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Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

Are lectures a good way to learn?

Phillip Dawson, Monash University

Imagine a future where university enrolment paperwork is accompanied by the statement: Warning: lectures may stunt your academic performance and increase risk of failure.

Researchers from the United States have just published an exhaustive review and their findings support that warning. They read every available research study comparing traditional lectures with active learning in science, engineering and mathematics. Traditional lecture-based courses are correlated with significantly poorer performance in terms of failure rates and marks.

The study’s authors boldly compare our new awareness of the harm done by lectures to the harms of smoking. Their article – they claim – is the equivalent of the 1964 Surgeon-General’s report that led to legislated warnings about smoking in the United States. The renowned physics education researcher Eric Mazur has described continuing with lectures in the face of this new evidence as “almost unethical”.

This paper is so important because it combines 225 individual research studies through a technique called meta-analysis. So although individual studies published over the past 70 years may have occasionally found lectures to be better, we now know that the collective evidence is in support of active approaches.

So what’s the alternative?

Rather than the perfect lecturer performance or PowerPoints, active approaches privilege “what the student does”. Courses built around active learning require students to spend class time engaged in meaningful tasks that lead to learning. These tasks might be online or face-to-face; solo or in a group; theoretical or applied. Most of our popular learning and teaching buzzwords at the moment are active approaches: peer instruction, problem-based learning, and flipping the classroom are all focused on students spending precious class time doing, not listening.

This new study confirms a significant difference in student achievement and failure rates between lectures and active learning. A hypothetical average student would move up to the top third of the class if allowed to participate in active learning instead of lectures. The difference in failure rates was large too: students in lecture courses were 1.5 times more likely to fail than active learning students. Active learning was better than lectures for all class sizes and all of the science, engineering and mathematics fields they considered.

But active learning as defined in this study is such a broad term. If your lecturer pauses to get you to solve a problem in a group, or asks you to explain a concept to the person sitting next to you, that is active learning. Worksheets, workshops or other activities taking up at least 10% of class time was enough to get a class labelled “active”.

Rather than a call to abandon lectures, this study is important evidence that we need to improve them. We now know beyond all reasonable doubt that talking at students non-stop for an hour or two is a bad idea. But we knew that already, didn’t we?

Sadly, the study authors calculate that in their dataset of 29,300 students, there were 3,516 students who failed but would not have failed if they were in an active class. They go on to muse that if those studies were conducted by medical researchers they would have stopped the experiments for ethical reasons, as denying the students access to active classes was harmful.

So perhaps the warning label should read:

Warning: bad lectures may stunt your academic performance and increase risk of failure.

What makes a good lecture?

In What’s the Use of Lectures, Donald Bligh notes: “One of the most common mistakes by lecturers is to use the lecture method at all”.

Bligh’s review of the research found that aside from transmitting information to students, lectures were not good for much at all. Lectures should not be a default teaching approach, but should instead be used in a targeted way when they suit the specific goals of the class. For other goals, such as teaching ethics, provoking thought, or developing practical skills, more active approaches work better than lectures.

There is some debate about the ideal length of lectures, with claims that student attention diminishes after 10 or 15 minutes, however the evidence behind these claims is thin. This doesn’t, however, give us permission to waffle on: unnecessary-but-interesting details can hurt learning, and so can excessive quantitative information.

The Conversation

Phillip Dawson, Lecturer in Learning and Teaching, Monash University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education, Secondary Education

Should college and high school diplomas be earned together?

The term “college prep” as it relates to high school paths has a different meaning than when I was a teenager. The high school courses that I took that were “college prep” were designed to prepare me for higher education after I first earned my high school diploma. Today, it’s not uncommon for high school students to have several college credits before they walk across that graduation stage — and some may even have associate’s degrees. Dual enrollment, where students can simultaneously earn high school and college credits, is offered in schools across the country, and supported through legislation (and President Obama has been a vocal supporter of it).

While critics may say it’s just too much too soon for teens, I tend to lean the other direction. I think it’s important to zero in on what possible careers high school students may aspire to have as adults and to start them down the path early — before they have a chance to drop out and before life gets in the way.

Dual enrollment extends beyond traditional classroom settings, too. Virtual classes for both high school and college curriculum are available to teens and the ability to manage both is much more flexible with this setup. Recently, Coffee County Schools and Wiregrass Georgia Technical College (WGTC) announced a partnership called the Wiregrass Regional College and Career Academy that will give students in 11 Southern Georgia counties a chance to take classes from both a fully accredited virtual high school and college. Students will be able to earn their high school diploma AND a college associate’s degree at the same time — with state-mandated tests and exams proctored at locations throughout the area. What’s more — the program is FREE through the state’s Move on When Ready initiative. The schools will tap K-12 virtual learning curriculum Odysseyware for course completion.

Earning both a high school diploma AND a college degree at the same time is certainly not for every student – but should be an option for those who are ready to jump start their careers.

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Matthew Lynch published in Physical Fitness, Policy & Reform

Cut Sports, Advance Academics

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Edgar Wilson

We need to get sports out of schools.

As an extra-curricular, sports should already be distinct from academics, but that hasn’t remotely stopped athletic programs from asserting dominance in and out of the classroom. The problem is most pronounced in tertiary education, where university budgets—and, by extension, student fees and tuition—are being coopted to support legacy athletic programs, most notably football.

Football programs—at least in the current conception—are a losing investment for most schools. Maintaining a diversity of athletic options is expensive, and is clearly not supported by the broadcast and viewership patterns of American sports fans. In the US, we want our football, and we want our basketball, and we want it for free.

These same consumer forces upsetting other pillars of the entertainment industry—music, movies, television—are beginning to cripple cable: streaming services.

Disney has been making headlines since the release of its new Star Wars sequel not only because of the record-breaking box office numbers the film is generating, but because the company is still managing to bleed money due to decreasing cable subscriptions, a pattern that undermines the value of its ESPN channels, and the associated advertising revenues.

Broadcasting college sports just can’t guarantee the same returns that made it such a popular money-maker in the past.

Beyond the backwards financial machinations of college sports, there is the fact that, overwhelmingly, K-12 sports are falling into a pay-to-play format that is fundamentally exclusionary. What merit can a sports program have as an avenue for poor or at-risk students to access college, if the cost of participation already bars them from playing in high school?

Yet at the collegiate level, sports teams have become the tent pole holding up the entire institution:

  • Rather than marketing the university based on academics, professional outcomes, research opportunities or expert faculty, their record of athletic accomplishment gets the most publicity
  • Individual payouts are larger (yet fewer) for athletic scholarships, creating a competitive, high-stakes sports culture that trickles down through secondary and even primary school programs
  • Universities must compete in terms of funding, event games, and spectacle in addition to competing on the field of play

In short, the whole mission and focus of universities pivots to accommodate athletics with increasing urgency.

Compromise abounds—even the United States Naval Academy, which graduates over a thousand students with Bachelor of Science degrees while simultaneously training them as officers for the U.S. Navy every year, has augmented its historically high standards to allow its student athletes to compete at the same level as schools lacking its demanding duel mission. Ditto for West Point.

Beyond lowering the bar for education itself, the troubling school-sports marriage is proving hazardous to the health of student athletes—at every level and age cohort.

The medical data coming out on the punishing long-term effects of athletic injuries, overexertion, and cumulative trauma from youth sports is damning. Whether or not it pays off in the form of discounted tuition or admission to a prestigious school, young jocks in full contact sports can more or less count on legacy injuries dogging them for life.

Outside the high-visibility, high-risk arena of football, research indicates that a hyper-competitive culture that prioritizes specialization leaves any youth athletes at risk of chronic injury. It isn’t that the sports themselves are bad, just that the culture surrounding them has made them so. Technophiles look to science to solve the problem of inherently violent contact sports, only to discover that the culture—not the equipment—is what needs to change to save lives.

The compromise of academics to accommodate athletes is troubling. The conflict of interest for universities, students, the public, and the myriad companies and industries that profit of collegiate sports is fundamentally undermining the purpose and potential of American higher education.

Institutions of learning should support student missions of learning—not athletics.

____

Edgar Wilson is an Oregon native with a passion for cooking, trivia, and politics. He studied conflict resolution and international relations and has worked in industries ranging from international marketing to broadcast journalism. He is currently working as an independent analytical consultant. He can be reached via email here or on Twitter @EdgarTwilson.

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Policy & Reform

Mississippi faces steep education cuts

K-12 education in Mississippi is under fire as the state faces budget cuts.

According to Clarionledger.com, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant plans to cut the state’s budget by 1.5 percent.

The cuts will result in a loss of $4 million for K-12. The silver lining is that the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, a program that determines the minimum needed for students to thrive based on the demographics of their school, is exempt from the cuts.

To pare it down further, the Schools for the Blind and Deaf stand to lose a total of $167,362 and Vocation and technical education $1,216,965.

That’s not a short loss.

Because it’s still early in the process, it is unclear if layoffs will be a part of the process. Last year when faced with budget issues, the state cut 35 positions.

Education Superintendent Carey Wright is trying to ensure that the reforms that have been put into place, such as literacy programs and the expansion of early childhood options, remain and aren’t slashed.

And Mississippi isn’t exactly climbing the walls of success. The state consistently ranks at the bottom (or dead last) in academic success and outlook for its K-12 students. When it comes to things like AP exams, just “5 percent of Mississippi students scored a 3 or higher on the exams compared to 21.6 nationally.”

It is still a slight wonder why states choose to cut money from education instead of finding relief in other areas. Mississippi in particular has no room for alleviation when it comes to education. Instead of taking money away from an educational system that desperately needs it, Mississippi should be finding ways to increase funding for K-12 schools, and publicly funded higher education. The cycle of poverty in the state won’t ever be broken if money continues to be pulled from where it is desperately needed: education.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Policy & Reform, Teachers

Education and esafety: Why You Shouldn’t Believe Everything You Read in the News

Note: The following guest post comes to us courtesy of Keir McDonald, Chairman of EduCare, a company that provides bespoke training solutions for schools. Their courses are available both online and on paper, and cover child protection and duty of care issues.

Media horror stories bombard us daily when it comes to students and esafety, but is going online really as dangerous for children as some journalists would have us believe? A new report from the London School of Economics has found that children might be better at self-regulating their internet usage than we usually give them credit for.

The influence of news stories on children is particularly strong when it comes to stranger danger and bullying, but do media representations of the internet empower children, or destabilise their development of effective online risk-management skills?

After speaking with 378 children about esafety, academics from LSE found that many children actively seek out ways to stay safe online by “planning” and “reflecting.” For example, when using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, older children take precautions such as changing their privacy settings to protect themselves online.

Even younger children, between the ages of 9 – 11, are competent at avoiding problematic websites or applications by simply clicking away. This is an obvious but “effective tactic” when it comes to staying safe on the internet. Most children were able to recognise both the risks and the symptoms of internet addiction, including health problems, losing interest in other things and losing friends.

Though girls are “more likely to seek social support […] than boys,” both sexes are generally reluctant to approach an adult for help when an incident of cyberbullying occurs. Children are commonly able to react proactively to abusive messages by blocking the send or disabling their own account, but sometimes this isn’t enough and internet conflicts escalate rapidly.

Why are children reluctant to seek support when faced with bullying?

Children are often reluctant to seek support, preferring instead to minimise or downplay the significance of cyberbullying. However, this is an inefficient tactic and schools can do more by harnessing the power of the peer-group for their anti-bullying and esafety lessons.

As adults, we can encourage children to feel comfortable sharing their online problems with us by being more reasonable, and less sensational, when it comes to the internet. For one thing, when we talk to children about the internet, we should acknowledge the many good points as well as cautioning against the dangers. Monitoring our children’s online activity is fine for very young children, but as they get older, we can earn their trust by respecting their need for a certain amount of privacy.

Parents and teachers can try to ban Facebook and other websites, or limit their children and student’s internet usage, but they should be aware of the potential consequences. Using social networking sites, among other online skills, has become almost mandatory both in the wider world and in the modern workplace. Banning children from social networking instead of teaching them how to network safely is doing them no favours in the long run.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, list, Matthew Lynch

3 Reasons to Consider Adopting an Emotional Leadership Style

When we look at all the data available on cognitive, intellectual, and philosophical views of leadership, and their combination with other frameworks, we see the power of emotions. Simply put, emotions generate knowledge, and emotionally acquired knowledge is strongly influenced by teachers’ and leaders’ understandings (or lack thereof) of their emotions. There is hope of a shift in school culture from one of emotional silence, to one of emotional engagement. Such a change would likely impact leader confidence, focus, well-being, and effectiveness, and could challenge leaders to redefine their schools. Let’s look at how adopting an emotional leadership style—where a leader taps into his or her own emotional center to lead—can affect you and the people around you.

  1. Emotional leaders develop positive emotions in their followers. Emotional Intelligence (EI) in leaders enhances thoughtful choices and unselfishness in their followers. As a result, leaders who are able to identify and manage their emotions and those of others develop sincerity and helpfulness among their followers. The expression of emotions is a vital component of charismatic leadership, and is linked to the leader’s ability to inspire and motivate followers through the emotional contagion process; that is, shared feelings encourage cooperation among everyone involved.
  2. Emotional leaders may be able to express a fuller range of emotions without negatively impacting their followers. It has also been shown that the expression of positive emotions has a positive impact on groups. However, there is a lack of research on how leaders express negative emotions such as disapproval, anger, and disappointment, and how this expression affects group performance.

One practical suggestion is that skilled and controlled expression of so-called negative emotions is important for leaders, so as to avoid decreasing workers’ motivation, or building up resentment and resistance.

Since practiced emotional expressiveness is necessary, effective expression of the leader’s negative emotions requires skills in expression, emotional control, and emotional sensitivity so as to gauge how these negative emotions are received by followers.

  1. Emotional leadership gives insight into how your followers are feeling. There has recently been considerable interest in the role of emotional sensitivity, which is the ability to “decode” emotions in the work setting. In some of the research studies, measures of emotional decoding skills have been used as a substitute for emotional intelligence. Other studies have examined the notion of emotional “eavesdropping,” where leaders decode followers’ emotions even when they are not intending to convey them directly. Emotional eavesdropping involves an acute awareness of follower’s body language, tone of voice, and other unspoken indicators to understand their true feelings.

The reason there has been so much interest in emotional decoding is that there are a number of measures available for researchers to study. Also, it makes sense to study the ability to “read” others’ emotions in the workplace. Although effective leaders must possess good skills in emotional control, especially during crises, individuals who are particularly good at controlling and masking their emotional expressions usually seem distant and aloof.

Any imbalance in the possession of emotional and social skills is linked to poorer psychosocial adjustment in teams and, therefore, to poor leadership. In summary, we find that, across most of the research, emotional intelligence improves effectiveness in organizational settings. Effective leaders must make serious efforts to detect, analyze, and understand the feelings of their followers. As a part of this effort, leaders must also be careful of how they express their own emotions to their staff. A thoughtful leader will listen to their followers’ concerns, and speak with care and conviction about their own.

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity, HBCU's, Higher Education

Diverse Conversations: Affordability Makes Diversity Possible on College Campuses

By Matthew Lynch

Colleges use the buzz word “diversity” when talking about their ideal student populations, but ideals and reality do not always add up. Dr. Paul Porter is the director of multicultural affairs at the University of Scranton and knows firsthand how important support programs are for minority and international students. Before his current role, he served as the director of the first-year experience program at the university, working to help students adapt to the demands of a college setting.

I spoke with Dr. Porter about his current role at the University of Scranton and what trends in diversity he expects to see in the coming years.

Q: How do affordable college options play into diversity?

A: The altruistic response is that they avail campuses to a multitude of self-identifying populations, while also creating a powerful educational experience in the classroom and beyond. However, they also call attention to the desperate need for institutional introspection. Before exploring the effects of affordability, campuses have to wonder if they are truly ready for population change. What type of experiences await students as campuses diversify? Are institutions appropriately preparing faculty and staff to engage an evolving student population and address potential changes in campus climate? Maybe most immediately, do we clearly understand our own frailties, prejudices, and concerns, as well as their influence on our institutional profile? Without a keen exploration of these issues, diversity of any kind becomes problematic.

Q: What trends in multicultural learning/campuses do you see coming in the next five years?

A: Preparation for a cultural reality that we’ve talked about but still remains unseen. For example, the increasingly blurred line between racial minority and majority; intensified discourses surrounding gender equity and the potentiality of more women in high level leadership roles (e.g. the White House); and even a reconstructed definition of marriage. I think it is safe to assume that we will be challenged to speak candidly yet sensitively about a continuously evolving social landscape – ESPECIALLY as these realities affect the climate of our campuses and the lives our students. But I’m also hopeful for a broader conversation that is more inclusive of not only the wealth of identities that shape our world view, but also the intricacies that emerge when those identities intersect.

Q: Is there still an advantage for students to attend a college campus, over online courses?

A: Absolutely! We live in a world in which people can disconnect themselves from human interaction far too easily, and our overuse of technology is the force that enables it. We don’t talk anymore. We have become cold to the human condition. However, the college campus as a social structure has done, by far, the best job of accommodating our digital obsession without dehumanizing us. Online courses, while convenient, don’t offer the type of engaged dialogue that takes place in the classroom. There is no service learning, or co-curricular activities like intercollegiate forensics (speech and debate). It’s called school spirit for a reason, and that reason is simple: campus is the physical space that plays host to the soul of a college or university. It is the one thing you cannot download. There’s no “app” for that.
Q: Do you think that being a small campus helps or hurts diversity at The University of Scranton?

A: It helps, primarily because the responsibility of maintaining a welcoming and inclusive environment sweeps across campus. Diversity is not a goal at The University of Scranton, it is an expectation. We all work from the “top-down” to ensure that it remains embedded in our institutional identity.

Q: What does your international student population look like?

A: We host approximately 130 international students and scholars, representing 20 countries, and our campus has experiences a gradual increase in enrollment every year. We have a strong Saudi Arabian student presence and a thriving Latino/Latina population.

Q: What programs/initiatives are in place to make The University of Scranton a truly multicultural place?

A: Maintaining a campus climate that celebrates multiculturalism is deeply rooted in our Jesuit Catholic tradition. From the lens of our Office of Multicultural Affairs, we pride ourselves on a philosophy that reframes the word multicultural to broaden the scope of students we serve. We are conscious of identities such as veteran status, geographic location, family structure, political preference, mental/physical ability, and body type when developing our programming, initiatives, visions, and goals. More importantly, we recognize and honor those identities without side-stepping or diluting the complexities of “traditional” cultural topics (e.g. race, gender, religion, etc.). We provide safe and nurturing spaces for all members of the campus community to develop, understand their cultural identities; and then encourage affective and appropriate means of expression.

I’d like to thank Dr. Porter for his insight and sharing his expertise with us.

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Higher Education, Matthew Lynch

Diverse Conversations: What’s Next for Higher Education?

Recognizing the trends of higher education is important for those of us who are involved in it on a professional level. But what are the trends? What’s next for higher education?

Today, I’m speaking with Ryan Evely Gildersleeve who is Associate Professor of Higher Education at Morgridge College of Education at University of Denver.

Q: First off, let’s talk about some of the general trends. How would you describe the trends of higher education now?

A: Money, money, money. Colleges and universities are now commodities and trades. As such, questions need to change and any or all trends must be understood not only in how they might fit within and reinforce this conception of higher education but also how they challenge it. It’s a strange relationship, certainly. To marketize knowledge and commodify education are in many ways at odds with how we’ve understood the role of the university over time, but it’s here. And with it, new forms of accountability, new demands on performance, and new measures of quality. These three trends form a trifecta of imperatives in public and political interest in higher education today. But it also presents new opportunities – and refocuses attentions on some opportunities that have always been there, but were perhaps neglected. In refashioning institutions, we have the chance to determine new purposes and modes of operations. These are values decisions. Our colleges and universities reflect and produce our values as a society. With big data, rapid technology shifts, and globalized capitalism, it’s radical change now. It’s subjecting the university to the market, wholesale – not piecemeal.

It would be a mistake, however, to equate higher education with business. Colleges and universities are not businesses. They are social institutions that perform a social good, as well as bestow private goods onto individuals. The marketization and commodification trend seeks to make money for various people through these social and private goods. But the thing that makes a college or university the powerful and inspiring institution that it is – that’s knowledge. And while capitalist society can find a way to capitalize pretty much anything, that doesn’t necessarily mean the generative activities of knowledge production and dissemination need to be organized as a business. To do so would more than likely truncate knowledge – it would minimize its impact and standardize its form. Part of what makes knowledge such an attractive commodity is its expansiveness, its diversity, its plurality and all the possibilities that follow suit. Rather, the activities of knowledge production and dissemination probably need something less linear, more dynamic, and dare I say, more democratic than business.

Q: Of these trends, which, do you think, is the most important? The one that people should principally pay attention to?

A: Accountability captures most of the sub-trends through which everyday people in academe have the most opportunity to shape their futures – and the future of higher education. Accountability as an imperative is already here, but what it looks like and how it gets operationalized is still up for grabs. Various states have some tentative plans that are starting to make in-roads, although these accountability regimes tend to be short-term and tied to specific temporal goals of enrollment or attainment. For example, Colorado’s master plan sets forward a college completion goal of having 66% of Coloradans with a degree or certificate by 2025. This is in-line with some of the federal government’s ideas around accountability, such as President Obama’s 2020 goal for being the most credentialed country in the world.

Still, no one is really sure what performance measures are best or most appropriate for higher education. That probably has something to do with the moment of higher education’s history we are crafting right now. It took a long time, but then all of a sudden it was made dramatically clear – higher education is the number one way to populate the workforce with knowledge-focused jobs and fuel the economy with consumers. It’s easy to abscond or at least obscure the knowledge imperative of higher education when we think about it only in relation to the knowledge economy. Today, most universities operationalize the knowledge imperative into research, teaching, and service – three distinct yet overlapping modes of scholarship. The knowledge imperative requires resources too easily hidden from the strict production of degrees. And yet, degrees are the most obvious commodity that colleges and universities can sell.

It’s tricky, because degrees are different than most commodities. They are symbolic of student and faculty labor that hopefully generated a broad (in the case of the liberal arts) or specific (in the case of professional programs) expertise. That labor constitutes knowledge. And knowledge isn’t fixed. It’s malleable. But the market seeks to make it static and standardized. Moreover, knowledge has as much to do with process as it does with content – knowledge involves synthesis, analysis, and creativity, regardless of the field of study.

Put plainly, a degree is not like a baseball bat. Sports stores can sell a baseball bat to anyone. A college degree must be earned through the generative activity of a higher education. Whereas, sports stores would never say you must obtain a 300 batting average before they’d sell you a baseball bat, colleges require students to perform above average over a period of about four years before they will bestow a degree.

Beyond this simple accounting of how a college degree is a tough thing to commodify and measure/assess productively (i.e., without absconding the knowledge imperative), it’s important to recognize our systems of higher education in the U.S. are so diverse that a single nationalized version of accountability won’t make much sense. It would be like having one regulating body for the minor leagues of baseball, the apprentice programs in dance, and keeping track of the number of moons orbiting Jupiter. How does one group take responsibility for holding each activity accountable? It can’t. But a small collection of dynamic accountability efforts might provide a whole new venue for talking about and documenting the significance of our systems of higher education in society. It might look more like various portfolios of assessment rather than a scorecard or ranking system.

Any accountability systems we might adopt should incorporate group, organizational, and social metrics, in addition to more traditional individual measurements (e.g., graduation rates). The problem with individual measurements alone is that a college education, being based on knowledge, is not solely an individual endeavor. Knowledge, requires learning, which requires collaboration. Doing so could potentially help revive focus on the knowledge imperative of higher education – moving beyond the linear interpretation of what colleges and universities “produce.”

Cue the faculty and administration.

Q: Why is it important for higher education professionals to pay attention to these trends? What benefits do we derive from being attentive?

A: If faculty and administrators don’t take seats at the table where these decisions are being made and the problems are being figured out, then we really are claiming space as cogs in a machine – and that’s not what most faculty came to the profession desiring. Most of us, I believe, want to take the knowledge imperative of our profession seriously. To do so, we need to configure systems of accountability that help illustrate the importance of our work.

Q: How can we use these trends, then? What strategies do you recommend for not only staying up to date with trends but making sure that they work for you, that you are prepared for them?

A: Faculty can demand seats at the accountability table (as should the public!). This can be difficult, because the commodification of education means we should all be spending most of our time on revenue generating activities – enrollments, external funding for research, etc. But I think engaging in active governance is something we can’t resign to managers and external voices alone. And right now – in this historical moment for higher education – shared governance still has some political cache. Faculty can still bring an institution to a stand still, without fear of losing their livelihoods. Shared governance also means staying up to date on what’s happening within and across our fields – fields of study, fields of education, fields of public investment. We need to think deeply about the ways that our labor – the labor of the knowledge imperative – is unique compared to other labor.

Q: Finally, what do you think is likely to happen in higher education in the future? Do you think the current trends are likely to sustain themselves?

A: I see no end to the commodification of education or the marketization of knowledge. Too many and too powerful economies now rely on it. The relationship between higher education and the economy has changed fundamentally, and with that change comes new questions that the public are expecting higher education to be able to answer. Accountability regimes are expanding in scope and scale. Now is the time to seize the opportunity to use these trends in order to configure the kind of social institution we want our colleges and universities to constitute.

Academics and higher education professionals don’t need to agree with the new economic imperatives of higher education or with the maturation of accountability regimes. But we certainly need to accept the responsibility of sustaining the knowledge imperative that undergirds our generative activity. And we need to recognize the weight of that responsibility as we choose how to engage with the design, adoption, execution, and critique of the accountability systems that will help define what the institution stands for and what it can produce as values of a democratic society.

We would like to thank Ryan for taking the time to sit down and talk with us.

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

2 Ways Educational Opportunity Has Risen 80 Percent Since 1970

According to the Historical Report of Opportunity, released by Opportunity Nation and Measure of America, educational opportunity has escalated by 80 percent since 1970. The Report defines Educational Opportunity as the number of children in preschool, the number of high school students who graduate on time, and the number of adults with an associate’s degree or higher. Over the past four decades, Massachusetts improved the most; Nevada, the least.

Let’s look a bit closer at how educational opportunity has manifested itself in the United States.

  1. More kids in preschool: Between 1970 and 2010, the number of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool increased by nearly four times, emphasizing the growing awareness of the benefits of early childhood education. Studies show that low-income children who attend high-quality preschool are more successful academically and more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in postsecondary education. Some states have cut funding for public pre-K, yet early childhood education continues to be a priority in many states.
  2. More adults getting degrees: Every state experienced growth in the percentage of adults aged 25 or older who obtained at least an associate’s degree. This indicates the changing global economy that requires higher levels of education of employees. During the four decades measured, Americans with at least an associate’s degree increased by 105 percent.

In 2013, 28 percent of children nationwide were enrolled in state-financed preschool. While 36.3 percent of Americans have at least an associate’s degree, economists predict that by 2020, two-thirds of American jobs will require some form of post-secondary degree or credential.

While Americans should be proud of the educational improvements our country has seen, we need to continue, or even pick up the pace to ensure people possess the skills required to build a powerful 21st-century workforce. This report acts as a good reminder to value the importance of education as the pathway to many of life’s successes.

Readers, what do you think about the educational improvements America has seen over the past several decades? Are these improvements good enough, or should we expect even more than what is happening? Let’s see your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, OpEducation, Policy & Reform

Rethinking the Emphasis on Standardized Testing

Note: Today’s guest blog is from Robert Sun, chairman, president and CEO of Suntex International Inc. and inventor of First In Math, an online program designed for deep practice in mathematics. He is a nationally recognized expert in the use of technology to enhance mathematics education; for more information, visit www.firstinmath.com.

Many who are concerned with education reform in the U.S. look to Asian education systems as the model to follow. Whether for cultural, economic or political reasons, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and other Asian nations are widely considered to be societies that get public education right.

Children in many Asian countries are outperforming their global peers, and test scores are high. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s most recent PISA study, the United States ranks 36 out of 65 countries in mathematics proficiency. Those at the top include the Chinese, specifically children in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

One would think that China, India and South Korea in particular—countries known to hold schools, teachers and students accountable for performance through rigorous and repeated testing—have the formula all figured out. But let’s look at what’s currently happening in these high-achieving nations.

In China, kids march to the unrelenting drumbeat of standardized testing beginning at age eight. The testing odyssey lasts through middle school and high school, reaching its apex with the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, commonly known as “Gaokao.” Passing this grueling, multi-day test is the sole prerequisite for college entry. Students spend years preparing for it.

So what does China have to show for its stringent academic system? Unemployment among Chinese graduates six months after leaving college is officially around 15% (some Chinese researchers estimate twice that number), despite the fact that a record 7.26 million young people will graduate from the country’s many universities this year—a number seven times greater than just 15 years ago.

At the same time, according to the Nikkei Asian Review, an acute shortage of factory workers throughout China is causing managers to hire students from technical schools as apprentices. Yukon Huang, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, reports that China’s non-graduate unemployment is as low as 4%, causing graduates to consider blue-collar jobs despite their college degrees.

India is facing similar problems. One in three Indian college graduates under the age of 29 is unemployed, according to a November 2013 report issued by the Indian Labour Ministry. Experts report that skill development programs and college education are not creating the sort of training that is in demand in the manufacturing and services sectors.

Meanwhile, ICEF Monitor, a marketing intelligence provider for the international education industry, reported that South Korea’s emphasis on academics is beginning to have diminished returns. Despite education spending that is significantly above the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average as a percentage of GDP, South Korea’s rate of graduate employment among university-educated 25-34 year-olds is just 75%, ranking it among the lowest in OECD countries, and well below the average of 82%.

After following the academic testing mantra for more than a decade, these countries are totalling the results—millions of stressed-out graduates with skills that oftentimes don’t match up with two of the most pressing needs of their societies: first, young workers who are technically trained; and second, individuals who are encouraged to be innovative, out-of-the-box thinkers.

China is only beginning to face this new realization head on. Its education ministry recently stated that it wishes to turn 600 of the nation’s universities into polytechnic schools in order to produce more technical graduates. In many areas of the country, factory jobs are paying more than entry-level office positions—a clear attempt to steer more potential white-collar workers back into empty blue-collar jobs.

For many countries with “model” education systems, it’s becoming clear that a focus on standardized testing is actually killing the kind of independent thinking that fosters creative prowess. Among the top 10 economies in the Global Innovation Index (GII), the annual innovation ranking co-published by Cornell University INSEAD and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a UN agency, only two are Asian (Singapore at #7 and Hong Kong at #10). Notably, the top five positions are all held by European countries, followed by the U.S. in sixth place. China, on the other hand, is ranked 29th, and India is far down the list at #76.

No one doubts that for a nation to remain competitive it needs to prepare their next generation for success in the STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). The question is, how many STEM graduates are needed? Even here in the U.S., attitudes are changing.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that while the total U.S. labor force will grow from 153.9 million in 2010 to 174.4 million in 2020—a 14.3% increase—engineering jobs will grow by only 11% over that same period (from 1.34 million to 1.45 million). Ten of the 15 engineering disciplines, in fact, will experience slower than average growth.

As someone who has spent years in the pursuit of math proficiency among America’s young people, I believe that mathematics is essential not only to lifetime success, but also for a society’s future. But in this worthy pursuit, we should not slavishly define standardized testing as the benchmark of effectiveness. Moreover, we should realize that testing can have a significant, even debilitating, downside for our children.

Testing has its place as long as it doesn’t push kids away from a sense of wonder and fascination for the world around them. Finland, another country held high for its academic excellence, believes that the overall goal should be a child’s holistic development. Finnish schools pursue the notion that children have different kinds of intellects. In fact the national curriculum dictates that public schools must have a balanced program including art, music, crafts and physical education—plus sufficient time for self-directed activities.

If America is to succeed in educating its students for the future, it’s becoming increasingly clear that rigid, standardized testing isn’t the magical solution. Global competitiveness is important—but it probably won’t come through a regimented, computer-scored exam.

A far more worthy goal would be to create a system wherein the whole individual is addressed, developed, and encouraged to thrive in the pursuit of a better life. That’s a lesson that Asia is just now beginning to learn—and it’s one we should as well, before it’s too late.

 

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

Keeping children back a year doesn’t help them read better

Paul Thomas, Furman University

If you’re an eight-year-old living in Charleston, South Carolina, you’re soon going to need to study extra hard at reading. The US state has joined in with a policy trend across the country that links children’s chances of progressing from third to fourth grade with their performance on reading tests.

Back in 2012, 14 states plus the District of Columbia had policies in place that hold students back a year on the basis of their reading ability.

New efforts to reverse the trend, in states such as Oklahoma, remain rare. This is despite research showing that holding children back a grade – known as grade retention – causes more harm than good.

Following Florida

In the US, holding children back a grade as a key element of reading legislation can be traced to a 2001 programme Just Read, Florida. Because of this programme, Florida was characterised by the New York Times education writer Motoko Rich as: “One of the pioneers in holding back third graders because of inadequate reading skills.”

But two problems lie in the popularity of such grade retention policies. First, while the Florida model has significant bi-partisan support among both Democrats and Republicans in the US, reviews of the outcomes of the Florida policy show research on it is misrepresented and inconclusive, at best.

Alongside this, 40 years of research into the policy of holding children back a grade refutes the practice.

Long-term consequences

The policy of holding children back a school year remains “widespread” internationally, according to a 2013 study by two Belgian scholars who studied retention and behaviour in Flemish high school students.

Research addressing retention in Senegal, in Belgium, and in Lebanon reinforces disturbing patterns about the overwhelming negative long-term consequences and ineffectiveness of grade retention. In the UK, where the practice is very uncommon, the policy has been assessed as costly and ineffective.

Holding children back a grade is strongly correlated with behaviour problems for retained students. Examining the Florida model, CALDER education researcher Umut Özek concluded, “Grade retention increases the likelihood of disciplinary incidents and suspensions in the years that follow.”

Another 2009 study by the Rand Corporation for the New York City Department of Education, found:

In general, retention does not appear to benefit students academically. Although some studies have found academic improvement in the immediate years after retention, these gains are usually short-lived and tend to fade over time.

Most disturbing are the long-term consequences. As literacy professor Nancy Frey explained:

The practice of retention … is academically ineffective and is potentially detrimental to children’s social and emotional health. The seeds of failure may be sown early for students who are retained, as they are significantly more likely to drop out of high school. Furthermore, the trajectory of adverse outcomes appears to continue into young adulthood, when wages and postsecondary educational opportunities are depressed.

Despite a well-established research base discrediting the practice, the policy appears to endure for two reasons. A political and public faith in punitive educational accountability sits alongside a straw man argument that advocates keeping children back instead of “social promotion”, where they are automatically passed onto the next grade regardless of student achievement.

Reward vs punishment

Giving children punishment and rewards for reading ability, like grade retention, is ineffective, especially in the context of teaching and learning. Education writer Alfie Kohn has challenged both for years.

Punishment and rewards shift students’ focus away from learning and toward avoiding one or seeking the other. In literacy, that failure has been exposed in the popular but flawed Accelerated Reader (AR) programme that seeks to increase reading through rewards.

Writing about the AR programme, literacy scholar and professor Renita Schmidt explains

If we continue to let AR ask the questions, we may very well lose the interest of our students and create literal readers who only want to ‘get points’ and be done with reading. That’s not teaching and that’s not reading.

But the National Association of Schools Psychologists asserts that neither strategy – repeating a year, nor promoting the student automatically – is an effective remedy.

Alternatives include addressing the powerful influence of how much access children have to books at home. Other research-supported policies, suggested instead of retention by Shane Jimerson and his colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, include focusing on parental involvement and targeted practices based on student needs. They also suggest modified reading programmes as well as more holistic approaches to supporting students, including mental health services and behaviour interventions.

But the most urgent political step is to acknowledge that holding children back a grade fails both students and their progress in literacy. Instead, we need an effective and evidence-based policy to replace decades where punishment is preferred over educationally sound practices.The Conversation

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

Paul Thomas, Associate Professor of Education, Furman University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education, Matthew Lynch

The 1 Thing You Should Know About Rising Sex Crimes on College Campuses

There’s no denying it, sex crimes are a major issue on college campuses.

In fact, a new report released by the U.S. Education Department found that reported cases of sexual assault and offenses on college campuses rose from 3,357 in 2009 to 6,073 in 2013.

However, while the numbers seem rather daunting, there’s one thing to keep in mind about this:

Officials in the Education Department say (in the letter) that the actual crimes have likely not risen, but awareness of them has. The push to encourage young people to speak up when they feel their sexual rights have been violated is gaining momentum across the country. Even the Obama Administration has stepped up and encouraged colleges and universities to take stronger actions when cases of sexual assault are reported, threatening to investigate schools that do not take the proper steps.

Working on a college campus, I don’t believe for a second that it has gotten twice as dangerous for students since 2009 when it comes to sexual assault. I think these numbers are exactly what the Education Department hints at — a result of raised awareness. Victims are feeling more comfortable speaking up and friends are more empowered to speak up when they see something happen that isn’t right.

Frankly, I would rather see numbers like this that indicate more young people are coming forward and feeling supported than to see a drop in numbers at this point. Until all colleges and universities have stringent sexual assault policies that they enforce, reports like this one are necessary to wake us from our slumber.

What do you think about the rising numbers of reported sex crimes? Does it come from more assaults or more awareness? I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts, so please leave a comment.

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