Category: Pedagogy

“Cheat Sheets”

A selection of "cheat sheets".

I let my students bring in one page of handwritten notes, a “cheat sheet” if you will, into their last Physics exam. I’d expected to see some very tiny writing, but some of the notes needed scientific-grade magnification equipment to be read. Seen from a distance, the dense writing did have a certain aesthetic appeal.

Of course the primary reason for letting students bring in the cheat sheets into the exam was to get them to practice taking notes. At one extreme, the students who already take good notes benefit from having to condense them. At the other extreme, the students who don’t take notes at all get a strong incentive to practice. The very act of preparing cheat sheets is a good way to study for exams.

And it worked. As they hand in their papers I usually ask them how the test went, and, this time, I also asked a few student if they found their page of notes useful. One student in particular responded, Well I didn’t need to use it after making it.

Cheat sheets laid out according to note-taking style. Two extremes of note taking styles are highlighted. Equations and diagrams to the left, and text-only to the right.

It was also very interesting to see the different styles of note taking: the strategic use of color; densely packed text; equations; diagrams; columnar organization. What all this means, I’m not sure. I’m particularly interested in how their note taking style relates to students’ preferred learning style.

Indeed, it would be interesting to see if the note taking style co-relates in any way with students’ performance on the test. One could hypothesize that, since we know that students learn better when they encounter material from multiple perspectives, then students whose notes have the greatest mix of styles — diagrams, equations, text etc. — should have learned more (and perhaps perform better on the test).

It’s a pretty simple and crude hypothesis, since there are likely many other factors that affect test performance, but it would still be interesting to look at.

Media Profanity and Aggression

This research shows that profanity is not harmless. Children exposed to profanity in the media think that such language is ‘normal,’ which may reduce their inhibitions about using profanity themselves. And children who use profanity are more likely to aggress against others.
–Brad Bushman (2011) in a Brigham Young University Press Release.

Exposure to profanity in videogames and on TV appears to affect how teens view and use profanity, and makes them more aggressive. These are the key results of a paper by Sarah Coyne (Coyne et al., 2011). The full article is available online, but is summarized here.

While the first part, at least, of this result might seem obvious — that seeing profanity desensitizes, familiarizes, and leads to increased use — it’s nice to have some scientific corroboration.

The more disturbing result, perhaps, is the link between profanity and aggression. It’s a moderate effect, but the link appears similar to the connection between war games and aggression.

Profanity is kind of like a stepping stone. You don’t go to a movie, hear a bad word, and then go shoot somebody. But when youth both hear and then try profanity out for themselves it can start a downward slide toward more aggressive behavior.
— Sarah Coyne (2011) in a Brigham Young University Press Release.

What’s Wrong with Traditional Education

Alison Gopnik points out the people first start to learn by exploration (the same way scientists do), and then learn to do things well by apprenticeship.

When we actually start to look at the fundamentals, it seems children learn by exploring—by experimenting, playing, drawing inferences …. that kind of exploratory learning isn’t just the purview of scientists but seems to be very, very basic. …The other kind of learning that we see, not so much in preschoolers but in school-age children, is what I call guided apprenticeship learning, where you’re not just exploring and finding out new things but learning to perform a skill particularly well.

— Alison Gopnik in Fillion (2011): In conversation: Alison Gopnik in MacLeans.

Kate Fillion’s great interview with Gopnik, a cognitive scientist, is worth the read.

The traditional way of thinking about learning at a university is: there’s somebody who’s a teacher, who actually has some amount of knowledge, and their job is figuring out a way of communicating that knowledge. That’s literally a medieval model; it comes from the days when there weren’t a lot of printed books around, so someone read the book and explained it to everybody else. That’s our model for what university education, and for that matter high school education, ought to be like. It’s not a model that anybody’s ever found any independent evidence for. [my emphasis]

— Alison Gopnik in Fillion (2011): In conversation: Alison Gopnik in MacLeans.

Update

EV, in the comments, recommends Allison Gopnik’s TED talk. It focuses on babies, but is a pretty good presentation.

(via The Dish)

Doodling is Good!

To Doodle: to make spontaneous marks to help yourself think.
–Sunni Brown (2011): Doodlers, unite! (at 3:19) in TED.

Unfortunately, teachers are usually opposed to doodling in class. (Image from Sunni Brown's TED talk.)

Doodling on a notepad is often seen as evidence that a student is not paying attention. Very much to the contrary, argues Sunni Brown in this TED talk:

Studies show that sketching and doodling improve our comprehension — and our creative thinking.
— TEDtalksDirector: Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite! on YouTube.

She describes doodling as a, “preemptive measure to stop you from loosing focus.” In addition, doodling helps integrate all four modes of learning (visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic) as well as helps provoke an emotional response, all of which greatly aid retention of information and creative thinking. Finally, doodling is most useful when we’re trying to process a heavy, dense load of information.

Brown has more details in her article in .net, Why the Doodle Matters.

(hat tip: The Dish)

Learning to Learn from Your Mistakes

When students are able to recognize mistakes and analyze them, they will learn faster and deeper. Jonah Lehrer summarizes a new study that shows that people learn faster when they spend the effort to learn from their mistakes.

When people notice that they’ve made an error, they have an instinctive negative reaction. Then we have the choice to either ignore the error or spend some time considering it – and learning from it. Guess who learn faster?

This research is based on Carol Dweck’s work on mindset, which shows that it’s better to praise effort rather than intelligence. A willingness to work hard (grit) is a much better attitude for learners. It turns failures into learning experiences, while focusing on intelligence actually discourages people from trying things at which they might fail.

… people learn how to get it right by getting it wrong again and again. Education isn’t magic. Education is the wisdom wrung from failure.

— Lehrer (2011): Why Do Some People Learn Faster? in Wired.

Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing

One of the first things we learned at Heifer was the process of group formation. It was also one of the last things they talked about so it must have been pretty important.

The four steps are:

    Forming: Students are quite polite to each other when they first get on the balance board.

  • Forming: When the group first gets together, people tend to be cautious with one another. But because they’re so careful with what they say and what they do, newly forming groups don’t usually get much done.
  • Storming: Now the barriers start to break down as individual personalities manifest themselves. People start speaking up. A lot. They become less polite. Conflicts arise. People become accusatory. There’s lots of energy, but because of all the conflict, they still aren’t able to get much done.
    • Storming: Vociferous disagreement breaks out.
  • Norming: The conflict begins to settle down as the group starts to work out its kinks, as all the individuals begin to adapt to one another. Groups may need guidance to get there because everyone has to stop fighting, but as it usually helps that the group will start to see successes because of successful co-operation.
  • Performing: A well-functioning group can get a lot done. They’re able to communicate effectively, and take action effectively. Their productivity kicks into high gear and they can accomplish much together.
Norming: The group begins to organize itself. Rules of order are put in place.

Not all groups get through all four steps, and every time the group changes, such as when a new member (like a new student) is introduced the groups will need to go through some version of the four steps as they learn to accommodate the newcomer.

A well established culture will help groups adapt to change. This is yet another benefit of multi-aged classrooms, because a healthy classroom culture eases the transition as older students leave and new students come in.

Performing: Roles are assigned. Balance is achieved (from 2, to 5, to 57 seconds).

Even so, awareness of the four steps is extremely useful because it helps everyone anticipate that there will likely be some conflict, but that conflict is part of the group forming process and will likely diminish with time.

So you should expect, every year, to have to spend some time group building. Two weeks dedicated to orientation and teamwork is what Betsy Coe’s Montessori Middle School program uses. It’s a fair chunk of time to take out of the year, but because good groups can get so much more done, it’s well worth it to build a good classroom community.

Do Single Sex Schools Make a Difference?

A recent article by Diane Halpern in Science looks at the data about single-sex schooling and finds little evidence of benefits.

There’s a podcast interview with Halpern that elaborates on the story, but Tamar Lewin’s article in the New York Times does a great job at looking at the different sides of the issue.

… sex-segregated education—is deeply misguided, and often justified by weak, cherry-picked, or misconstrued scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence. There is no well-designed research showing that single-sex (SS) education improves students’ academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism.

— Halpern et al., 2011: The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling

My personal, (very) anecdotal experience would argue the opposite, however. At least in secondary school, not having all the inter-gender interactions was quite beneficial. It may not have made me the best student (or even a good student), but it was at least one less complication to worry about while I was trying, or trying to avoid, learning.

The author are directors of the American Council for CoEducational Schooling, so they do have a definite point of view. Their Why Co-Ed? page makes the arguments for Co-Ed schools in nice bullet points.

Their arguments seem to be based on the evidence that gender segregated schools encourage stereotyping, usually to the detriment of the girls. Gender segregation is particularly suspect when it’s based on the idea that boys and girls learn very differently. There are certainly differences (e.g. as in their approach to games, and blogging) but having all this diversity in approaches and perspectives in the same classroom has been generally beneficial in my experience.

My only real major outstanding question is the effect of the increased sex drive that comes with puberty on students’ ability to learn. Although they admit it as a potential problem, their counter is that students in single-sex environments don’t learn how to interact properly with the other gender. Adolescents need all the opportunity they can get to learn how to normalize their interactions with the opposite gender. My own anecdotal evidence would definitely support this contention, but I’d like to see it backed up with more research, nonetheless.

… the rise in testosterone at puberty, which happens in both boys and girls, has one clear-cut effect: elevating sex drive in both males and females. There is no question that this can change the dynamics in a middle- or high-school classroom;

…

… there is evidence that gender segregation disturbs boy-girl interactions when the two sexes do come together at lunch, recess, or more formal social gatherings.2 Lacking the opportunity to work together in a serious, non-sexual environment, boys and girls may over-glamorize, misunderstand, and even harass the other sex when they do have a chance to mingle outside the classroom.

— Halpern et al., 2011: The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling

I’m troubled about the use of the word “may” in the second paragraph; the evidence either way seems equivocal. It’s good, though, to see someone compiling the research.

I do think single-gender education should be an option that’s available, but I’d like to see the arguments either way be based on sound science. The simple fact that boys and girls learn differently (on average) does not mean they would benefit from learning separately.

The Ingredients of “Character”

Some key performance-character strengths:

zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity.

— Tough (2011): What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? in The New York Times’ Education Issue

Paul Tough’s thought provoking article is a great overview of some of the recent research on character, and discusses a few attempts to instill character building into school.

Levin [co-founder of the KIPP network of charter schools ] noticed that … the students who persisted in college were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically at KIPP; they were the ones with exceptional character strengths, like optimism and persistence and social intelligence. They were the ones who were able to recover from a bad grade and resolve to do better next time; to bounce back from a fight with their parents; to resist the urge to go out to the movies and stay home and study instead; to persuade professors to give them extra help after class.

— Tough (2011): What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?

Much of the work on character is based on the universal character characteristics identified in the book Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (Peterson and Seligman, 2004) and the research of Angela Duckworth (her research page is a good place to find copies of her publications).

Duckworth’s Grit Scale, seems to be a remarkably good predictor of GPA, and perhaps more interestingly, corresponded inversely to the number of hours of television students watched: “gritter” students did better in school and watched less TV.

Among adolescents, the Grit–S [short Grit Scale] longitudinally predicted GPA and, inversely, hours watching television. Among cadets at the United States Military Academy, West Point, the Grit–S predicted retention.

— Duckworth and Quinn (2009): Development and Validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit–S)

The grit survey would probably be a useful addition to the Personal World curriculum.

One interesting application discussed in the article is at the KIPP middle schools in NYC. There they issue a Character Report Card and integrate discussion of character into all the classes: a language class might talk about how much self control the protagonist in a novel has and how that works out for them.

I’d be extremely reluctant to have to grade my students on twenty four character traits. While it might be a useful rubric to have and discuss and build on students’ positive self-conceptions, I fear that it might also significantly reinforce the negative conceptions as well.

Imbuing a language of character as a subtext of the curriculum seems like a great idea however.

Performance vs. Moral Character

One important critique of much of this work is that it focuses on “performance” character, the character traits that predict high achievement, rather than “moral” character which focuses on the ability to work well with others.

These two perspectives on the same character traits need careful attention. From a performance perspective, social intelligence, can be seen as a way of getting ahead – something that is somewhat manipulative, but from a moral perspective, social intelligence is intrinsically beneficial to the person and the society around them.

And perhaps this is the biggest problem with performance-character. It is extrinsically motivated: do this and you will get this reward. The intrinsic nature of moral-character seems much more in line with a progressive approach to teaching. Certainly, much care should be taken in how we think about and include character building in education.

The Character Education Partnership has a number of lesson plans and best practices for all grade levels, that focus more on moral character.

Giving Students the Opportunity to Fail

Finally, Tough talks about the fact that students need the time and space to explore, try difficult things, and to fail, in order to really build character.

The idea of building grit and building self-control is that you get that through failure, and in most highly academic environments in the United States, no one fails anything.

— Dominic Randolph (2011) in Tough (2011): What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? in The New York Times’ Education Issue

This is tied into the central theme of the movie Race To Nowhere and the book The Price of Privilege, that argue that, for many affluent students, the stress of excessively high academic expectations are having some seriously negative effects.

People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. – Joan Didion (1961), via Word on the Street (2010)

(hat tip to Ms. D. for the link to the article)