In This Issue:

1. Sherry Turkle on some downsides of 21^st-century communicating

2. Are we losing the ability to converse in person?

3. Letters to the editor about technology and face-to-face communication

4. Rick DuFour and Douglas Reeves on real PLCs

5. Mike Schmoker on effective professional development

6. Teaching about the presidential election

7. Ways to stop classroom cheating

8. Research on the causes of unequal student outcomes

9. Short item: Hans Rosling on statistics

 

Quotes of the Week

“Of course teacher quality matters. It will matter even more when teachers are using materials of proven quality… Every opportunity for schools getting more bang for their curricular buck is a function of choosing the right product, not finding a better price.”

            Robert Pondiscio in The Education Gadfly, reviewing “The Hidden Value of

Curriculum Reform” by Ulrich Boser, Matthew Chingos, and Chelsea Straus,

http://bit.ly/1WdcV1e

 

“Academic success is typically an obsession with parents of color. Nowhere else have I seen mere high-school graduation treated as such a celebratory event. But if the world has told me repeatedly that people like me are not good at academics, that information seeps into my unconscious and stays there. A setback or two in the classroom can easily get translated into a ‘can’t do’ attitude – for both children and their parents. So the boy who runs into trouble on a math test may give up on the spot, then go out to the corner after school with a basketball, miss a few baskets, but keep on trying, because he ‘knows’ that people like him are good at basketball.”

            Will Richan, emeritus professor at Temple University, in a letter to the New York Times

responding to the 10/11/15 article, “Why Are Asian-Americans So Successful in

America?” http://nyti.ms/1Gsy9kN

 

“Boys are more sensitive than girls to disadvantage. Any disadvantage, like growing up in poverty, in a bad neighborhood, or without a father, takes more of a toll on boys than on their sisters. That realization could be a starting point for educators, parents, and policy makers who are trying to figure out how to help boys – particularly those from black, Latino, and immigrant families.”

            Claire Cain Miller in “A Disadvantaged Start in Life Harms Boys More Than Girls” in

The New York Times, October 22, 2015, http://nyti.ms/1H4dxtB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Sherry Turkle on Some Downsides of 21^st-Century Communicating

            In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, MIT professor Sherry Turkle describes how a few students in a 20-person seminar asked to see her halfway through the semester and confessed that they were texting in class. At a subsequent class meeting, Turkle had the whole group discuss the issue, and several other students admitted that they couldn’t stop themselves from texting, even in such an intimate and positive classroom environment. They spoke of constant connection as “a necessity,” says Turkle. “For some, three minutes was too long to go without checking their phones. They wanted to see who was in touch with them, a comfort in itself.”

            Students decided to try doing without any devices in class, with a short break to check for messages and e-mails. “For me,” says Turkle, “something shifted. Conversations became more relaxed and cohesive. Students finished their thoughts, unrushed. They seemed more present and able to be in an uninterrupted conversation. When they were not tempted by their phones, the students told me, they felt more in control of their attention. With phones in hand, they felt control slip away.” How ironic, since these devices are supposed to give us more control!

            As Turkle analyzed her students’ need to be digitally connected during class, she identified several triggers. One was a moment of boredom, another was a friend reaching out to them (bzzz). Once they were in the “circle of apps,” even a highly engaging class couldn’t compete. In addition, she says, “Distraction is contagious.” Seeing a classmate checking e-mail or shopping on Amazon conveys that the class is not going well and everyone has permission to check out. “Despite research that shows that multitasking is bad for learning,” says Turkle, “the myth of the moment is that multitasking is a good idea. We are not inclined to let this myth die because multitasking feels good.”

            Some believe that device-driven multitasking is like being addicted to heroin. For people who think of it this way, says Turkle, “It is as though they are facing something that is by definition more powerful than they could ever be. Resistance seems futile.” That’s why a number of educators accommodate students’ craving for “hyper attention” by jazzing up their PowerPoint presentations and encouraging “backchanneling” (students type a running digital commentary of comments during a presentation) and “Google jockeying” (students search the Internet for images, examples, definitions, or opposing views to display on the screens). Katherine Hayles of Duke University says educators have no choice but to adapt to the new-age sensibility, and believes that “deep attention” is passé. “Change the students to fit the educational environment,” she says, “or change that environment to fit the students.”

            The problem, says Turkle, is that, “When you train your brain to multitask as your default approach – when you choose hyper attention – you won’t be able to focus even when you want to. You’re going to have trouble sitting and listening to your children tell you about their day in school. You’re going to have trouble sitting in a meeting and listening to your colleagues. Their narrative will seem painfully slow. Just as middle-school children don’t acquire the skills for conversation because they lack practice, university students lose the capacity to sit in a class and follow a complex argument.”

Turkle says corporate human-resources officers describe their new hires as not very good at talking in business meetings. College graduates say the same thing about themselves. They are anxious about the give-and-take of in-person interaction. And yet they attend fewer and fewer in-person classes, miss the opportunity to chat with instructors after classes, seldom take advantage of instructors’ office hours, and prefer e-mail and texting to face-to-face conversation. When will they learn those vital skills?

Turkle finds that heroin analogy unhelpful; after all, there are plenty of positive (and legal) benefits to 21^st-century connectivity. “Instead of thinking about addiction,” she says, “it makes more sense to explore how we are vulnerable to certain things that technology offers. The path forward is to learn more about our vulnerabilities and design around them. To do that, we have to clarify our purpose. In education, learning is the focus, and we know that multitasking is not helpful. So it’s up to us to actively choose unitasking… If the brain is plastic, then at any age it can be set to work on deep attention. So if we decide that deep attention is a value, we can cultivate it.”

Turkle describes how Carol Steiker, a professor at Harvard Law School, noticed that her students were furiously typing on their laptops in class, creating something close to a transcript of what she was saying – basically becoming court stenographers. “They sometimes seemed annoyed if you called on them because it broke up their transcriptions,” she says. “If you are trying to write a transcript of class, class participation takes you away from your job.” So Steiker decided to allow no technology in her classes, requiring students to take notes by hand. The result? “Students seem less annoyed when you call on them,” she reports. Now they are better listeners, discussions have improved, and classes are more successful.

Turkle is also interested in what’s happening with MOOCs (massive open online courses) after the initial burst of enthusiasm a few years ago. It turns out that the most important factor in helping students succeed is human contact with the instructor. “Since students struggle with conversation, it makes sense to engage them in it,” she says. “Conversations teach attention, how to listen, how to be in a relationship. Educational technology, with all its bells and whistles, only highlights the simple power of conversation… If you ask people where their love for learning comes from they usually talk about an inspiring teacher. The most powerful learning takes place in a relationship. What kind of relationship can you form with a professor who is lecturing in the little square on the screen?”

“The lecture is the easiest form of in-person pedagogy to criticize,” Turkle concedes. “It is the oldest form of instruction. It is the only one most likely to involve a passive student. It is the easiest to caricature, as the teacher might be passive as well, perhaps reading notes that were written years ago. But for all its flaws, the lecture has a lot going for it. It is a place where students come together, on good days and bad, and form a small community. As in any live performance, anything can happen. An audience is present; the room is engaged… Ideally college classrooms are places where students stand up and defend their ideas in real time. They learn from speaking and from listening… That doesn’t happen if you take your class alone in your room. The value of attending live lectures is a bit like the value of doing fieldwork: In fieldwork, there can be dry spells, but you learn to read people in real time. You share a bit of road with those around you, and you come to understand how a group thinks. And you learn the rewards of patience: you have followed arguments as they unfold. If you are lucky, you learn that life repays close, focused attention… What makes the greatest impression in a college education is learning how to think like someone else, appreciating an intellectual personality, and thinking about what it might mean to have one of your own.”

 

“Talk to Me: How to Teach in an Age of Distraction” by Sherry Turkle in The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 9, 2015 (Vol. LXII, #8, p. B6-B9), no free e-mail link

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2. Are We Losing the Ability to Converse In Person?

            In this New York Times review of Sherry Turkle’s just-published book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, (Penguin Press, 2015), author Jonathan Franzen has this to say about the author: “She’s a skeptic who was once a believer, a clinical psychologist among the industry shills and the literary hand-wringers, an empiricist among the cherry-picking anecdotalists, a moderate among the extremists, a realist among the fantasists, a humanist but not a Luddite: a grown-up.” Her book, says Franzen, “is straightforwardly a call to arms: Our rapturous submission to digital technology has led to an atrophying of human capacities like empathy and self-reflection, and the time has come to reassert ourselves, behave like adults, and put technology in its place.”

The digitally-addled people Turkle interviewed for her book, says Franzen, “have adopted new technologies in pursuit of greater control, only to feel controlled by them. The likably idealized selves that they’ve created with social media leave their real selves all the more isolated. They communicate incessantly but are afraid of face-to-face conversations; they worry, often nostalgically, that they’re missing out on something fundamental.”

In-person communication is what’s being supplanted, says Franzen, and we must find ways to regain it: “Conversation presupposes solitude… because it’s in solitude that we learn to think for ourselves and develop a stable sense of self, which is essential for taking other people as they are… Through the conversational attention of parents, children acquire a sense of enduring connectedness and a habit of talking about their feelings, rather than simply acting on them… When you speak to people in person, you’re forced to recognize their full humanity, which is where empathy begins… And conversation carries the risk of boredom, the condition that smartphones have taught us most to fear, which is also the condition in which patience and imagination are developed.”

            Turkle’s book makes the case that face-to-face interactions shape children’s development at home, improve learning in school, and enhance employees’ workplace performance. And achieving a measure of liberation from digital technology also has political and economic implications, says Franzen: “The young person who cannot or will not be alone, converse with family, go out with friends, attend a lecture, or perform a job without monitoring her smartphone is an emblem of our economy’s leechlike attachment to our very bodies,” he says. “Digital technology is capitalism on hyperdrive, injecting its logic of consumption and promotion, of monetization and efficiency, into every waking minute.”

 

“Left to Our Own Devices” by Jonathan Franzen in The New York Times Book Review, October 4, 2015, http://nyti.ms/1Gu5iMY

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3. Letters to the Editor About Technology and Face-to-Face Communication

            A recent New York Times article by MIT professor Sherry Turkle sparked a number of responses. Some excerpts:

            • “Communications research suggests that new media frequently complement, rather than replace or displace, interpersonal communication. And there is also evidence suggesting that for shy, socially unskilled individuals, online technologies offer a safe haven in which to develop the more emotionally complex skills necessary for effective face-to-face communication.”   Richard Perloff, Cleveland State University, Ohio

            • “Even though powerful social norms compel young people to be constantly connected via technology, it’s clear that deep within them is an age-old yearning for unmediated engagement with the world.”   Ira Silver, Framingham State University, Massachusetts

            • “The problem is that no one is selling, advertising, or tempting the public with the ‘wares’ of empathy and introspection. It behooves parents to model for their children restraint in their use of gadgetry and to have the kinds of conversations with them that can only occur without distraction.”   Larry Sandberg, Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York

            • “It’s pleasant to hear that in summer camp, after a few days without access to mobile devices, people are enjoying conversation more. But to get to the point where one chooses, on his or her own, to put the phone to sleep – where is the evidence for that? Addiction is addiction, whether to alcohol, drugs, or cellphones.”   Elmera Goldberg, New York City

            • “Whatever happened to social etiquette?… The pleasure centers of the brain learn to love the speedy injections of stimuli. Teaching and modeling mastery over the digital ‘tools’ in our lives means enforcing ‘device-free zones’ at home and in the workplace. It means being fully ‘present’ when conversing with fellow human beings and not being lost (and alone) in a digital maze.”   Barbara Allen Kenney, Santa Fe, New Mexico

            • “Ironically, today’s technology would not have been possible without hundreds of engineers, scientists, and others talking face to face and collaborating to create the modern phones, computers, Internet, and myriad devices that so many now use to avoid talking face to face.”   John Gregory, Convent Station, New Jersey

            • “Our tech-induced discomfort with solitude and reflection poses another hazard: It undermines a personal reckoning with life as we grow older and seek to cultivate a more idiosyncratic, interior state of mind. Aging will never be trending; there’s no app to deepen an understanding of our lives. This is a stealth liability that tech-dependent young adults will confront when their phones stop buzzing.”   Robert Kertzner, Columbia University, New York

 

“Tethered to Technology: How Has Our Attaching to Mobile Devices Affected Our Social Interactions?” October 4, 2015 letters to The New York Times in response to Sherry Turkle’s September 27, 2015 Times article, “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk” http://nyti.ms/1O3UlEq; to read the letters, click http://nyti.ms/1GEQgDE.

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4. Rick DuFour and Douglas Reeves on Real PLC’s

            In this Education Week article, author/consultants Rick DuFour and Douglas Reeves wrestle with two seemingly contradictory findings in a recent Gates-funded Boston Research Group study, “Teachers Know Best: Teachers’ Views on Professional Development”:

-   Front-line educators prefer PD that helps them plan and improve their instruction, is teacher-driven, includes hands-on strategies relevant to their classrooms, is sustained over time, and recognizes they are professionals with valuable insights.

-   Teachers also said the least beneficial kind of PD was “professional learning communities”, which they described as “just another meeting,” a place to “share their frustrations,” or “a social hour.”

If the latter description is what PLC’s really are for teachers, say DuFour and Reeves, “we absolutely agree that their time is being wasted. But we want to stress as emphatically as possible that the conditions they describe are not related to the authentic PLC process in any way.”

So what is the real thing? “A professional learning community is not simply a meeting,” say the authors. “It is an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recursive cycles of collective inquiry and action research in order to achieve better results for the students they serve.” A true PLC has the following elements:

-   Educators work in collaborative teams rather than in isolation, taking collective responsibility for student learning.

-   Collaborative teams implement a guaranteed and viable curriculum, well-planned unit by well-planned unit.

-   Collaborative teams establish the criteria they will use in assessing student work.

-   They apply those criteria consistently and monitor student learning through an ongoing assessment process that includes frequent, team-developed common interim assessments.

-   Educators use the results of these common assessments to help one another improve their individual practice and build the team’s capacity to achieve its goals.

-   Teams also identify individual students, by name and by need, for intervention and enrichment.

-   The school provides a systematic process for intervention and enrichment based on the needs of individual students.

“A process like this does not emerge by accident,” say DuFour and Reeves. “It requires leaders at the district and school level to provide purpose and support for work to be done by collaborative teams and to maintain the groups’ focus on specific goals and initiatives. Too often we see school and district leaders fail at these responsibilities, which results in confusion and frustration on the part of teachers.”

            An authentic PLC process benefits all teachers and students, but most of all it benefits the 150,000 first-year teachers who enter our schools each year, often schools with the neediest students. “These teachers are much more likely to experience success and remain in the profession,” say DuFour and Reeves, “when they have the ongoing guidance, mentoring, and support that the PLC process provides.”

 

“Professional Learning Communities Still Work (If Done Right)” by Rick DuFour and Douglas Reeves in Education Week, October 2, 2015, http://bit.ly/1OT6dZR; Reeves can be reached at [email protected]

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5. Mike Schmoker on Effective Professional Development

            In this Education Week article, author/consultant Mike Schmoker cites the recent TNTP report, “The Mirage” [see Memo 598], which found that K-12 professional development is costly and largely ineffective. Earlier research by Thomas Corcoran, Susan Fuhrman, and Catherine Belcher came to a similar conclusion, blaming schools’ tendency to embrace “whims, fads, opportunism, and ideology.”

The good news, says Schmoker, is that professional development can be effective when schools follow two cardinal principles:

• Choose instructional practices with the strongest research base and track record. “School and district leaders should be able to tell teachers that the practices they have studied and selected, with teacher participation, are the very best, most amply supported practices,” says Schmoker. “They should be able to offer viable evidence that these selections will have the most substantive and immediate benefits for our students. By itself, this criterion would eliminate some of the most popular but inferior initiatives that now populate most school improvement plans.” Schmoker singles out differentiation and technology-driven instruction as examples of programs without convincing research evidence.

• Choose a small number of initiatives and provide sustained training and monitoring. “For teachers to master new practices,” he says, “every available minute must be devoted to frequent and immediate review, reinforcement, and teacher collaboration, and ongoing, actual practice, with feedback, during team meetings and PD sessions themselves. Mastery born of repeated practice and ongoing guidance must become the new goal of professional development.” And there should be immediate follow-up and support for teachers who haven’t reached proficiency.

Schmoker points to Brockton High School in Massachusetts as an exemplar of this approach [see Memo 360]. Under the leadership of principal Sue Szachowicz, teachers focused on one core initiative, insisted on “daily, intellectually oriented reading, writing, and discussion in every course,” and made sure lessons followed the most effective pattern: begin with a clear purpose; present content in digestible chunks; frequently check for understanding; and clarify, adjust, and reteach throughout the lesson. By focusing on the right stuff, says Szachowicz, she and her team were able to “monitor like crazy.” And the results were stunning – student achievement in this 4,000+-student, low-SES school went from among the lowest in the state to the top 10 percent.

 

“Transforming Professional Development: Beyond ‘The Mirage’” by Mike Schmoker in Education Week, October 21, 2015 (Vol. 35, #9, p. 18-19), www.edweek.org; the author can be reached at [email protected].

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6. Teaching About the Presidential Election

(Originally titled “The Elephant (and Donkey) in the Room”)

            In this article in Education Update, Sarah McKibben discusses whether and how teachers should handle the presidential election as it unfolds in the months ahead. One study of the 2012 election cycle found that one-quarter of civics teachers worried that they would get parent pushback if they got into politics in their classrooms, and only 38 percent believed districts would have their backs. Teachers also feared that student debates might get out of hand because of deep polarization around a number of issues, as well as taking time away from covering the regular curriculum.

But avoidance is a mistake, says Peter Levine of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). His group’s research found that high-school students who learn about elections and other civics topics are “more likely to vote, to form political opinions, to know campaign issues, and to know general facts about the U.S. political system.” Another study found that good civics education helps students build understanding and tolerance of opposing political viewpoints. “The purpose of school should not be to simply reinforce the ideological choices people are making in their homes,” says Diana Hess of the Spencer Foundation. “We want kids to develop as political beings in the most democratic environment we can create.” In that vein, McKibben has several suggestions for teachers:

• Keep the community context in mind. For example, a teacher in the Washington, D.C. area found parents particularly sensitive to political discussions because many had jobs that were directly affected by the outcome of a presidential election. When he moved to a New York City high school, parents encouraged him to teach about politics from a radical perspective.

• Make sure you have support from above. With a potentially controversial assignment – for example, asking students to argue a viewpoint opposite to their own – it’s wise to check first with the principal or department head.

• Think through whether to disclose your own political views. In the study conducted by CIRCLE, 75 percent of civics and U.S. government teachers said they avoided sharing their own positions on elections and current issues. There’s no evidence that teachers sharing their views influences students’ political views, but it’s wise to check in with superiors.

• Make sure all sides are presented. Students don’t benefit from a one-sided picture. “If we don’t give multiple perspectives in our classrooms, where are students going to [be exposed] to them?” says Indiana social studies teacher Kevin Zupin. “We have to tackle the controversy.”

• Avoid treating the election as a horse race. The ups and down of opinion polls are not the real story; better to talk about candidates’ views on specific issues. Among the best resources are The Week, a magazine that summarizes articles from a wide range of publications, and www.vox.com, which provides background information and policy positions from all the candidates.

• Structure political discussions. “The last thing you want is a talk show atmosphere in the classroom when you’re talking about politics,” says Levine. A fishbowl format with clear ground rules and criteria for grading can work well: a group of 5-7 students sits in an inner circle discussing an essential question while the rest of the class observes in an outer circle. Then the two circles switch places. “Even when you’re in a homogenous political community, there’s more ideological diversity than one would expect,” says Hess. “Kids are undecided on many issues.” Here are some discussion grading criteria from the Deliberative Dialogue Rubric developed at Indiana University:

-   Ability to support comments – referencing resources discussed in class;

-   Questioning skills – asking classmates thoughtful questions;

-   Understanding the topic – showing higher-order thinking and multiple perspectives;

-   Mindfulness – being respectful of others.

• Give students first-hand experiences. This can include watching debates on TV, exploring websites, and, if possible, seeing candidate events in person.

• Take advantage of teachable moments in other subject areas. For example, math teachers can explain electoral voting statistics or the facts and figures raised in debates. Science teachers can use debates on budgets, space exploration, or climate change to go deeper into those topics.

 

“The Elephant (and Donkey) in the Room” by Susan McKibben in Education Update, October 2015 (Vol. 57, #10, p. 1, 4-5), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/1Gt50ps; the author can be reached at [email protected].

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7. Ways to Stop Classroom Cheating

            In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Kate Stoltzfus reports that researchers have found a “high and stable” level of cheating on tests in college classes since the 1960s. Professors have tried a variety of remedies – building trust with students, honor codes, not giving just a few high-stakes exams, serious punishments for students caught cheating – but there’s been no reduction in the amount of cheating.

Stoltzfus describes an experiment with a different approach conducted by Steven Levitt (University of Chicago, co-author of Freakonomics) and Ming-Jen Lin (National Taiwan University). Levitt and Lin worked with a professor at a prominent American university who was concerned about reports of cheating in his large introductory science course. Noting that students were allowed to sit where they wanted during midterm exams, the researchers studied matching multiple-choice answers and were able to detect patterns of shared incorrect answers among pairs of students who were sitting next to each other. It appeared that at least 10 percent of the students in the course had cheated.

For the next exam, students were given assigned seats and there were additional proctors prowling the lecture hall. Randomized seating broke up the pairs of students who planned to collaborate, and when Levitt and Lin studied the results, they found no evidence of cheating.

 

“To Stop Exam Cheats, Economists Say, Try Assigning Seats” by Kate Stoltzfus in The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 23, 2015 (Vol. LXII, #8, p. A15),

http://chronicle.com/article/To-Stop-Exam-Cheats/233741?cid=rc_right

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8. Research on the Causes of Unequal Student Outcomes

            In this article in Educational Researcher, William Schmidt, Nathan Burroughs, and Richard Houang (Michigan State University) and Pablo Zoido (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) report on what they learned about student mathematics achievement, SES, and opportunity to learn from PISA data from OECD countries. Their findings:

-   Opportunity to learn – whether and how long students are exposed to curriculum content in classrooms – is closely linked to student achievement.

-   Within the same school, higher SES students have more opportunity to learn – that is, more rigorous and comprehensive mathematics curriculum content in classrooms – than their less-advantaged peers.

-   Students’ socioeconomic status has a direct impact on how much they learn, but SES also operates indirectly through the curriculum content to which they’re exposed, accounting for about one-third of the impact on learning.

-   For the U.S., the largest source of opportunity-to-learn inequality is within rather than between schools.

-   This is more true in U.S. schools than almost all the other OECD countries.

The bottom line, say Schmidt, Burroughs, Houang, and Zoido, is that “rather than ameliorating educational inequalities, schools [are] exacerbating them… The implication of these findings is that any serious effort to reduce educational inequalities must address unequal content coverage within schools.”

 

“The Role of Schooling in Perpetuating Educational Inequality: An International Perspective” by William Schmidt, Nathan Burroughs, Pablo Zoido, and Richard Houang in Educational Researcher, October 2015 (Vol. 44, #7, p. 371-386), http://bit.ly/1H4qBzo; Schmidt can be reached at [email protected].

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9. Short Item:

            Hans Rosling on statistics – This one-hour BBC documentary is a tour de force by Swedish statistician Hans Rosling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9nvLqLM9Y0

 

“The Joy of Stats” by Hans Rosling, April 2012

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