belongs to one of the ‘chronotypes’. You can be a more or less extreme lark (phase-advanced, tend to wake up and fall asleep early), a more or less extreme owl (phase-delayed, tend to wake up and fall asleep late). You can be something in between – some kind of “median” (I don’t want to call this normal, because the whole spectrum is normal) chronotype.

— Zivkovic (2012): When Should School Start in the morning in Scientific American (blog).

And how your chronotype gets phase-delayed at puberty:

No matter where you are on these continua, once you hit puberty your clock will phase-delay. If you were an owl to begin with, you will become a more extreme owl for about a dozen years. If you are an extreme lark, you’ll be a less extreme lark. In the late 20s, your clock will gradually go back to your baseline chronotype and retain it for the rest of your life.

— Zivkovic (2012): When Should School Start in the morning in Scientific American (blog).

Networks versus Trees: Ways of Analyzing the World

Manuel Lima contrasts the traditional, hierarchical, view of the world (evolution’s tree of life for example) to a more network oriented perspective.

One interesting part is the interpretation of the history of science as having three phases, dealing with Problems of:

  • Simplicity: Early scientific efforts (17th-19th centuries) was focused on “simple” models of cause and effect — embodied perhaps in Newton’s Laws, where every force has an equal and opposite force.
  • Disorganized Complexity: Think early 20th century nuclear physics — Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle for example — where the connections between events are complicated and sort of random/probabilistic.
  • Organized Complexity: Systems science sees the interrelatedness of everything: ecologic food webs; the Internet; horizontal gene transfer across the limbs of the tree of life.

ᔥ RSA Animate ↬ The Dish

Formative and Authentic Assessment

Instead giving counterproductive, high-stakes exams, David Jaffee promotes formative and authentic assessment methods.

Formative assessment happens during learning, usually in the classroom. Students do something, like an assignment, and get immediate feedback on what they did. A teacher walking around from student to student or group to group, following what the students are doing and helping students identify which concepts they’re not getting, is a typical example of formative assessment.

Authentic assessments are assignments that are or mimic real-world problems, and require students to apply the stuff they should have learned to solving them. I’m using projects like the draining of a bottle and carpet friction experiments to assess if my students truly understand why they do algebra and calculus, and are able to apply the techniques they’ve learned.

Caveat: It is important to note, however, that being able to solve real-world problems requires some abstract thinking skills that adolescents are still developing. Yet, even though a lot of the basic learning in middle and high school consists of ingesting the language of the different fields of study — they type of thing that is easy to test — a more useful assessment is likely to be one that requires students to use their new vocabulary in written assignments, such as project reports and essays.

Don’t Study for Your Exams

… cramming—short-term memorizing—does not contribute to retention or transfer [my emphasis]. It may, however, yield positive short-term results as measured by exam scores.

— Jaffee, 2012: Stop Telling Students to Study for Exams in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

It’s getting close to the end of the academic year, and exams are coming up. David Jaffee advocates that we stop telling students to study for their exams; they should, instead, study for learning and understanding.

Jaffee especially piles on on Final Exams:

This dysfunctional system reaches its zenith with the cumulative “final” exam. We even go so far as to commemorate this sacred academic ritual by setting aside a specially designated “exam week” at the end of each term. This collective exercise in sadism encourages students to cram everything that they think they need to “know” (temporarily for the exam) into their brains, deprive themselves of sleep and leisure activities, complete (or more likely finally start) term papers, and memorize mounds of information. While this traditional exercise might prepare students for the inevitable bouts of unpleasantness they will face as working adults, its value as a learning process is dubious.

— Jaffee (2012).

The alternative to exams, Jaffee suggests, is formative and authentic assessment.

A Better Commencement Address

2. Some of your worst days lie ahead. Graduation is a happy day. But my job is to tell you that if you are going to do anything worthwhile, you will face periods of grinding self-doubt and failure.

— Wheelan, 2012: 10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You in The Wall Street Journal

Charles Wheelan provides an excellent perspective on what should be important in a commencement address.

I particularly like this warning about the danger of working only for rewards:

8. Don’t model your life after a circus animal. Performing animals do tricks because their trainers throw them peanuts or small fish for doing so. You should aspire to do better.

— Wheelan, 2012: 10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You in The Wall Street Journal

And this point on conservation and the real meaning of being conservative:

3. Don’t make the world worse. I know that I’m supposed to tell you to aspire to great things. But I’m going to lower the bar here: Just don’t use your prodigious talents to mess things up. Too many smart people are doing that already.

— Wheelan, 2012: 10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You in The Wall Street Journal

↬ The Dish

Building a Metaphor (Actually a Grill)

The grill entering the final stages of construction by Ryan V. and Robert M.. Photograph by Autumn F.

It took us a little more than half a day to build a grill. It’s a simple thing of cinder blocks and sand, located near the soccer field so it’ll be convenient for bbq’s next year.

It took the highschoolers all morning to dig an outline for the base of the grill and lay in the foundation, despite it being a small, three-quarters of a rectangle shape, and only ten centimeters (4 inches) deep at maximum. The local clay is extremely dense and hard.

The foundations took the longest time to build.

But the foundations were firm, secure, and level.

When the base was done, two middle-schoolers — ably documented by a peer photographer — finished all the visible parts of the structure in just half an hour.

The next day, after I’d given them a presentation on cognitive development during the teenage years that I realized how nice a metaphor the grill construction was for the training of the brain during adolescence. The extensive pruning and myelination that typifies adolescence establish neural pathways are the foundation for future mental growth.

Good, strong, level foundations are the basis for a rich and fulfilling life.

Good foundations require some effort, but they're worth it.

What Computer-Based Learning of Math Should Look Like

Walter Russell Mead (and his commenters) highlight two articles (here and here) on Virginia Tech’s excellent computer-based learning setup for their mathematics classes. Most of the work is done on the computer, either at home or in a shared Math Emporium where teachers are available to help when necessary; which, except for the computer work, is very much like how my class works. It seems close to the ideal way of using technology to allow flexibility in learning and assessment, and is in many ways similar to New York City’s School of One program.

VT’s approach requires some self-motivation on the part of the students — students are able to use the 24 hour a day Emporium at any time — but the model should fit be a good fit for Montessori middle and high-school students who have much independence in managing how they use their time during the day.

Their assessment method also nice as it allows students to pace themselves and take their tests when they’re ready. It is based on students proving that they’ve learned the material — how they learned it is not important, nor is how many practice tests they took before they get to the test.

Each course is broken up into a series of “modules,” available on Emporium computers or the Internet, that students are required to complete within a certain amount of time. Each module outlines a specific set of mathematic principles and concepts. These are translated into specific examples to review and problems to solve.

Once the module materials are completed, students can take randomly generated practice tests that draw on a central bank of thousands of potential questions. If they get questions wrong, the computer refers them back to the appropriate materials, and there’s no limit to the number of practice tests they can take. When they decide they’re ready, students come to the Emporium to take an official, proctored test that’s generated in exactly the same way as the practice quizzes. Then they move to the next module. Instead of marking progress by time—the number of hours spent in proximity to a lecturer—Emporium courses measure advancement by evidence of learning.

— Carey, K., 2008: Transformation 101 in Washington Monthly

↬ Tyler Cowen ↬ Walter Russel Mead ↬ Ms. Douglass