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Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Policy & Reform

Are gifted kids more sensitive to screen violence?

Jonathan Wai, Duke University; Brad Bushman, The Ohio State University, and Yakup Cetin, Fatih University

The past few weeks have been full of several unfortunate violent events: the massacre in Orlando, the killing of black men by police officers, the sniper attack in Dallas, the Bastille Day attack in France, the violent coup attempt in Turkey and the shooting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

While many of us may not have been directly affected by these events, we watched the news as it unfolded on broadcast and social media. Witnessing such violence on media can take a severe toll on us even when our near and dear ones are not directly affected.

Surprisingly, what research is beginning to uncover is that impact on young children – especially young gifted children – can be worse.

Impact of violence on adults and children

A large body of research has demonstrated a link between exposure to violent media and aggression and violent behavior across multiple countries and cultures. A synthesis of this literature found different reactions in adults and children. The short-term impact of watching violence on screen was greater for adults, while the long-term effects were greater for children.

Research specifically related to children has shown that violent media events like the ones we are currently seeing can frighten and worry them. Scholars have discussed how witnessing violence harms children’s mental health.

However, this impact can vary. We are researchers who study gifted children and violence. Although definitions of “gifted” vary, gifted children can be generally defined as those high in general intelligence as indicated by a standardized test score.

Gifted kids show greater motivation, memory, moral reasoning and development. US Army Garrison Red Cloud – Casey Follow, CC BY-NC-ND

Based on this definition, gifted children tend to have many advantages. For example, higher intelligence is linked to greater achievement, motivation, memory, moral reasoning and development, social skills, sense of humor, educational and occupational attainment, leadership, and even creativity. Higher intelligence is also linked to lower impulsive behavior, delinquency and crime.

However, research also shows that higher intelligence is linked with greater emotional sensitivity. Scholars studying gifted children have argued that because of this, they are not necessarily advantaged in all contexts.

Studying the impact of violence on gifted kids

But what things might gifted children might be more sensitive to? One factor that might play a role is violence – even violence depicted in something as seemingly harmless as cartoons.

Along with Cengiz Altay, a doctoral student at Fatih University, we tested 74 “gifted” children and 70 children from Turkey who were “less gifted” or had relatively lower intelligence scores. The “gifted” group were those students scoring 130 or higher (top two percent) on the intelligence scale. The school from which these students were drawn had a gifted students unit and were initially screened for higher intelligence than the general population.

The study was conducted in 2015 over a period of half a year. At the time of the study, these children were 10 years old. We examined whether exposure to media containing violence compared to media that did not contain violence differently affected the verbal ability of children.

To do that, we asked all students to take a verbal test before (pre-test) and after (post-test) watching a video. Participants were asked to generate words from a different set of letters for both these tests.

The most common letters in the Turkish alphabet were randomly divided into two groups for the pre-test and post-test. In the pretest, participants were asked to generate words starting with the letters A, L, M, S, C, E, B and H. In the post-test, participants had to generate words starting with the letters I, D, N, O, F, K and T. They had one minute to list as many words as possible that began with the particular letters.

Between the pre-test and post-test, participants in both the gifted and less gifted groups were randomly assigned to watch either a nonviolent cartoon or a violent cartoon. We used two animation shows that are commonly watched by children.

Even animation series that depict violence can have an impact.Loren Javier, CC BY-ND

One was “Bakugan Battle Brawlers,” a series with episodes that depict violence in a battle, and the other “Arthur” – a story that revolves around the many friend and family issues of a young boy named Arthur. This latter series does not have any episodes of screen violence.

What our findings show

Our research, published recently in Gifted Child Quarterly, a leading journal on the study of giftedness, shows that children’s abilities could be negatively impacted by exposure to violence, especially gifted children.

We found that gifted students generated more words than the other students when they were asked to generate words prior to watching the video. However, the gifted students assigned to the video which showed violence generated slightly fewer words than the less gifted group after they had watched the video.

Conversely, when gifted students were shown the cartoon without violence, they outperformed the other students on both the pre-test and the post-test. This suggests that it was the violence in the cartoons that reduced the gifted students’ mental performance rather than simply watching a cartoon.

Overall, all kids under performed after watching the violence, but gifted kids showed a greater performance drop.

Are gifted kids more sensitive?

One commonly held belief is that gifted students don’t need help and will do fine on their own. This perception may be due to the empirical evidence showing that many gifted students do end up quite successful later in life.

Scholars, however, have argued that it is a myth that gifted students don’t face problems and challenges. Our study adds to the evidence that gifted children do face disadvantages or challenges, specifically when it comes to exposure to screen violence. Violence in the media impact children generally, but our study shows this negative impact is amplified for students with higher intelligence.

We are just beginning to explore the reasons for this surprising finding. Perhaps greater sensitivity of the “gifted” group leads them to react with more anxiety to the violent media. And perhaps exposure to such media lowers their working memory capacity, reduces their attention to the mental task and thus lowers their performance. In our study, gifted children thought the violent cartoon was more violent, liked it less and saw it less frequently at home than did the other children.

Screen violence and harm

Our findings have implications for parents, educators and policymakers who need to be aware that violence on screen may have a negative impact on kids, and in particular gifted kids. The impact of violent video on verbal tasks could be particularly important given the heavily verbal nature of schools.

Screen violence could lead to nightmares and other sleep disturbances. Boys image via www.shutterstock.com

A just-released statement from The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended, along with attention to children’s “media diets,” that “parents should be mindful of what shows their children watch and which games they play.” Other experts too have warned that screen violence, whether real or fictional, could lead to nightmares, sleep disturbances and increased general anxiety.

Our findings support this earlier evidence. In general, the violence depicted in our videos was quite small compared to the violence that children are often exposed to, such as in the news. So, it’s possible our study provides a lower estimate on the impact of violent media on the mental performance of children.

Optimal educational development requires not only including positive impacts but also reducing and removing negative impacts. Such risk factors could be greatest for talented but disadvantaged students who likely live in neighborhoods with higher rates of violence, which might accumulate and contribute to their eventual underachievement.

With the rise of digital devices and constant switching of tasks, it is difficult to control student exposure to violence. However, more attention needs to be paid to media diets that could detract from educational development over a period of time.

The Conversation

Jonathan Wai, Research Scientist, Duke University; Brad Bushman, Professor of Communication and Psychology, The Ohio State University, and Yakup Cetin, Head of the Department of Foreign Language Education, Fatih University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert

Do students lose depth in digital reading?

Naomi Baron, American University

Do students learn as much when they read digitally as they do in print?

For both parents and teachers, knowing whether computer-based media are improving or compromising education is a question of concern. With the surge in popularity of e-books, online learning and open educational resources, investigators have been trying to determine whether students do as well when reading an assigned text on a digital screen as on paper.

The answer to the question, however, needs far more than a yes-no response.

Reading in print versus digitally

In my research, I have compared the ways in which we read in print and onscreen. Between 2013 and 2015, I gathered data from 429 university students drawn from five countries (the U.S., Japan, Germany, Slovenia and India).

The students in my study reported that print was aesthetically more enjoyable, saying things such as “I like the smell of paper” or that reading in print is “real reading.” What’s more, print gave them a sense of where they were in the book – they could “see” and “feel” where they were in the text.

Print is easier on the eyes. H. Moon, CC BY-NC-ND

Print was also judged to be easier on the eyes and less likely to encourage multitasking. Almost half the participants complained about eyestrain from reading digitally (“my eyes burn”), and 67 percent indicated they were likely to multitask while reading digitally (compared with 41 percent when reading print).

At the same time, respondents praised digital reading on a number of counts, including the ability to read in the dark, ease of finding material (“plenty of quick information”), saving paper and even the fact they could multitask while reading.

Measuring learning

But the bigger question is whether students are learning as much when they read onscreen.

A number of researchers have sought to measure learning by asking people to read a passage of text, either in print or on a digital device, and then testing for comprehension.

Most studies have found that participants scored about the same when reading in each medium, though a few have indicated that students performed better on tests when they read in print.

The problem, however, with learning-measurement studies is that their notion of “learning” has tended to be simplistic. Reading passages and answering questions afterwards may be a familiar tool in standardized testing, but tells us little about any deeper level of understanding.

Some researchers are beginning to pose more nuanced questions, including one scholar who has considered what happens when people read a story in print or on a digital device and are then asked to reconstruct the plot sequence. The answer: Print yielded better results.

Another aspect of learning is to see how outcomes differ when students are doing their reading in less prescriptive experimental conditions. One study let students choose how much time to spend when reading on each platform. The researchers found that participants devoted less time to reading the passage onscreen – and performed less well on the subsequent comprehension test.

This finding is hardly surprising, given the tendency so many of us have to skim and search when going online, rather than reading slowly and carefully. In my study, one student commented,

“It takes more time to read the same number of pages in print comparing to digital.”

Another complained,

“It takes me longer because I read more carefully.”

Critical thinking and reading

How does the learning question relate to educational goals? There is much buzz today about wanting students to be good at critical thinking. Definitions of that goal are elusive, but it’s pretty clear they involve being able to understand complex ideas, evaluate evidence, weigh alternative perspectives and construct justifiable arguments.

To become proficient in critical thinking – at least in a literate society – students need to be able to handle text. The text may be long, complex or both. To make sense of it, students cannot skim, rush ahead or continually get distracted.

So, does reading in print versus onscreen build critical thinking skills?

Reading helps develop critical thinking skills. mrskradz, CC BY-ND

The comprehension studies we talked about earlier tell us little about the kind of reading we recognize as necessary for serious contemplation or analysis. An alternative approach, at least for starters, is asking students about their digital and paper-based reading patterns – much as physicians ask for histories (along with physicals and lab tests) to figure out what ails their patients.

While my own study didn’t directly measure learning, it did query students about their reading patterns and preferences. The responses to some of my questions were particularly revealing.

When asked on which medium they felt they concentrated best, 92 percent replied “print.” For long academic readings, 86 percent favored print. Participants also reported being more likely to reread academic materials if they were in print.

What’s more, a number of students indicated they believed print was a better medium for learning. One said,

“It’s easier to focus.”

Others stated,

“[I] feel like the content sticks in the head more easily” and

“I feel like I understand it more.”

By contrast, in talking about digital screens, students noted “danger of distraction” and “no concentration.”

Obviously, student perceptions are not the same thing as measurable learning outcomes. And my research didn’t probe connections between reading platforms and critical thinking.

However, a pattern did emerge: Print stood out as the medium for doing serious work.

Digital is convenient and cheaper

At the same time, we cannot ignore other factors impacting students’ decisions about what reading platform to chose for school work.

Convenience is one big consideration: More than 40 percent of participants in my study mentioned convenience (including easy access to materials) as what they liked most about reading onscreen.

Money is another variable. Students were highly conscious about differential prices for print and digital versions of reading materials, with cost often driving choice. As one student put it,

“Cost rules everything around me.”

Many students revealed a mismatch between finances and learning. When queried about which reading platform they would choose if cost were the same, 87 percent said “print” for academic work.

Adapting to digital learning

We also need to keep in mind the growing trend for universities to adapt their curricula to fit the proverbial “procrustean” bed of a digital world – a world tailor-made for skimming, scanning and using the “find” function rather than reading slowly and thoughtfully.

How can digital be adapted? ITU Pictures, CC BY

Professors now toy with ditching long or complex reading assignments in favor of short (or more straightforward) ones, moving closer to digital reading patterns in the nonacademic world. This world hypes condensed versions of texts and shorter reading material that is bite-sized to begin with.

The question then is how can universities help students read text thoughtfully, reflectively, and without distraction on digital devices?

One key could be adaptation. Research suggests students may be overconfident about what they are understanding when they read digitally. Teaching them to be mindful in their digital reading (for instance, by writing down key words from the reading) may help in learning.

Another form of adaptation is happening in the realm of digital hardware and software. Modern screens cause less eyestrain, and annotation programs continue to improve. Some digital reading devices now come with tools enabling them to digitally approximate physical page flipping and multiple place-marking.

However, in my view, while short-and-to-the-point may be a good fit for digital consumption, it’s not the sort of reading likely to nurture the critical thinking we still talk about as a hallmark of university education.

The Conversation

Naomi Baron, Executive Director, Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning, American University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Matthew Lynch

How to Spell Words Made Easy: Go Back To The Roots

Note: Julie Bradley has been an educator for more than 30 years. Her expertise has taken her to outback Australia and around the world presenting to educators and parents on spelling and foundational skills. Mrs Bradley is Managing Director of Smart Achievers, a worldwide distributor for Smart Words Spelling, Reading and Perceptual Motor Programs.

Another amazing session in Minnesota, USA with spelling guru, Denise Eide, was on Greek and Latin roots. You might wonder why we need to bother with these when we are learning how to spell words in English. What’s interesting is that 95% of multisyllabic words in English are based on Latin and Greek roots.

Here are some key points from the lessons:

Knowing the history of words and sounds helps us to understand how to spell them. If we know which, when and how to use suffixes and prefixes we can extend our working vocabulary by thousands of words in one lesson, in one day.

We have to start getting smarter in the way we are teaching our kids. This is very important if we want our kids to be considered literate and to know 200,000 words by the time they are 26 years old.

A list of 20 words a week is not going to help kids make the grade. In fact, they won’t even rate as ‘average’ if they learn 100 words a week. They have to learn 27 words a day, 365 days a year, for 20 years to rate as ‘well educated.’

With some clever teaching, kids can learn how to spell thousands of words. We can help them do this with simple explanations and a few well planned activities.

When kids know how to spell words, they know the code needed to read and write. Reading won’t teach kids to spell, though. If they don’t know the code well, they won’t trust it enough to use it. That’s why we have so many struggling readers today.

No kid should be left behind. You may think ‘so what if they can’t spell?’ Did you know that 85% of juvenile offenders are functionally illiterate? Literacy rates are closely tied to delinquency and are considered by some to be the best predictor that a kid may end up in prison or on welfare. Today, 70% of inmates are functionally illiterate!

So my question is: what do you want for your kids?

In four days in the Minnesota, USA I have learnt amazing ways to make it easier for our kids to learn how to spell words so they can achieve success in both reading and writing.

I can’t wait to get home and start sharing it all with you.

Join my quest to help kids so we don’t hear any more sad stories of kids feeling “dumb” and ashamed because they can’t read and write.

Let’s change our children’s lives for the better, today.

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

High school Dropout Rates Up; Are Math and Science the Cause?

More rigorous math and science requirements for high school graduation are in place, and simultaneously dropout rates in the country are up.

Research back to 1990 showed that the US dropout rate rose to a high of 11.4 percent when students were required to take six math and science courses, compared with 8.6 percent for students who needed less math and science courses in order to graduate.

The dropout rate is up to 5 percentage points higher when gender, race and ethnicity are considered.

William F. Tate, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences says that part of the problem with adding math and science courses to requirements was that a significant number of students weren’t prepared to meet the revised requirements.

Andrew Plunk, a postdoctoral research fellow in the psychiatry department at Washington University School of Medicine, says the study highlights that the one-size-fits all approach to education requirements is not ideal due to various demographic groups, states and school districts that are all different.

When educational policies cause an unintentional consequence like an increase in students dropping out, the effects reverberate far beyond the classroom walls.

“Communities with higher dropout rates tend to have increased crime,” says Plunk. “Murders are more common. A previous study estimated that a 1 percent reduction in the country’s high school dropout rate could result in 400 fewer murders per year.”

While I do feel that the high drop out rate could be blamed on math and science courses, I don’t feel that the US should ease up on those requirements. I think the key is to better prepare the students. We need to make sure the students are ready for the requirements and aim to help all students graduate high school.

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership

Should schools provide free breakfast in classrooms?

Sean Corcoran, New York University; Amy Ellen Schwartz, New York University, and Michele Leardo, New York University

Child hunger is a serious problem: 48 million Americans, including more than 15 million children, live in households that lack the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis. In large cities, about 25 percent of households with children do not have sufficient food.

The federally funded National School Breakfast Program has long sought to improve these numbers, by providing a free or low-cost breakfast for students in participating schools. In addition to reducing food insecurity, the program has been found to improve students’ health and nutritional intake as well as their academic achievement.

Even though school breakfast is affordable (or free), meets federal nutrition guidelines and has the potential to benefit children in multiple ways, participation in the School Breakfast Program is surprisingly low. Nationally, only about half of eligible students participating in the School Lunch Program take breakfast.

In fact, in New York City, less than a third of all students take a breakfast each day. This is particularly surprising because breakfast has been offered free to all students since September 2003.

So why are the numbers taking advantage of free breakfast so low? What difference might it make if they were higher?

Why don’t kids eat free breakfast?

There are several reasons that participation in the School Breakfast Program is low.

Why don’t children eat breakfast? sheri chen, CC BY-NC

First, breakfast is offered in the cafeteria before school hours, and many students are unable to arrive to school early, because of transportation or family commitments. Second, children may not be aware that breakfast is served in the cafeteria before school. Finally, children are often unwilling because of the stigma associated with a trip to the cafeteria for a free breakfast.

Introduced more than a decade ago, Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) has been adopted in many school districts as part of the school day. Breakfast is offered free to all students in their classroom at the start of the day, rather than providing it in the cafeteria before the bell. Cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas, Detroit, Cincinnati and Newark show high rates of participation.

Here is how it works

Breakfast in the Classroom is given during the first 10-20 minutes of the school day. It typically includes cold, packaged items (such as cereal, bagels, yogurt and fresh fruit). In some schools, breakfast is offered on mobile carts as students walk in the door (“Grab-n-Go”), or as a “Second Chance” breakfast, between the first and second periods of middle or high school.

New York City began rolling out Breakfast in the Classroom in 2007. According to the Department of Education, the program is now offered in nearly 500 of the city’s 1,700 schools. The city serves over 30,000 classroom breakfasts each day. Beginning this year, it is expanding the program to all elementary schools. And there are plans to extend the program to all schools in the district.

Advocates for the program argue that in addition to reducing hunger and food insecurity, moving breakfast from the cafeteria into the classroom will, in turn, improve school attendance and academic performance. Some also argue it will improve student engagement by building a sense of community around eating breakfast together, and provide an opportunity to integrate nutrition and healthy eating habits into the curriculum.

However, critics have raised concerns that Breakfast in the Classroom could contribute to weight gain, as some children consume more calories by eating two breakfasts – one at home and one at school. Or that the program could take away from instructional time at the start of the school day.

What does evidence show?

Our research looked at the early effects of New York City’s Breakfast in the Classroom program. We examined the program’s effects on school breakfast participation, student weight outcomes including body mass index (BMI) and obesity, as well as academic outcomes. We tracked data on student weight and academic achievement at different points of time, to compare students in schools that did and did not adopt the program.

Our sample included students in over 1,100 NYC public elementary and middle schools between the 2006-07 and 2011-12 school years (of which about 300 offered Breakfast in the Classroom at the time of our study).

Does breakfast in classroom lead to obesity? U.S. Department of Agriculture, CC BY

To begin with, we found that serving breakfast in classroom substantially increased school breakfast participation. For example, in schools offering breakfast in classroom in 25 percent or more of classrooms but not schoolwide, the participation rate nearly doubled. The increase was even higher – about two-and-a-half times – for schools offering the program schoolwide.

Importantly, we found no evidence that Breakfast in the Classroom led to student weight gain. We found no impact on BMI or the incidence of obesity. We also found no evidence that breakfast in the classroom reduced academic performance, as measured by achievement on reading and math standardized tests for students in grades three through eight.

Serve breakfast in classrooms

Our study suggests that the program certainly did no harm by taking away from instructional time or increasing student weight.

Other rigorous research on Breakfast in the Classroom has found the program can improve school attendance and increase academic achievement.

Taken together, our results show serving breakfast in the classroom increased participation in school breakfast even when free breakfast was being served in the school cafeteria.

Our work also shows critics’ fears that the Breakfast in the Classroom program will cause weight gain and reduce academic performance due to a loss of instructional time are largely unwarranted. There is no reason, therefore, not to expand Breakfast in the Classroom.

The Conversation

Sean Corcoran, Associate Professor of Educational Economics, New York University; Amy Ellen Schwartz, Professor of Public Policy, Education, and Economics and Director of the NYU Institute for Education and Social Policy, New York University, and Michele Leardo, Assistant Director of Education and Social Policy, New York University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education

Why the new SAT is a reminder to improve the teaching of writing

Jeff Grabill, Michigan State University

The SAT, the test that many schools require to check for college readiness, has recently gone through a makeover. Perhaps the most significant change is to the writing portion of the SAT, which presents students with new and more complex reading and and writing challenges.

College Board, the nonprofit that administers the test, had earlier announced that the essay in the writing section would be optional. However, many schools in the U.S. require their students to take the writing exam.

Connecticut, New Hampshire and Michigan are examples of such states, where the SAT, including its writing exam, is required, not optional. What’s more, scores from these tests are critical beyond their acceptance and placement in some colleges.

The SAT serves as the measure of the educational progress for all students in each state that adopts the SAT for that purpose. In such cases, the SAT is more than a bridge between high school and college. SAT has become a “high-stakes” K-12 assessment. In fact, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

But are schools preparing students adequately to take the new SAT?

I have been working for a number of years with K-12 writing teachers in Michigan on designing more effective approaches to learning in writing as part of my research. I believe the new writing test is complex and requires skills that U.S. schools are not teaching students.

The new SAT

First, let’s take a look at what’s different about the new writing assessment.

In a break from most standardized writing assessments, the new essay task is not designed to elicit students’ subjective opinions. Rather, its aim is to assess whether students are able to comprehend an appropriately challenging source text and craft an effective written analysis of that text.

Students need to discuss real-world topics in the revised SAT.Vancouver Film School, CC BY

For years, the formula for success on high-stakes writing assessments has been to craft a five-paragraph structure: thesis paragraph, three supporting paragraphs and a concluding paragraph. Within that structure, students are more or less free to say anything, and the more creative and engaging that “anything” is, the better.

Les Perelman, the former director of MIT’s Writing Across the Curriculum program, who helped create MIT’s writing placement test, summed it up, when he said:

It doesn’t matter if [what you write] is true or not…In fact, trying to be true will hold you back.

As Perelman noted, “in relaying personal experiences, students who took time attempting to recall an appropriately relatable circumstance from their lives were at a disadvantage.”

The revised SAT, therefore, is a major shift from “subjective opinion” to an analysis based on a real-world nonfiction persuasive passage.

The table below provides a quick overview of what the revised SAT asks of students. The five paragraph structure is still there, but the intellectual work required of students is vastly different.

The revised SAT. Jeff Grabill, CC BY

Students read a nonfiction argument that may be in the form of speeches, opinion editorials or articles that tend not to have simple for or against arguments but convey more nuanced views. Students are expected to marshal evidence about how the author builds a persuasive argument.

What makes the test challenging?

The first significant challenge is that the new prompt asks students to read rhetorically. Rhetorical reading is a form of analysis that is different from more literary forms of analysis that are likely taught in schools.

For example, the new SAT prompt asks students to notice how an author achieves a purpose, shapes a text for an audience and organizes information to achieve a goal. Students need to be able to analyze an argument pulled from topics across the disciplines.

For students to be able to do this, teachers need to help students become better rhetorical readers and better writers. This new way of reading and teaching reading must be layered into already overloaded existing curricula.

The second significant challenge, of course, is the writing itself.

In the past, success on “high-stakes” writing tests like the SAT could be achieved by following a highly structured formula.

That will no longer work. Instead, students will be asked to make arguments based on their own analytical reasoning. They will be required to marshal real evidence – not made-up events – drawn from the passage to be analyzed.

And students will be required to do this quickly, within a time frame in which they will already be engaged in more complex reading practices.

Writing instruction in schools

The reading and writing required by the new SAT will be new for students and many teachers. Rhetorical reading requires “reading like a writer” and answering questions such as “Why did the author do it this way?” Students will then have to write up that analysis in a way that makes evidence-based arguments.

What’s missing in the English writing curriculum? Dennis S. Hurd, CC BY-NC-ND

Any examination of English Language Arts curriculum in U.S. middle and high schools will reveal a nearly complete focus on literary forms and genres with relatively little writing. The basic values and focus that give us our “English” curriculum date back to a 19th-century shift from classical modes of education toward the study of literary texts. It was a shift from Latin and Greek models of discourse, and, most importantly, instruction in speaking and writing, to a shift to literature in English and a focus on reading and analysis.

The curriculum that resulted from these broad changes over time is “English,” and direct instruction in writing has never recovered. The National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges, a project to help improve the teaching of writing, argues that writing is the “neglected R” in education. That same report notes that little time is spent on writing instruction – at best less than three hours a week. In a recent survey, 82 percent of teens report that their typical school writing assignment is a paragraph to one page in length.

This evidence is consistent with education researchers Arthur Applebee’s and Judith A. Langer’s findings in their comprehensive study of writing instruction across the United States. As they say:

[T]he actual writing that goes on in typical classrooms across the United States remains dominated by tasks in which the teacher does all the composing, and students are left only to fill in missing information, whether copying directly from a teacher’s presentation, completing worksheets and chapter summaries, replicating highly formulaic essay structures keyed to high-stakes tests, or writing to “show they know” the particular information the teacher is seeking.

Let’s not teach to the test

I work with teachers and schools quite anxious about how to respond.
Anxious parents – mostly parents of students who struggle with language or have learning disabilities – have asked me questions about the revised SAT.

Teacher preparation programs have historically provided little to no preparation in teaching writing to new teachers, though this is slowly changing. Surely, good teachers and attentive schools will develop well-designed approaches to the new SAT. But I believe responding to the exam is the wrong approach and misses the point.

What is required is a comprehensive change in how we value writing and writing instruction. If that were to happen, then more complex writing exams would be taken in stride because our approaches to learning in writing would exceed the demands of any high-stakes test.

The Conversation

Jeff Grabill, Associate Provost for Teaching, Learning and Technology, Michigan State University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Teachers

Straight A students may not be the best innovators

Matthew Mayhew, New York University and Benjamin S. Selznick, New York University

Demand for innovation is at an all-time high. Innovation is now recognized as being key to economic growth strategies in the United States, Canada and countries in the European Union.

As a result, there is an increased need to understand what drives innovation. Certainly traditional research and development, funded by both the private and public sectors, continues to remain a primary source of new ideas and products. But innovation demands innovators.

So where do innovators come from? And how do they acquire their skills?

One place – perhaps among the best – is college. Over the past seven years, my research has explored the influence of college on preparing students with the capacity, desire and intention to innovate.

In this time we’ve learned that many academic and social experiences matter quite a bit; grades, however, do not matter as much.

What influences student innovation?

Our ongoing research, an example of which can be found here, has surveyed over 10,000 full-time undergraduate and graduate students in four countries – the United States, Canada, Germany and Qatar.

Our sample includes a wide diversity of students: those in fields of study often associated with innovation and entrepreneurship (e.g., business, engineering) as well as more traditional majors (e.g., arts, humanities, education); those from differing races/ethnicities and gender identifications; those from different socioeconomic and political backgrounds; and those from families that already include, or do not include, entrepreneurs.

To learn more, we asked students about their innovation intentions and capacities, their higher education experiences, and their background characteristics. We also administered a “personality inventory” to address the question of whether innovators are born or made.

Classroom practices can make a difference. Penn State, CC BY-NC-ND

We conducted a series of statistical analyses that allowed us to isolate the influence of any one individual attribute (e.g., classroom experiences, GPA, personality, gender, etc.) on our innovation outcomes.

Here is what our analyses have revealed so far:

  • Classroom practices make a difference: students who indicated that their college assessments encouraged problem-solving and argument development were more likely to want to innovate. Such an assessment frequently involves evaluating students in their abilities to create and answer their own questions; to develop case studies based on readings as opposed to responding to hypothetical cases; and/or to make and defend arguments. Creating a classroom conducive to innovation was particularly important for undergraduate students when compared to graduate students.
  • Faculty matters – a lot: students who formed a close relationship with a faculty member or had meaningful interactions (i.e., experiences that had a positive influence on one’s personal growth, attitudes and values) with faculty outside of class demonstrated a higher likelihood to be innovative. When a faculty member is able to serve as a mentor and sounding board for student ideas, exciting innovations may follow.

Interestingly, we saw the influence of faculty on innovation outcomes in our analyses even after accounting for a student’s field of study, suggesting that promoting innovation can happen across disciplines and curricula. Additionally, when we ran our statistical models using a sample of students from outside the United States, we found that faculty relationships were still very important. So, getting to know a faculty member might be a key factor for promoting innovation among college students, regardless of where the education takes place or how it is delivered.

  • Peer networking is effective: outside the classroom, students who connected course learning with social issues and career plans were also more innovative. For example, students who initiated informal discussions about how to combine the ideas they were learning in their classes to solve common problems and address global concerns were the ones who most likely recognized opportunities for creating new businesses or nonprofit social ventures.

Being innovative was consistently associated with the college providing students with space and opportunities for networking, even after considering personality type, such as being extroverted.

Networking remained salient when we analyzed a sample of graduate students – in this instance, those pursuing M.B.A. degrees in the United States. We take these findings as a positive indication that students are spending their “out-of-class” time learning to recognize opportunities and discussing new ideas with peers.

Who are the innovators?

On the basis of our findings, we believe that colleges might be uniquely positioned to cultivate a new generation of diverse innovators.

Counter to the Thiel Fellowship, an initiative that pays individuals to step out of college in order to become entrepreneurs, our work supports efforts by colleges and universities to combine classroom learning with entrepreneurial opportunities and to integrate education with innovation.

One of our most interesting findings was that as GPAs went down, innovation tended to go up. Even after considering a student’s major, personality traits and features of the learning environment, students with lower GPAs reported innovation intentions that were, on average, greater than their higher-GPA counterparts.

In short: GPA was associated with innovation, but maybe not in the direction you’d think.

Not GPAs, but being motivated, makes a difference. THINK Global School, CC BY-NC-ND

Why might this be the case?

From our findings, we speculate that this relationship may have to do with what innovators prioritize in their college environment: taking on new challenges, developing strategies in response to new opportunities and brainstorming new ideas with classmates.

Time spent in these areas might really benefit innovation, but not necessarily GPA.

Additionally, findings elsewhere strongly suggest that innovators tend to be intrinsically motivated – that is, they are interested in engaging pursuits that are personally meaningful, but might not be immediately rewarded by others.

We see this work as confirmation of our findings – grades, by their very nature, tend to reflect the abilities of individuals motivated by receiving external validation for the quality of their efforts.

Perhaps, for these reasons, the head of people operations at Google has noted:

GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring.

Somewhat troubling, though in line with concerns that plague the entrepreneurship community, women were less likely to demonstrate innovation intentions than men, all else being equal.

This is a problem, especially given jarring statistics that venture capitalists are funding males – specifically white males – more than any other group.

Such findings also speak to the need for higher education to intervene and actively introduce the broadest range of individuals to educational experiences and environments that spur the generation and implementation of new ideas. Fresh and creative ideas, after all, are not restricted to any one gender, race or family background.

As we say in our forthcoming paper’s finding on gender:

Imagine the explosion of new processes and products that would emerge in a world where half the population was socialized to believe that it could and should innovate.

Imagine indeed.

The Conversation

Matthew Mayhew, Associate Professor of Higher Education, New York University and Benjamin S. Selznick, Ph.D. candidate, New York University

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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education

Why it’s so hard for students to have their debts forgiven

Neal H. Hutchens, University of Mississippi and Richard Fossey, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Outstanding student loan debt in the United States reached a record US$1.35 trillion in March, up six percent from a year earlier.

About 10 million people who borrowed from the government’s main student loan program – 43 percent – are currently behind or no longer making payments, with more than a third of them in default. Some students are especially at risk, such as those who attended for-profit institutions.

Meanwhile, the loan default rates widely reported by the U.S. Department of Education fail to account for borrowers who default more than three years after repayment begins. These rates also fail to account for the millions of borrowers who are struggling or unable to repay their loans but aren’t included in the numbers because they’ve claimed an economic hardship deferment.

These unsettling numbers raise the question of what happens to borrowers unable to repay their student loans.

The ‘undue hardship’ issue

While individuals with debt they cannot repay often turn to bankruptcy, this discharge option is frequently unavailable in the case of student loans. Such debtors must first demonstrate “undue hardship,” an exacting standard few borrowers are able to satisfy and one not applied to most types of unsecured debt in bankruptcy.

Credit card debt, for example, can be easily discharged as long as a person qualifies to file for bankruptcy protection. The standard also leaves student-loan debtors without the types of options open to businesses in bankruptcy to work with creditors to reduce debt.

Some student-loan borrowers may soon have some relief, however. The Department of Education proposed a new rule this week, for example, that would make it easier for students who are defrauded by their colleges to have their debt forgiven.

That’s a step in the right direction. But more needs to be done.

As higher education legal scholars who have been examining these issues for many years, we have a special interest in the ways in which laws and legal standards support or harm students. The general inability for Americans to discharge student loans under current bankruptcy law represents an issue affecting millions of borrowers and their families.

This and the growing mountain of debt have prompted lawmakers and other observers to warn of another bubble in the making, with potentially disastrous consequences.

How undue hardship was established

The federal role in student loans can be traced back to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which made federal loans available to all students.

In 1965, the federal government shifted from making loans to serving as a guarantor of student loans. An overhaul of federal loan policy in 2010 made direct loans from the federal government the only federally guaranteed student loan program, although loans from other lenders, often referred to as private student loans, are still available.

Until the 1970s, student loan debt received the same treatment in bankruptcy proceedings as other types of unsecured debt. Concerns arose, however, that unscrupulous borrowers had sought to discharge their student loans after obtaining lucrative positions in such fields as medicine and law.

Evidence suggests no widespread pattern of abuse existed, but Congress directed in 1976 that federally guaranteed loans could not be discharged in bankruptcy during the initial five years of the repayment period, absent a showing of undue hardship. Congress extended the undue hardship requirement to seven years in 1990, and in 1998 made the standard applicable throughout the loan’s life. And in 2005, Congress also extended the undue hardship standard to private student loans not guaranteed by the federal government.

Congress did not define the term undue hardship, leaving it to the bankruptcy courts to interpret its meaning. Most courts have adopted the so-called Brunner test (named after a famous court ruling), which requires student loan debtors to make three showings. First, they must prove that they cannot pay off their student loans and maintain a minimal standard of living. Second, they must show additional circumstances that make it highly unlikely they will ever be able to repay their student loans. And finally, debtors must demonstrate that they have made a good faith effort to pay their student loans.

This stringent standard can lead to disheartening results. For example, in one case, a bankruptcy judge denied discharge under the undue hardship to a student loan debtor in her 50’s who had a record of homelessness and lived on $1,000 a month.

In practice, most courts have applied the Brunner test, or similar standards, in ways that make discharge in bankruptcy especially difficult for many student loan borrowers. In fact, a 2012 paper calculated that 99.9 percent of bankrupt student loan debtors do not even try to discharge them. Among the reasons for this low percentage is likely the difficult standard to qualify for a discharge.

Some courts push back

Recently, however, a few bankruptcy courts have interpreted the Brunner test more leniently.

In perhaps the most well-known example, a panel of judges reviewing a bankruptcy decision discharged the student loan debts of Janet Roth, a 68-year old woman with chronic health problems who was subsisting on Social Security income of $780 a month.

Roth’s creditor argued that she could not pass the good-faith prong of the Brunner test because she had never made a single voluntary payment on her student loans. But the panel rejected this argument on the grounds that Roth had lived frugally and had never earned enough money to pay back her student loans in spite of her best efforts to maximize her income.

The panel also rejected the creditor’s arguments that Roth should be placed in a long-term income-based repayment plan that would extend for 25 years. Roth’s income was so low, the creditor pointed out, that she would not be required to pay anything on the student loan anyway. Nevertheless, a remote possibility existed that Roth’s income would rise in the future, permitting her to make at least token payments.

In the court’s view, putting Roth on a long-term repayment plan seemed pointless. Applying a common law principle of basic fairness, the court stated “that the law does not require a party to engage in futile acts.”

One of the judges in the Roth case filed a separate opinion agreeing with the judgment but suggesting that courts should abandon the Brunner test altogether. He argued courts should replace it with a standard in which bankruptcy judges “consider all the relevant facts and circumstances” to determine whether a debtor can afford to repay student loan debts “while maintaining an appropriate standard of living.”

Such a standard would be more closely aligned with how most other types of debt are eligible for discharge in bankruptcy.

So far, federal appeals courts have not taken up the suggestion to scrap the Brunner test, although several lower courts have begun applying it more humanely. The Brunner test, however, is a subjective standard, and debtors experience widely different outcomes when they attempt to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy.

President Obama signs a presidential memorandum on reducing the burden of student loan debt in 2014. Larry Downing/Reuters

Moving toward a more humane standard

Recent actions by the Obama administration on the issue – including this week’s announcement on “predatory” colleges – has accompanied the judicial activity.

For example, in 2015 the Department of Education offered guidance on when loan holders should “consent to or not oppose” undue hardship petitions involving government-backed student debt in bankruptcy proceedings.

The department also recently announced an initiative to address problems in making loan forgiveness available to individuals who are permanently disabled.

In the case of private student loans, the Obama administration has urged Congress to make such loans no longer subject to the undue hardship standard.

Courts and federal agencies can help to humanize interpretation and application of the undue hardship standard and make discharge a more realistic option for some borrowers. Ultimately, however, authority rests with Congress to make any substantive changes to the treatment of student loan debt in bankruptcy.

While likely on hold until after the November elections, the pending reauthorization of the Higher Education Act – the centerpiece of federal higher education policy – presents a key opportunity for Congress to review the undue hardship standard. At a minimum, Congress should give serious consideration to abolishing the standard for private student loans.

Other options include reinstating limits on how long the undue hardship standard should apply to federal student loans or directing courts to adopt a more flexible test for discharge in bankruptcy, such as that advocated in the separate opinion in the Roth case.

With so many student loan borrowers struggling, circumstances suggest the need for Congress to take decisive action on this critical issue on public policy and humanitarian grounds.

The Conversation

Neal H. Hutchens, Professor of Higher Education, University of Mississippi and Richard Fossey, Paul Burdin Endowed Professor of Education, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity

What it means to be black in the American educational system

Kevin O’Neal Cokley, University of Texas at Austin

Many people still think that racism is no longer a problem in America. After the election of President Obama, academic John McWhorter argued that
racism in America is, for all intents and purposes, dead. The prominent conservative scholar and African-American economist Thomas Sowell has argued that “racism isn’t dead, but it is on life support.” Harvard professors William Julius Wilson and Roland Fryer too have argued about the declining significance of race and discrimination.

However, as we wind down the final months of Obama’s presidency, the declining significance of race and discrimination narratives seem to be at odds with the lived realities for African-Americans. President Obama himself has faced racist treatment, such as the birther controversy and a member of Congress saying “you lie.” And then, one incident after another has highlighted the painful reality that black men are disproportionately likely to die at the hands of the police in comparison to any other demographic group.

Sadly, racism and discrimination are facts of life for many black Americans. As an African-American scholar who studies the experiences of black college students, I am especially interested in this issue. My research has found that black college students report higher levels of stress related to racial discrimination than other racial or ethnic groups. The unfortunate reality is that black Americans experience subtle and overt discrimination from preschool all the way to college.

Here’s what studies show

The results of a recent survey by the Pew Research Center underscore this point. The survey found that black Americans with some college experience are more likely to say that they have experienced discrimination compared to blacks who did not report having any college experience.

Additional survey results revealed several differences between blacks with college experience versus blacks without college experience. For example, in the past 12 months, 55 percent of people with some college experience reported people had acted suspicious of them, compared to 38 percent of those with no college experience.

Similarly, 52 percent of people with some college experience reported people had acted as if they thought the individual wasn’t smart, compared to 37 percent of people with no college experience.

So, what are the race-related struggles experienced by African-American students throughout their schooling?

Story of Tyrone

Let’s consider the case of Tyrone. Tyrone is a four-year-old black male raised in a two-parent household. Like most four-year-olds, Tyrone is intellectually curious, and has a vivid imagination. He loves books, loves to color and paint, and also loves physical activities such as running, jumping and playing games with his friends.

What’s the early school experience of black kids?
Teacher image via www.shutterstock.com

Behaviorally, Tyrone is also similar to many four-year-olds in that he often likes to talk more than listen, and he can be temperamental. He can engage in hitting, kicking and spitting behaviors when he is angry.

One day Tyrone was playing a game with a friend and he lost. Tyrone got angry and threw the ball at his friend. A teacher witnessed that and immediately confronted Tyrone about his behavior.

Angry about being confronted, Tyrone started to walk away. The teacher grabbed his arm. Tyrone reacted by pushing the teacher away. The teacher sent Tyrone to the principal’s office. After consultation with the principal, Tyrone was deemed to be a danger to students and staff.

He was consequently suspended.

Early years of schooling

On the surface this looks like a simple case of meting out the appropriate punishment for perceived serious student misbehavior. There does not appear to be anything explicitly racial about the interaction.

However, consider the fact that there have been many instances of white students engaging in the same behavior, none of which ever result in suspension. This is the racialized reality black students experience every day in American schools.

Black boys are almost three times as likely to be suspended than white boys, and black girls are four times as likely to be suspended than white girls. Black students’ (mis)behavior is more often criminalized compared to other students.

Black boys are three times more likely to be suspended than white kids.
Children image via www.shutterstock.com

While black kids make up 18 percent of preschool enrollment, they represent 48 percent of students receiving one or more suspensions. Getting suspended matters because it is correlated with being referred to law enforcement and arrested. Black students account for 27 percent of students who are referred to law enforcement and 31 percent of students who are arrested, while they only make up 18 percent of enrolled students. As a general rule, black students do not often receive the benefit of the doubt when they engage in bad or questionable behavior.

School experience

When Tyrone entered fourth grade, teachers noticed a change in his demeanor. His enthusiasm for school and learning had diminished considerably. He no longer eagerly raised his hand to answer questions. He no longer appeared to love books and listening to stories. He appeared to have little joy participating in class activities. His teachers characterized Tyrone as “unmotivated,” “apathetic,” having “learning difficulties” and “a bad attitude.”

Educators and researchers have referred to this phenomenon as “the fourth grade failure syndrome” for black boys. Early childhood educator Harry Morgan suggested that this phenomenon occurred during this time because the classroom environment changes between the third and fourth grade from a socially interactive style to a more individualistic, competitive style.

By fourth grade, a child’s enthusiasm can diminish.
Boy image via www.shutterstock,com

This change in style is counter to the more communal and cooperative cultural learning environment which, according to research, black students tend to prefer. The fourth grade failure syndrome refers to a bias in schools (e.g., cultural insensitivity, disproportionately harsh discipline, lowered teacher expectations, tracking black students into special education or remedial classes) that has the cumulative effect of diminishing black students’ (especially boys’) enthusiasm and motivation for school.

By high school Tyrone no longer identified with school. His sense of pride and self-esteem increasingly came from his popularity and his athletic abilities rather than his intelligence. Psychologist Claude Steele has referred to this as “academic disidentification,” a phenomenon where a student’s self-esteem is disconnected from how they perform in school.

Tyrone is not alone. According to one study based on national data from almost 25,000 students black males were the only students that showed significant disidentification throughout the 12th grade. My research too has confirmed this, although I did not find evidence among black females, white males or white females.

What’s the college experience?

While the narrative of more black men being in prison than in college has been thoroughly debunked by psychologist Ivory Toldson, it is still the case that black men are underrepresented in college. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 887,000 black women enrolled in college compared to 618,000 black men.

Owing in large part to the emphasis of education by his family, Tyrone is fortunate enough to be accepted to college. Excited and nervous about being away from home, Tyrone looks forward to starting his college experience.

Like many college students, Tyrone likes to go to parties thrown by Greek organizations, and he frequently attends parties thrown by black fraternities. While attending one party, Tyrone and his friends became upset when campus police broke up the party because of complaints of loud music and threaten to arrest the attendees.

Tyrone has partied with white friends and knows firsthand that their parties often involve drugs and reckless behavior, yet, as my students tell me, police almost never break up their parties. As it turns out, white fraternities are frequently the perpetrators of racist incidents, which cause Tyrone and other black students to engage in campus protests.

For example, in 2014, Tau Kappa Epsilon, a fraternity at Arizona State University, was suspended for having a racist Martin Luther King Jr. party at which they drank from watermelon cups, held their crotches, wore bandannas and formed gang signs with their hands.

Resilience

To add insult to injury, Tyrone and other black students read opinion pieces in the student paper complaining how affirmative action discriminates against white students and allows less qualified “minority” students on campus.

Tyrone finds refuge in black studies classes, where he learns about theories such as “critical race theory” and terms such as “institutional racism,” “white privilege” and “hegemony.” Exposure to these classes provides Tyrone with the vocabulary and critical analytical tools to better understand the challenges facing black people.

Interest among black students in obtaining a degree remains high.
chandlerchristian, CC BY-NC-ND

So it is not surprising that college-educated blacks like Tyrone are more likely to report experiencing discrimination in college than blacks with no college experience in college environments where racist incidents and racial microagressions are frequently reported. In spite of the desire among many for America to be colorblind, at every level of education black students experience disproportionate amounts of discrimination.

In many ways my research on African-American students reflects my own experiences as a black male negotiating the challenges of being in predominantly white academic environments. The silver lining to this story is that black students are incredibly resilient and there are positive things to report.

In 2016, for example, enrollment at historically black colleges and universities has increased. It is difficult to know if this increase is related to the negative experiences of discrimination black students often experience on predominantly white campuses, but it does suggest that interest among black students in obtaining a college education remains high. According to 2016 data reported in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, black women now have the highest graduation rate of any demographic group at the University of Georgia.

For every positive outcome for students like Tyrone, there are unfortunately also too many negative outcomes for other similar students. The educational experiences of Tyrone and all black students matters should be of concern to everyone.

While education is not a cure all for experiences with racism and discrimination, education can equip us with the tools to better understand, analyze and ultimately find solutions to the tragic incidents we are seeing too frequently involving police killings of black people.

The Conversation

Kevin O’Neal Cokley, Professor of Educational Psychology and African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas at Austin

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Matthew Lynch published in Bullying, Diversity, Education Leadership, Equity

Where does anti-LGBT bias come from – and how does it translate into violence?

Dominic Parrott, Georgia State University

In the United States, public support of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community has increased in recent years. These changes are associated with increased visibility of openly gay characters on television, the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage.

Nevertheless, violence against sexual minorities remains a major public health problem in the U.S. and internationally. A recent study concluded that approximately 50 percent of LGBT adults experience bias-motivated aggression at some point.

For every highly publicized act of violence toward sexual minorities, such as the recent mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, there are many more physical and verbal assaults, attempted assaults, acts of property damage or intimidations which are never reported to authorities, let alone publicized by the media.

What spurs on these acts of violence? Can we do anything to prevent them? Fortunately, an extensive body of social science research exists that identifies perpetrators’ motivations and suggests ways we can reduce the likelihood of these acts of aggression toward sexual minorities.

Anti-LGBT bias feels normal if everyone around you seems to support it. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Reinforcing the roots of antigay bias

Prejudice toward sexual minorities is rooted in what psychologists call sexual stigma. This is an attitude that reflects “the negative regard, inferior status and relative powerlessness that society collectively accords to any nonheterosexual behavior, identity, relationship or community.”

Sexual stigma exists and operates at both individual and society-wide levels.

At the societal level, sexual stigma is referred to as heterosexism. The conviction that heterosexuals and their behaviors and relationships are superior to those of sexual minorities is built into various social ideologies and institutions – including religion, language, laws and norms about gender roles. For example, religious views that homosexual behavior is immoral support heteronormative norms, which ultimately stigmatize sexual minorities.

On an individual level, heterosexuals can internalize sexual stigma as sexual prejudice. They buy into what they see around them in their culture that indicates sexual minorities are inferior. Consider the Defense of Marriage Act. This legislation, which defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman, denied homosexuals the rights held by heterosexuals. Heterosexuals can incorporate that stigmatizing view into their own belief system.

Sexual minorities themselves can internalize sexual stigma, too – a process called self-stigma. Aligning their own self-concept with society’s negative regard for homosexuality results in myriad negative health outcomes.

The heterosexism of our society and the sexual prejudice of individuals are interrelated, reinforcing each other. When cultural ideologies and institutions espouse heterosexism, they provide the basis for individuals’ sexual prejudice – and perpetration of violence based on it. Conversely, researchers theorize that pro-gay attitudes reduce heterosexism that exists within these same institutions.

Beyond prejudice: a masculinity problem

Many people believe that antigay violence is caused by prejudice. To a certain extent, they’re correct. But when we back up and think about this aggression within the framework of sexual stigma, we can see that the causes of antigay violence run deeper and are more complex than a simple “prejudice” explanation.

Perpetrators of anti-LGBT aggression may or may not hold prejudiced attitudes, but they carry out their violence within a heterosexist society that implicitly sanctions it. It’s these society-level heterosexist attitudes that provide the foundation for three well-established motivations and risk factors for aggression toward sexual minorities.

Heterosexual masculinity is a fundamental factor that starts to explain anti-LGBT violence. To be masculine, one must be heterosexual, so the thinking goes. The logic continues that any man who’s not heterosexual is therefore feminine. In essence, a man’s aggression toward sexual minorities serves to enforce traditional gender norms and demonstrate his own heterosexual masculinity to other men.

Researchers have identified two major aspects of this masculinity-based motivation.

The first is adherence to norms about status – the belief that men must gain the respect of others. The status norm reflects the view that men should sit atop the social hierarchy, be successful, and garner respect and admiration from others.

The second is a strong conviction in antifemininity – that is, believing men should not engage in stereotypically feminine activities. Men who endorse this norm would not engage in behaviors that are “traditionally” reserved for women – for instance, showing vulnerable emotions, wearing makeup or working in childcare.

A narrow definition of what constitutes ‘masculinity’ is at the root of anti-LGBT violence. Tea party image via www.shutterstock.com.

Other norms can also lead to violence under certain circumstances. For instance, recent data indicate that alcohol intoxication may trigger thoughts that men need to be tough and aggressive. Being drunk and having toughness in mind may influence men to act in line with this version of masculinity and attack gay men.

In the most common aggression scenario, an assailant is in a group when he becomes violent toward a member of a sexual minority. The attacker has the support of his group, which can act as a motivator. Indeed, the male peer group is the ideal context for proving one’s masculinity via aggression because other males are present to witness the macho display.

Studies also indicate that perpetrators of hate crimes, including violence toward sexual minorities, seek to alleviate boredom and have fun – termed thrill-seeking. It’s important to note that for thrill-seeking assailants, the selection of sexual minority targets is not random. Given that sexual stigma devalues homosexuality, it sanctions these perpetrators’ strategic choice of a socially devalued target.

Translating motivations into violence

How does a given perpetrator get to the point where he decides to attack a sexual minority? Research suggests it’s a long process.

Through personal experience and from social institutions, people learn that LGBT people are “threats” and heterosexuals are “normal.” For example, throughout adolescence, boys consistently have it drilled into them by peers that they need to be masculine and antifeminine. So when a young boy teases a gay person, verbally intimidates that person or hits him, he gets positive reinforcement from his peers.

As a result of these processes, we learn over time to almost automatically view sexual minorities with lower social regard and as a threatening group.

Recent research suggests two types of threats – realistic and symbolic – may lead to sexual prejudice and a heightened risk for anti-LGBT aggression. It doesn’t matter whether an actual threat exists – it’s one’s perception of threat that is critical.

A group experiences realistic threat when it perceives sexual minorities as threats to its existence, political and economic power or physical well-being. For example, heterosexuals may fear that pro-gay policies such as the legalization of same-sex marriage will make it harder to advance their own alternative political agendas. In this way, they should perceive a gay man as a direct threat to their own political power.

Symbolic threat reflects a heterosexual’s perception that sexual minorities’ beliefs, attitudes, morals, standards and values will lead to unwanted changes in his or her own worldview. For instance, a highly religious heterosexual may fear that a same-sex relationship or marriage poses a threat to his or her own values and beliefs.

Getting to know LGBT people can decrease heterosexuals’ prejudice. Francois Lenoir/Reuters

Can we prevent anti-LGBT violence?

Sexual stigma may be reduced by targeting the processes that lead to sexual prejudice. For example, studies indicate that heterosexuals who have a close relationship with an LGBT individual report lower levels of sexual prejudice. That’s probably because positive feelings regarding the friend are generalized to all sexual minorities.

These kinds of experiences may help lessen heterosexism within various social contexts. But given the widespread nature of bias-motivated aggression and the ubiquity of heterosexism, these individual-level approaches are likely insufficient on their own.

If we’re serious about tackling the public health issue of anti-LGBT violence, we need to try to reduce heterosexism at the societal level. Succeeding at that should lead to corresponding reductions in sexual prejudice and antigay violence.

There are a few prongs to a societal level approach. Changing public policies – things like hate crime legislation, repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” legalizing same-sex marriage – can work to reduce heterosexism. Likewise, positive portrayals of sexual minorities in the media and popular culture can contribute to changing views. Social norms interventions that work to correct misperceptions of LGBT people can help, too.

The Conversation

Dominic Parrott, Professor of Psychology, Georgia State University

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