Policy & Reform

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

Are Bilingual Programs Worth the Extra Effort and Expense?

The debate on the best way to educate ELL students continues, with little promise of a clear-cut way to proceed emerging anytime soon. Meanwhile, the diversity of languages spoken in U.S. schools continues to expand. Languages include Spanish, Hmong, Urdu, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Polish, Korean, Tagalog, and Swahili…and that doesn’t cover everything! Achieving the goal for all students to obtain a satisfactory level of learning is often compromised by the cultural, social, and language differences among various groups. The inability to provide the best approach for the learning needs of ELL students places them at greater risk of falling behind.

The original enthusiasm for bilingual programs has diminished, and these programs are now criticized as ineffective. Support for the immersion model has also declined, and initial supporters now believe ELL students simply aren’t learning English quickly and thoroughly enough. They now suggest that the immersion program does not facilitate ELL students’ ability to cope with American culture, not only in school but also beyond school boundaries. The slower learning curve experienced by ELL students in immersion programs may plague them for the rest of their lives.

This belief is based on research suggesting that Hispanics who were enrolled in bilingual programs from the 1970s through the 1990s have earned less money on average than Hispanic students educated during the same period in an English-only setting. Hispanic high school dropouts who were in English-only classrooms are also fewer in number and more likely to return to school later. Immersion makes it difficult for the teacher to provide support for all students’ needs. In the case of a complex assignment such as a research paper, language and usage are challenging even for fluent students. The further complication of using a second language puts ELL students at a serious disadvantage if they don’t have special support. The immersion method of teaching has yet to establish itself as an effective program for minority students.

Supporters of the transitional and developmental models insist that students taught at least some of their core academics in their native language can better keep pace with their English-speaking peers. According to research studies, transitional instruction in both the native language and English helps students learn English more quickly and effectively. Transitional instruction helps students become more literate in their native language, which in turn improves their ability to learn English.

An issue that complicates the education of the ELL learners is the lack of training among teachers and the apparent lack of urgency on the part of states to ensure highly qualified ELL teachers. Most states have no requirements for new teachers to demonstrate competency in ELL instruction. And most states do not have incentives for teachers to pursue a license or endorsement in ELL instruction. Regardless of the model chosen, qualified teachers are necessary for quality programs.

Bilingual programs—are they helpful or harmful? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

 

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform

How to get boys excited about reading

Decades of data show girls outscoring boys on a range of language skills. Four ELA teachers share their best practices for closing the gap.

A guest post by Dr. Jackie Arnold

“Girls are better readers than boys” is an educational generalization that happens to be backed up by decades of data. According to the 2015 “Brown Center Report on American Education” from The Brookings Institution:

Girls outscore boys on practically every reading test given to a large population. And they have for a long time. A 1942 Iowa study found girls performing better than boys on tests of reading comprehension, vocabulary, and basic language skills. Girls have outscored boys on every reading test ever given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—the first long-term trend test was administered in 1971—at ages nine, 13, and 17.

Given this reality, our task as educators is to do our best to spark boys’ interest in reading and keep them at it. For some advice on how to make this idea a reality in the classroom, I asked teachers from Salem Community Schools in Indiana to share their best practices.

Find Out What They’re Interested In

According to fifth-grade teacher Bev Sweeney, “The boys especially like the sports and vehicle stories and the gross and silly, plus mysteries.” Fourth-grade teacher Melissa Nicholson said that, when her boys are allowed to choose what they read, “the ‘gross and scary’ books are some of their favorites.”

Boys are also engaged by stories that they are familiar with, said Amy Collins. “As a fourth-grade teacher, I find it easy to find reading lessons that interest boys in my classroom, due to the fact that we study Indiana history and we focus on Native Americans, the Civil War, and the American Revolution. My students love to tie our Social Studies and reading together.”

Fifth-grade Language Arts teacher Susan L. Shields relies on the power of great characters. “It is important to ‘hook’ young readers by offering them interesting characters to which they can relate,” she said. “The students in my classroom love the characters developed by Gertrude Chandler Warner in The Boxcar Children series, as well as the characters brought to life by Beverly Cleary in the Henry and Beezus books. The students come to view these characters as their ‘book friends’ and are truly sorry when the book ends because they have to tell their ‘friends’ goodbye.” And, she added, “Offering boys characters of similar age and gender will usually increase the amount of independent reading boys are willing to do.”

All ELA teachers at Salem use the personalized learning environment myON, which helps students find books they’ll like by having them complete an “interest inventory.” The system then delivers a selection of books geared to the individual student. Of course, finding an engaging book is one thing, but getting boys to read the whole thing is another.

Keep Them Motivated

Sweeney said that her secret to making boys want to keep reading is to “read a portion of a book to them and stop when they want to hear more.”

Once a boy starts reading a book, Shields monitors whether it too hard for him by giving benchmark assessments from time to time. And, she said, “Because myON offers a quiz at the end of each book along with quick results, students earn tickets from our classroom economy for each correct answer. This also serves as motivation.”

During reading groups, Nicholson motivates students by having them listen to or read books with a friend. “The boys especially like this,” she said, “due to getting to work with a buddy. Also, the different voices used in the stories really pull in my readers to engage them in the plot.”

Shields also gives the students in her Language Arts class 10 to 15 minutes a day for silent, sustained reading. She uses the website Book Adventure daily to assess boys’ comprehension of the chapter books they choose.

Giving boys a choice of reading material and the support they need to get through it has paid off for Shields. In her class, she said, “boys are reading as much as or more than the girls. The average number of tests passed on Book Adventure for the boys in my class is 5.9 for the year. The average number of books for the girls is 5.0.”

_____

Dr. Jackie Arnold is the Director of Assessment and Program Improvement at Salem Community Schools (IN).

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Policy & Reform

Drum Circles as Part of Every Classroom

Note: The following guest post comes to us courtesy of Dr. Darla Shaw, Professor of Education, Western Connecticut State University.

Nothing is older in the culture of any society than drum circles. They were used for communication, for entertainment and as a centerpiece of all activities for the community.

Today drum circles are being revitalized and being used with students with special needs, with people who are ill, with senior citizens, and in classrooms where music is not the major subject.

Drums circles can cross any barrier. They all speak a language others can understand. They do not have to be costly as drums can be made out of “found materials” or objects found in a room. They can be played at any time and for any purpose and they are all inclusive. Drum circles are not for spectators. Drum circles are for performers. Drum circles build community.

Because of so many positive factors linked to drum circles, this innovative practice is now being brought into regular classrooms at every level. Each teacher has a different type of circle, made up of different materials, but they all seem to bring many positive factors to the classroom environment.

Classroom Climate and Management

Many classroom teachers are using drumming to get students’ attention and ready to focus. These teachers also like to use drumming as a motivational tool. When students have been working for a long period of time on a tough task, bringing out the drums and following patterns is a good way to relax and reenergize. When a teacher says we are going to next go to drumming, the class will begin to perk up and eagerly await the activity. It is extremely rare to find a student that does not like drumming as it is inherit skill that everyone can perform at some level.

Just before an important test, it also helps to bring out the drums and let the students get rid of their tensions. Teachers are finding that three minutes of drumming just prior to an exam, can help to focus the brain and keep the student on track.

Reading Skills and Patterning

In the early grades, drumming is used to help with the auditory segmentation of words. When students say cat, c – a – t , they say the letter and beat it out on a drum. This helps to internalize the number of sounds in a word. This helps students to build their auditory skills along with their perceptual skills. Phonological awareness to the beat of a drum is highly regarded in the world of phonics.

This same segmentation technique is also used with number of syllables. or long and short vowel sounds. When students hear a short vowel sound, they make a certain beat on the drum. When the students hears a long vowel sound, they make another sound. When teaching children to read fluently with phrasing, drumming is a very useful tool.

Students can also learn the alphabet through beats on the drum. The drum beat with certain letters “sticks to the brain” and can then be retrieved when the student is reading or writing. We have all heard people saying, “I can’t get that song out of my head,” that is what happens when drum circle sounds are applied to any particular skill.

Reading is all about seeing and hearing patterns. When students are in a drum circles, they need to be able to duplicate patterns through careful listening and trial and error. They must also be able to create a new pattern of their own. These two drumming skills involve critical thinking and are important to a student’s developmental level.

Today we talk a great deal about engagement of students. There is no better way to engage students then through the use of a drum linked to a particular skill.

Content Area Classes

Students love to read their poetry, stories, or reader’s theater presentations to the beat of a drum. Working in teams to put the words and beats together through various drumming techniques, can help not only the students with special needs, but all students.
Drumming helps students to become creative, to become critical thinkers, and to integrate their learning senses. Students begin to take risks that they never took before when you give them a drum.

If students are trying to memorize a phrase, a definition, an equation or something difficult, they can pattern the message to a drum beat and the information will be there when they need it. This technique is more effective than just rereading the information a second time.

As a final project, students can also take their research and use a drum circle to help them share the information. For example, if students were talking about a plant going through different life stages, they might not only use power points, but along with the power point have a particular style of drum beats portraying a particular action. Drum beats and how they are performed are a form of speaking and communication, the same way words and pictures give us insight into a situation.

In math and science, students are looking to discover information on number of beats, tone, fluency, vibrations, modulation, strength and length of vibrations, and patterns that can be transferred to technological devices. These STEM type projects and music are becoming more common place and even showing up in many science fairs. Music motivates students and helps them get into areas that before have never been of any interest to them.

As a teacher of teachers, I tell my students at the beginning of each new year. “ Don’t be afraid to try something new this year. By taking risks and tracking the results, you uncover what it takes to be a good teacher. However, if you are only going to do one new activity this year, make it drum circles in some form. You will thank me for this suggestion as I have never seen a situation where drum circles have not helped with relieving stress, helping classroom management, building integration skills, and bringing fun and enjoyment to the rigors of the Common Core classroom of today.”

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

Explainer: what is all the fuss about the Common Core?

Ken Libby, University of Colorado

When it comes to US public education, few topics engender such heated debate as a new set of maths and English standards for school children known as the Common Core.

Since the final standards were released in 2010, they have been adopted by 44 states and the District of Columbia. This marks a departure from the long history in the US of leaving most educational standards up to the whims of states and local school districts, resulting in different standards in every state for kindergarten to grade 12.

The Common Core counts supporters and critics in both of the two major US political parties. This makes the conversation about the standards quite messy and interesting – especially given the upcoming congressional elections in November.

Fighting ‘ObamaCore’

Although moderate conservatives generally favour the Common Core, those further to the right, like the Tea Party, portray the new standards as inappropriate meddling by the federal government. Some engage in wild conspiracy theories, and attack the standards as part of a broader anti-public school agenda.

The fight over the US’s recent changes to healthcare policy, Affordable Care Act (sometimes referred to as “ObamaCare”), provides a way for some conservative activists to jump into the Common Core fray by claiming the new standards are the educational equivalent (“ObamaCore”). It’s a poor comparison, but permits easy entry into the debate for those with little substantive knowledge.

Left-leaning critics cite concerns about the potential for private companies (such as publishing group Pearson) to profit from the Common Core as a reason for rejecting the new standards.

Criticism of the standards is coming in all shapes and sizes.
amerigus/WWYD , CC BY

There are also concerns as to whether the standards for early elementary students are developmentally inappropriate. Others dismiss the new standards as a solution to a problem that does not exist, or a band-aid for much bigger problems, like the high child poverty rate in the US.

Some critics of the Common Core view it as further cementing the use (and misuse) of standardised testing in American schools.

State-driven testing

In addition to the new standards, two consortia of states – Smarter Balanced and the Partnership for Assessment and Readiness for College and Careers – have been working to develop tests tied to the standards. However, some states, such as Kansas, have opted to develop their own assessments.

These new and ostensibly better assessments created by the two consortia may provide some real advantages compared to previous tests. However, early trials of assessments tied to the Common Core indicate up to 70% of students in New York may not receive a passing mark given the more challenging nature of the standards. While that may well paint a reasonably accurate picture of how many students can truly meet the new standards, it is a politically tenuous position to maintain.

Supporters, on the other hand, claim the standards are more challenging than previous state standards (and they are, at least for most states). They also say that the standards will better prepare students for college-level work, and create a more level playing field for children across the country.

The shift to the Common Core comes as states pursue several other policy changes, including teacher evaluations based in part on student progress on standardised tests. These new evaluations attempt to use statistical models to calculate a measure of teacher quality based on how much a teacher’s students improve their performance on standardised tests, usually controlling for a host of other variables.

What teachers think

Pursuing both the new Common Core standards and teacher evaluations at the same time is worrying, especially if teachers and schools are not adequately prepared to help students reach the goals of the new standards.

While teachers generally support the common core, they also express reservations about implementation. A poll conducted in July 2013 by the largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), indicated that teachers wanted more time to collaborate with colleagues about the new standards, updated resources, and enhanced technology for the classroom.

With each state and school district responsible for implementation, the degree to which teachers feel supported (or not) varies greatly. Heads of both the NEA and the second largest teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, have expressed concerns about Common Core implementation in recent months.

Personally, I do not consider myself a strong supporter of the common core. Nor am I an opponent. Although some critics make wild charges and engage in conspiracy theories, there are certainly legitimate concerns about the changes.

Implementation seems rushed in far too many places, leaving teachers and students inadequately prepared for the shift. If equity across the country were truly a concern, we would talk about how states do an exceedingly poor job of financing schools equitably, giving fewer resources to districts populated with low-income students and racial minorities. We would also tackle the inequitable distribution of teachers and various out-of-school factors – poverty, residential segregation, inequality and racism.

With more states shifting to the new standards and assessments in the coming year, the Common Core will likely remain an important issue in US public education and political debate. The standards themselves are rarely discussed – in large part because the biggest concerns are about related (and perhaps intertwined) issues like testing, teacher evaluations, and implementation.

The Conversation

Ken Libby, PhD student studying educational foundations, policy and practice, University of Colorado

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Parental Involvement, Policy & Reform, Teachers

How schools can help immigrant children to thrive

Jan Germen Janmaat, UCL Institute of Education

In view of the large influx of refugees from Syria and the growing concern about their integration in European societies, the launch of a new report on immigrant children in education systems could not be more timely.

The report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), noted reassuringly that there was no relation between the amount of immigrants in a country’s education system and a decline in education standards. It’s as if the OECD were pre-empting criticism from populist anti-immigrant politicians that the influx of Syrian refugees will be a disruption to western societies, and in particular a drain on schools.

The main focus of the report is actually on the performance gap between children of immigrant background and their non-immigrant peers and what schools can do to close it. Although the achievement gap has closed across the OECD – by a semester between 2003 and 2012 – on average, immigrant students still perform worse than their peers. The OECD gives some quite explicit advice to politicians if they are serious about enhancing the performance of these children: provide additional language instruction, arrange early childhood education, prevent segregation, don’t force them to repeat grades and eliminate the early streaming (also known as tracking) of children into different ability groups.

While the first two recommendations are uncontroversial, the last suggestion is politically sensitive as there are quite a few states who practice and cherish the tracking or streaming of children. In Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, different tracks coincide with different kinds of schools, while in England, ability grouping is organised within schools in what is called setting.

Provocatively the report said: “While ability grouping, grade repetition and tracking are harmful for all students, immigrant students are more likely to be affected by these practices.“ This is likely to raise some eyebrows, particularly among political parties advocating early tracking such as the Christian Democrats in Germany and the Conservatives in the UK.

Many education researchers have stressed that early tracking only reinforces achievement gaps, not only between immigrant and non-immigrant children but also between children of different social backgrounds. As early as 1974, the French sociologist Raymond Boudon noted that the more tracks a system has and the earlier these tracks start to branch out, the greater the inequality in educational performance and the more difficult it will be for children of modest backgrounds, including many immigrants, to do well in school. In this sense the OECD can be said to be a late convert to the cause of late selection – or comprehensive education as it is more widely known.

The report also noted that early tracking on the basis of ability amounts to social and ethnic sorting and so only adds to school social and ethnic segregation, which is an observation widely shared in academia.

Segregation and achievement

Segregation is also mentioned by the OECD as another factor contributing to the performance gap. This is based on the idea that large concentrations of immigrant children give rise to peer influences that reduce performance, irrespective of the individual social and ethnic background of children. In other words, when immigrant children are surrounded by peers of the same background in school, they are doubly disadvantaged, both in terms of their own background and in terms of the backgrounds of their classmates.

Language lessons for refugee children in Germany.
Ole Spata/EPA

In mixed settings, by contrast, they should be able to learn from their more privileged peers. Desegregated schools can thus help to compensate for the effect of family disadvantage. Again this theory is not new. In 1966 a famous report by American sociologist James Coleman noted that it makes a great difference who you go to school with. This report greatly reinforced the desegregation campaign that was set in motion by the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education US Supreme Court ruling declaring that de jure segregation was “inherently unequal” and therefore unconstitutional.

What’s best for immigrant children

There is more controversy among researchers, however, about whether segregation enhances achievement gaps. In 2005, American researchers Russell Rumberger and Gregory Palardy noted that when it comes to student achievement, the social composition of schools matters much more than the racial composition. Taking a closer look at social composition they found that several school characteristics, including teacher expectations of children, the amount of homework that students do, and the number of rigorous courses that students take, explain all of the effect of social composition.

This would imply that in theory immigrant children can perform just as well in segregated schools, provided they are exposed to the very same curriculum and teaching input as their peers in mixed schools. The question, however, is whether equalising these resources across schools can be achieved in practice – as they are so inextricably bound up with the social and ethnic mix of schools.

The OECD report deserves praise for letting the data speak and ignoring possible political pressures to revise the policy messages emanating from its findings on what works to close the achievement gap. It does not deal, however, with two relevant questions of quite a different nature: namely whether the policies it recommends can be adopted in the same way in countries with different educational cultures and whether they will produce the same results across the board. This debate – a hot topic among researchers – so far remains unresolved.

The Conversation

Jan Germen Janmaat, Reader in Comparative Social Science, Department of Lifelong and Comparative Education, UCL Institute of Education

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

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

The Ultimate Demise of Common Core – Part II: The Parents

It’s been said that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but in the case of Common Core implementation, I’d say the word “parent” could easily be inserted. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, message boards – you do not have to look very far to find a post, thread or entire account dedicated to a common hatred for Common Core. Facebook pages titled “Common Sense against Common Core” and “Against Common Core” have fans who are passionate about dismantling the initiatives that are ruining the educational journey of their kids and dumbing them down for testing. A viral meme reads “Wow! This Common Core homework makes so much sense… said no parent, ever.” Parents appear to be both confused and angered by Common Core benchmarks that, at least in theory, are designed to improve national learning standards.

On Monday, I wrote about the ways in which I believe politics will contribute to the downfall of Common Core initiatives. Today I want to look at the ways parents will eventually succeed in the same way.

It’s just too darn hard.

The heightened concepts of learning and retaining Common Core materials means that some students will get left behind. The aggressiveness of the learning campaigns, however, make it difficult for teachers to spend extra time on subjects or circle back to them once most of the class has retained them. In a perfect world, this is where the parents would step in and fill the gap, or at least hire a tutor to do it. Ever since No Child Left Behind legislation, however, the assumption is that public schools are responsible for the total learning process of all their students. Parents who find that Common Core is leaving their own children behind find it easier to point the finger at the standards instead of initiating a way to make them work for their kids.

The “I don’t understand it” mentality.

Particularly when it comes to math, some of the new-fangled methods that Common Core implements are foreign to parents. Moms and dads who remember excelling in elementary school math are suddenly befuddled by the homework questions their second-graders must figure out. Parents, even the very young ones, did not use many of the tactics now in place in K-12 classrooms and certainly were not required to learn as many complicated subjects at such a young age. This lack of comprehension translates to lack of confidence – and causes parents to become defensive about the materials their children are expected to learn.

Stop teaching my kid to the test.

Parents are a finicky bunch when it comes to education. They want the best career opportunities for their kids but resent the idea of teaching too specifically for the simple sake of scoring higher on an assessment test. The items on state assessment tests, more than ever, are designed to test the knowledge set deemed appropriate for the future economy (in part, at least). Though parents want the best job opportunities for their kids, they don’t want knowledge to be so narrowly dispersed. The truth is that no teacher has enough time to teach everything to his or her students. Some of that learning must happen at home and in other real-world applications.

Standards are a calculated guess as to what learning materials should be prioritized among U.S. students – not an end-all-be-all list. Parents see items that they deem “important” missing from Common Core standards and believe it signals a complete dysfunction of the benchmarks. The growing movement to protest or even eliminate standardized tests is being driven mostly by parents. Though it’s unlikely that they will ever truly succeed on this front, their outspoken concerns about Common Core will eventually aid in dismantling the standards – particularly if their political representatives are listening.

In the last part of this series I’ll write about the ways the logistics of Common Core standards will lead to their downfall.

Do you think parents are right in their Common Core complaints, or off-base?

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform

Why You Need Both Data and Common Sense for School Reform

By Matthew Lynch

The first step to positive K-12 reform within a school and a district is to find a starting point. Often, data sets are used to determine this – but really, so much more should go into it.

Districts that demonstrate continuous positive results often base their decisions on data alone, as opposed to relying on observations and data together. Schools should regularly evaluate the pros and cons of instructional programs and realize that standardized tests should constitute only a piece of the assessment puzzle rather than the entirety. Continuously monitoring the progress the school’s student body makes will allow the task force to amend the reform plan as needed.

Balancing Reform

Successful schools also take measures to institute checks and balances, to ensure the decision-making process is distributed among a variety of reform participants. Superintendents are charged with the duty of ensuring that the implementation and sustaining of improvement efforts are done in a positive manner and meet the needs of the students. The team leader’s job is to ensure teachers have all of the tools needed to foster the academic performance of students.

Accountability, Too

Districts all over the country recognize accountability as the key to the school’s improvement process. Everyone is expected to perform at optimal levels, or must face the consequences. To ensure that staff and faculty members are able to perform at optimal levels, the school district must provide them with high-quality professional development.

Modify, Modify, Modify

In order to complete the process of school reform, restructuring efforts must be monitored and evaluated. The process of evaluation can be completed in-house, or the leader can hire outside consultants to perform the task. If the task force is willing to evaluate the success of the school’s reform, they must first develop a plan for evaluation.

The team’s evaluation plan should have been developed before the reform was implemented. Performance goals that were created at the beginning of the restructuring process should be used to guide the evaluation process.  The team will need to decide who will collect, analyze, and interpret the data. In order to avoid biased results, it may be in the best interest of the school to hire an outside consultant who may provide a more objective assessment of the reform efforts. The team will also use the results to determine whether or not the reform efforts were effective.

The results may indicate that the reform was not a success. In this case, the best solution is to build upon the small successes and learn from mistakes. Another reform could then be implemented or the unsuccessful reform amended to better suit the needs of the school. School restructuring is a long-term process. Reform occurs on a continuous cycle that must be sustained in order for improvements to be maintained and furthered. Keep in mind that not every restructuring effort bears fruit. Even the best schools have to continue to work in the restructuring process.

Successfully implementing and sustaining school reform is possible. It may not be easy, but with a tremendous effort, the utilization of all resources, and the expertise of professionals, school reform can be successful. The level of success the school is able to achieve will be based on the school’s predicament. Whatever the obstacles, the leaders’ decisions need to be resolute to foster academic achievement. While data is certainly a starting point, there is a lot more that goes into the bigger picture of smart school reform – and districts should recognize that and work towards solutions that not only make sense on paper, but also in real life.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Policy & Reform, Teachers

Why children who sleep more get better grades

Dagmara Dimitriou, UCL Institute of Education

Sleep plays a fundamental role in the way we learn. Emerging evidence makes a compelling case for the importance of sleep for language learning, memory, executive function, problem solving and behaviour during childhood.

A new study that my colleagues and I have worked on illustrated how an optimal quantity of sleep leads to more effective learning in terms of knowledge acquisition and memory consolidation. Poor quality of sleep – caused by lots of waking up during the night – has also been reported to be a strong predictor of lower academic performance, reduced capacity for attention, poor executive function and challenging behaviours during the day.

Many adolescents are sleep-deprived as they gain less sleep than the average recommended level – around nine hours for this group. But due to school commitments, teenagers are required to wake up early at a set time even if they have not achieved the optimal number of hours sleep.

Along with these early start times, teenagers also experience pubertal phase delay – meaning pubertal teenagers will sleep even less due to biological factors. Combined with late night activities, this can have a significant negative effect on the quality of sleep and therefore their behaviour during the day.

Insufficient and poor quality of sleep appear to be pervasive during adolescence. These can have various consequences such as an excessive daytime sleepiness, poor diet and in turn impairments in cognitive control, risk-taking behaviour, diminished control of attention and behaviour, as well as poor emotional control.

More sleep versus better sleep

In a recent study involving 48 students between 16 and 19-years-old recruited through an independent sixth form college in central London, my colleagues and I at the Lifespan Learning and Sleep Laboratory at UCL examined the link between sleep, academic performance and environmental factors.

Our results showed that the majority of the teenagers achieved just over seven hours of sleep, with an average bedtime at 11.37pm. Our study showed that a longer amount of sleep and earlier bedtimes – measures of sleep quantity – were most strongly correlated with better academic results obtained by the students on a number of tests taken at school. In contrast, measures that were indicative of sleep quality were mostly linked with students’ performances on verbal reasoning tests and on grade point averages on tests at school.

So it appears from our results that “longer sleep” is more closely related to academic performance, while “good night sleep” is more closely related to overall cognitive processing.

Why teens are getting less and less sleep

Our study also confirms findings from previous research showing that teenagers are getting at least two to three hours less sleep than is needed for their optimal brain development and a healthy lifestyle.

There are several modern lifestyle factors that have shown to impact on sleep. We found that consumption of energy drinks and coffee, and social media use half an hour before habitual bedtime were strongly associated with poorer sleep.

Too much late night snapchat.
CandyBox Images/www.shutterstock.com

Our study has also shown that the negative impact of poor sleep on academic functioning is not always matched by a realisation of this fact by students themselves, therefore they may have little motivation to alter bad sleep habits. Unlike for adults, adolescence is a crucial time because of continual changes in the brain – so sleep is particularly important for a teenager’s health.

Conditions that can impact sleep

There is an added complexity to the sleep patterns of children with developmental disorders, despite the fact that they are more likely to suffer from sleep problems. So far, we have examined sleep, and cognitive and behavioural functioning in children with Down Syndrome, Williams Syndrome and ADHD. All our studies show that sleep has a very important impact on cognitive and daytime functioning of children with these conditions.

When we examined levels of sleep biomarkers – melatonin and cortisol – in children with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder, it revealed that they had elevated levels of cortisol and dampened levels of melatonin. High cortisol and low melatonin levels before bedtime were strongly linked with delayed sleep onset – taking around 50 minutes in comparison to the typical 20 minutes to fall asleep.

Since cortisol is often described as a stress hormone, high levels of this hormone before bedtime may potentially cause sleep problems including difficulty in relaxing and falling asleep. This is an important result to consider before a child is prescribed a melatonin supplement – which might not be necessary to help solve their actual sleep problem.

The effects of the sleep disturbances extend beyond the individual. Parents of children with developmental disorders often experience heightened levels of stress and sleep problems because they are kept awake by their children.

All this shows how crucial it is for teenagers to get the right amount of sleep – otherwise it could have long-term impacts on their health and on their grades.

The Conversation

Dagmara Dimitriou, Director, Lifespan Learning & Sleep Lab, Department of Psychology and Human Development, UCL Institute of Education

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

6 Saddening Facts about Childhood Obesity and Unhealthy Body Image

The rate of obesity among children is skyrocketing—and this is something to worry about. After all, as you might expect, obese children are at a higher risk for diseases such as diabetes, arthritis and heart disease.

But there are some other things that you might not know about childhood obesity and its implications.

1. For example, did you know that…by the age of four, one out of every five children is obese? Yes, a full twenty percent of children are obese by the time they are four years old.

2. Obese children also tend to have low self-esteem, poor grades, and are less likely to attend college (particularly girls).

3. Children from low-income families and those of Hispanic, African American and Native American heritage are at a higher risk of falling prey to obesity.

4. Poor diet and lack of exercise are the two main culprits. Simply put, sedentary behaviors are on the rise. The average American youth watches 1,500 hours of television per year and they go to school an average of 900 hours per year – the math right there should tell you something about where our kids are learning the most, and how it is being absorbed.

During the 1500 hours of television watching, experts tell us that children are mostly eating high calorie snacks. Additionally, American society is riddled with fast food, refined foods and processed foods that calorie laden. Is it any surprise that so many children in this country struggle with their weight?

5. Television and other activities at home are not the only factors to blame, though. Our K-12 schools are also playing a role in the rise in obesity and unhealthy lifestyles among kids. To start with, many schools lack physical education programs, with a mere 4 percent of elementary schools, 8 percent of middle schools, and 2 percent of high schools offering daily physical education.

6. Perhaps the oddest point when it comes to the rising rate of obesity is this: American culture teaches children that thin is better, and that you simply cannot be too thin. Rising rates of anorexia and bulimia among young women and men are the result of poor messages about body image that children frequently hear. These eating disorders generally begin between the ages of 11 and 13, particularly for girls. In fact, nearly half of all girls from grade 1 to grade 3 want to be thinner. The top wish for girls ages 11 to 17 is to lose weight.

Obviously, messages American children receive from the media and society in general need to change. Young girls learn that to be attractive and to be a success, you must be thin. Boys receive similar messages and learn that thin and muscular is the preferred body type. As a result, boys as young as 10 years old are bulking up at the gym and many young men are taking steroids to build muscle, at great detriment to their overall health.

So on one hand, children learn that they need to remain thin to be attractive and successful. But on the other hand, they do not have the resources to establish healthy eating habits on any level – and schools are really no help.

For schools to really get behind a healthy approach to body image, diet and exercise, an atmosphere that promotes acceptance of self and the importance of overall health should be established. Classroom and learning materials should portray different body types and images. Ensuring students know a thin body isn’t necessarily a healthy body and that healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes is also important. It is not enough to simply tell them though; students need to be equipped with healthy lifestyle tools to make the right choices when they are on their own.

What do you think we as Americans do to better address both the obesity and unhealthy body image issues that run rampant among K-12 students? Please leave a comment in the comment section below—I would appreciate hearing your thoughts.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform

Girls are kept out of science jobs by unhelpful stereotypes

Anna Zecharia, Imperial College London

The number of girls taking A-level physics has remained stagnant for the past 20 years or more, and the UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers in the EU. Progress on gender equality in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) is frustratingly slow.

And what’s even more worrying is that when questioned, Brits can’t think of current women scientists as role models. A recent YouGov poll of 3,000 people done for ScienceGrrl, a not-for-profit of which I am a director that advocates for more women in science careers, found one in ten named Isambard Kingdom Brunel – a male engineer – when asked to think of a famous women scientist. Only about half could actually name a female scientist and of those that did, 68% named Marie Curie, who died in 1934.

In a new report called Through Both Eyes also by ScienceGrrl, we set out the case for looking at the issue in light of the society we live in, and the legacy of inequalities between men and women.

Anyone more recent than Marie Curie?
Wikimedia Commons

Lack of progress isn’t due to a lack of attention or awareness. The Institute of Physics has compiled a series of comprehensive reports since 2004 and government frequently makes the economic case for diversity in science, technology, maths and engineering (STEM).

Deeply embedded cultural messages about women, attitudes, structures and norms manifest themselves as invisible hurdles that undermine girls’ participation and women’s progression in the workplace. These hurdles are invisible precisely because none of us knows what it looks like to live in an equal world.

Science capital in the family

We’ve explored what is known to propel somebody to choose a career in science. The literature is clear that there are three key factors. Liking STEM isn’t enough, it has to be relevant to a person’s interests and goals. They also need to feel confident they can succeed, and have access to “science capital” – the opportunity to gain knowledge and experience of STEM through personal networks.

People receive messages about themselves and the opportunities available to them from wider society, family and friends, the classroom and the workplace. We are all exposed to these messages and their balance is crucial to informing the choices we make.

Professor Louise Archer says her research shows it is: “harder for girls to balance or reconcile their interest in science with femininity” because STEM is seen to be for those who are “white, middle class, brainy and male”. A 2011 Ofsted report showed that by around 7-8 years old, girls and boys spoke about jobs as being “for men” or “for women”. Cordelia Fine, in her book Delusions of Gender suggests that children act as “gender detectives” from a much earlier age.

The “girls’ toys” that value physical perfection over adventure or intelligence, and the objectification of women in the media are just two examples of how the roles and capabilities of women are diminished in wider society.

Casual reliance on stereotypes leads to unconscious bias undermining all areas of girls’ lives. In STEM subjects, this is particularly true for confidence: girls perform worse in maths tests when their gender is made salient. This is known as “stereotype threat” – the phenomenon that performance can be impaired by awareness of lower expectations for your particular social group.

Stereotypes also affect expectations of those with influence in girls’ lives. Students get most of their careers advice from family members. But polling data from Engineers Week in 2013 showed that parents are steering their daughters away from careers in engineering, with 3% encouraging it as a career, compared to 12% for their sons.

Inspiring teachers

Progress will require a whole community approach. Schools also play an important role. Evidence from the Institute of Physics suggests that gender stereotypes undermine girls in the classroom.

But as Dr Vanessa Odgen, headteacher at Mulberry School for Girls, summarises: “girls’ uptake of science, technology and maths increases significantly when these subjects are taught by women who care passionately about STEM and when curriculum content promotes the achievements of women”. In short, when a whole school ethos means it is normal and expected for girls to succeed.

It is missing the point to say that girls aren’t “choosing” to study STEM. Many girls do not have real choice because of the low expectations placed on them and the lack of genuine opportunity. Girls are being kept out of rewarding careers.

We don’t need to change girls, we must place the responsibility on those with influence in our society. Showing the variety of directions STEM can lead, that it is creative and has social relevance it will appeal to a broader based talent pool, not just to more girls.

The Conversation

Anna Zecharia, Postdoctoral neuroscientist, Imperial College London

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

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