educhat

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.

  • no reactions
0
Share
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.

  • no reactions
0
Share
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.

  • no reactions
0
Share
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.

  • no reactions
0
Share
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

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

  • no reactions
0
Share
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

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

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Education News, First Year Teachers, Parental Involvement, Teachers, Testing

Want to understand your child’s test scores? Here’s what to ignore

Stephen Sireci, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Now that the first month of school is over, parents can get ready for the next milestone of the school year – they will soon get reports of the state tests their children took last year.

My estimates show that approximately 26 million students in public schools took statewide tests in reading and math last year. Many of them also took statewide tests in science. These tests provide important information to parents about how well their children are doing in school.

However, my research also shows that when parents receive their child’s test score report, they may have a tough time separating the important information from the statistical gibberish.

What’s more, the results might not even give them accurate information about their child’s academic growth.

Is your child ‘proficient’?

The No Child Left Behind law, enacted in 2002, required all states to set “achievement level standards” in reading and math for grades three through eight, and for one grade in high school, typically 10th or 11th grade. States were also required to develop tests to measure students’ level of “proficiency” on each test.

The new federal law passed in December 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), will continue this practice.

As a result, the test reports parents receive classify children into achievement levels such as “basic” or “proficient.” Each state decides what these classifications are called, but at least one category must signify “proficient.”

These achievement level categories are described on the test score reports, and so this information is easily understood by parents. For example, I find it helpful each year to see if my sons reach proficiency in each subject area.

How is student growth being measured?
Student image via www.shutterstock.com

But children’s test scores in a given year, and their achievement level, are not the only information reported in some states. A new statistical index, called a “student growth percentile,” is finding its way into the reports sent home to parents in 11 states. Twenty-seven states use this index for evaluating teachers as well.

Although a measure of students’ “growth” or progress sounds like a good idea, student growth percentiles have yet to be supported by research. In fact several studies suggest they do not provide accurate descriptions of student progress and teacher effectiveness.

What does it mean?

What exactly are “student growth percentiles”?

They are indexes proposed in 2008 by Damian W. Betebenner, a statistician who suggested they be used as a descriptive measure of students’ “academic growth” from one school year to the next. The idea was to describe students’ progress in comparison to their peers.

Like the growth charts pediatricians use to describe children’s height and weight, student growth percentiles range from a low of one to a high of 99. However, their calculation involves a lot more error than physical measurement such as height and weight. Our research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst indicates substantial error in their calculation.

The scores do not actually measure children’s growth.
Children image via www.shutterstock.com

Student growth percentiles are derived from test scores, which are not perfectly accurate descriptions of students’ academic proficiency: Test scores are influenced by many factors, such as the questions asked on a particular day, students’ temperament, their level of engagement when taking the test or just the methods used to score their answers.

Each student’s growth percentile is calculated using at least two different test scores, typically a year or more apart. The most recent test scores of a student are then compared to the most recent test scores of students who had similar scores in previous years. This is to see which of those students had higher or lower scores this year.

The problem, however, is that each of the calculations carries some measurement error. Further calculations only compound that error. So much so that the results end up with twice as much error. No statistical sophistication can erase this error.

The question is, why are so many states using such an unreliable measure?

Using it for accountability

The use of student growth percentiles is due in part to a desire to see how much students learn in a particular year, and to link that progress to accountability systems such as teacher evaluation.

In 2010, the Race-to-the-Top grant competition invited states to come up with innovative ways of using test scores to evaluate teachers, which paved the way for this new measure of “growth” to be quickly applied across many states.

However, the use of student growth percentiles began before research was conducted on their accuracy. Only now is there a sufficient body of research to evaluate them, and all studies point to the same conclusion – they contain a lot of error.

In addition to our research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, research on the accuracy of student growth percentiles has been conducted by education nonprofits such as WestEd, Educational Testing Service and other research institutions. Researchers J.R. Lockwood and Katherine E. Castellano recently concluded that “A substantial research base already notes that student growth percentile estimates for individual students have large errors.”

However, many states seem to be unaware of these research findings. Massachusetts even goes so far as to classify children with growth percentiles less than 40 as “lower growth” and children with growth percentiles greater than 60 as “higher growth.”

Measuring teacher performance

As I mentioned earlier, 27 states are using student growth percentiles to classify teachers as “effective” or “ineffective.” Research on the use of growth percentiles for this purpose indicates they could underestimate the performance of the most effective teachers, and overestimate the performance of the least effective teachers – the exact opposite of what these states are trying to do with their teacher evaluation systems.

These measures are being used for teacher performance as well.
Teacher image via www.shutterstock.com

A recent report by WestEd evaluated the use of student growth percentiles for evaluating teachers and concluded they “did not meet a level of stability” that would be needed for such high-stakes decisions.

Let’s go back to traditional measures

I believe student growth percentiles have taken us a step backwards in the use of educational tests to improve student learning.

Traditional measures of children’s performance on educational tests, such as whether they are “proficient” in a given year and their actual test scores, give a good idea of how well they performed in math or reading in a particular year.

These traditional percentile ranks are still reported on many educational tests, just like they were when we as parents were in school. Traditional percentile ranks compared us to a national or state group in a given year, rather than comparing us to how other kids in the nation or state were “growing” across different tests they took in different years, as student growth percentiles attempt to do.

Given what we now know about student growth percentiles, my advice to parents is not only to ignore them on their children’s test score reports, but also to contact their state department of education and ask why they are reporting such an unreliable statistic.

Developing measures of how much students have learned over the course of a year is a good goal. Unfortunately, student growth percentiles do not do a good job of measuring that.

The Conversation

Stephen Sireci, Professor of Educational Policy, University of Massachusetts Amherst

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

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Policy & Reform

When do children show evidence of self-esteem? Earlier than you might think

Dario Cvencek, University of Washington; Andrew N. Meltzoff, University of Washington, and Anthony G. Greenwald, University of Washington

A YouTube clip called “Jessica’s Daily Affirmation” recently went viral. The clip shows a four-year-old Jessica standing in front of the bathroom mirror saying what makes her happy about herself.

Jessica’s Daily Affirmation.

Many youngsters, like Jessica, seem to exude positive feelings about their abilities – they happily report that they are good at running, jumping, drawing, math or music.

However, the belief in being good at certain concrete skills could be different from a more general sense of self-worth or what scientists call “positive self-esteem.” For example, at early ages, children can report “I’m good at running” or “I’m good with letters.” But preschoolers might not be able to answer questions about their overall sense of self-worth.

So, when do kids develop a sense of self-esteem and how can we measure it?

Our research has developed new ways to study what kids think about themselves. Parents, make a note: our results show that most kids develop a sense of self-esteem – feeling good or bad about oneself – as early as age five, before they even enter kindergarten.

Measuring self-esteem in young children

Measuring children’s self-esteem can be challenging because it seems to require a certain level of introspection and verbal abilities. We found a way of getting around this by measuring children’s deeper and more implicit sense of self-esteem, something that did not require answering verbal questions.

For example, in adults, self-esteem is often measured by asking people to rate their agreement with statements such as, “I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others,” or “I take a positive attitude toward myself.”

But preschoolers have difficulty answering such verbal questions. Cognitive and verbal skills required for such answers do not develop before age eight.

So, rather than relying on asking children verbal questions, we developed a new tool called the “Preschool Implicit Association Test” (the PSIAT) to measure children’s implicit self-esteem. The value of this measure was that it did not require children to verbally describe how they felt about themselves.

Here’s how we did it.

We gave two sets of small colored flags (see below), each set symbolizing “me” and “not me” to 234 children.

Child’s view of the apparatus used in the test.
Reprinted from Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 62, Cvencek, D., Greenwald, A. G., & Meltzoff, A. N., Implicit measures for preschool children confirm self-esteem’s role in maintaining a balanced identity, 50–57, Copyright (2016), with permission from Elsevier.

These children then were asked to respond to a series of “good” (fun, happy and nice) and “bad” (mad, mean and yucky) words from a loudspeaker by pressing buttons. This procedure measured how closely the children associated the “good” words with the “me” flags.

A five-year-old tested at the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.
Copyright (2011) University of Washington.

This procedure is a variation of the adult Implicit Association Test, a social psychology measure widely used to reveal hidden biases in adults about race, religion, self and other topics by asking participants to quickly categorize words from different categories.

We found that more than 90 percent of five-year-old preschoolers linked themselves with the “good” words, which indicated positive self-esteem. It also showed us that most kids develop a measurable sense of self-esteem by age five.

Our test provides researchers a reliable way of examining the earliest glimpses of how preschoolers develop a sense of their self-worth.

People with high self-esteem more resilient

So, why is self-esteem important for children?

A healthy self-esteem can provide an emotional buffer to setbacks and enable children to develop resilience toward failures. In adults, self-esteem has been shown to predict an individual’s reactions to success and failure. People who have high self-esteem persist more after experiencing a setback than do people who have low self-esteem.

In young children, such a relationship between resilience and self-esteem may be especially important to early learning and education.

For example, few first graders consistently score 100 percent on all tests, and few preschoolers are as skilled as their older siblings. We believe that such micro-setbacks can be buffered by positive self-esteem.

Because self-esteem tends to remain relatively stable across one’s lifespan, its early establishment could potentially provide a lifelong emotional buffer in the face of everyday failures and challenges.

The importance of self-esteem

How do children develop their sense of self-esteem?

Young kids care a lot about others “like me,” and this may even start in infancy. We also know from other research that infants and toddlers can judge the extent to which others are like them along several dimensions.

This lays the foundation for developing social relationships and a sense of belonging. These feelings, combined with warm and consistent care, help children develop feelings of attachment to their parents, which may further pave the way for the development of positive self-esteem. We found the first five years to be critical in laying the foundation for this social-emotional development.

Positive self-esteem can help in other ways as well.

For preschoolers, it is important to feel that they are part of a group. In this way they can navigate the social world more easily. Children, just like adults, tend to prefer those groups to which they belong.

Scientists call this an in-group preference. In-groups in adults can be based on race, nationality, religion, etc. In children, we found a strong in-group preference based on gender, and it was linked to self-esteem.

This shows that self-esteem is systematically related to other fundamental aspects of one’s personality very early in development. We believe that self-esteem is one of the mental tools children use to create a sense of identity and belonging with social groups. In other words, at an early age, children mirror adult patterns of psychological organization. This is something they bring to kindergarten with them and don’t learn in school.

Giving kids a good start in life may be one of the most important gifts that parents can provide to their child: children who feel loved by others will likely internalize this love to love themselves.

Jessica from the YouTube video is but one compelling reminder of just how inspiring a young child’s positive self-view can be. And it is the foundation for so much more.

The Conversation

Dario Cvencek, Research Scientist, University of Washington; Andrew N. Meltzoff, Professor and Co-Director, Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, University of Washington, and Anthony G. Greenwald, Professor of Psychology, University of Washington

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

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teachers

An education for the 21st century means teaching coding in schools

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

Leon Sterling, Swinburne University of Technology

Bill Shorten’s recent announcement that, if elected, a Labor Government would “ensure that computer coding is taught in every primary and secondary school in Australia” has brought attention to an increasing world trend.

Estonia introduced coding in primary schools in 2012 and the UK followed suit last year. US-led initiatives such as Code.org and the “Hour of Code”, supported by organisations such as Google and Microsoft, advocate that every school student should have the opportunity to learn computer coding.

There is merit in school students learning coding. We live in a digital world where computer programs underlie everything from business, marketing, aviation, science and medicine, to name several disciplines. During a recent presentation at a radio station, one of our hosts said that IT would have been better background for his career in radio than journalism.

There is also a strong case to be made that Australia’s future prosperity will depend on delivering advanced services and digital technology, and that programming will be essential to this end. Computer programs and software are known to be a strong driver of productivity improvements in many fields.

Being introduced to coding gives students an appreciation of what can be built with technology. We are surrounded by devices controlled by computers. Understanding how they work, and imagining new devices and services, are enhanced by understanding coding.

Of course, not everyone taught coding will become a coder or have a career in information technology. Art is taught in schools with no expectation that the students should become artists.

Drag and drop

A computer program is effectively a means of automating processes. Programs systematically and reliably follow processes and can be used to exhaustively try all the possibilities.

The languages used to program computers have evolved in the 70 years we have been building computers. Interfaces and programming environments have become more natural and intuitive. Language features reflect the applications they’re used for.

What is needed to easily express a business process, scientific equation, or data analysis technique is not necessarily the same as what is needed to rapidly develop a video game.

However, throughout the evolution of programming languages, the fundamental principles have remained the same. Computer programming languages express three essential things:

  1. The order in which a sequence of instructions is performed
  2. A means of repeating a sequence of instructions a prescribed number of times
  3. And tests as to whether or not a sequence of instructions is performed.

While personal preference influences which computer language a programmer uses, there is a greater understanding of which languages work well for teaching introductory programming. For example, Scratch is popular for primary school students and is quick to learn. Alice has been used to help students quickly build computer animations. Python is increasingly used for scientific applications. Visual programming languages – where students can drag-and-drop icons rather than type code – allow for rapid development of simple programs.

At Swinburne University of Technology we run workshops to introduce school students to program NAO robots. Students use the Choregraphe environment to link robot actions from a library.

Students previously unused to programming can develop interesting robot projects in a couple of days. More sophisticated development of the robot requires students to use a more detail-oriented language, such as Python or C++. The simpler options lead to positive student experience.

The Nao robot can be programmed easily to perform a range of tasks.
Brett Davis/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Computational thinking

Writing and then executing a program gives immediate feedback as to whether you have correctly expressed instructions for the computer. Ultimately, the understanding of how to express concepts so that a computer can perform tasks accurately and efficiently is far more important than the details of the programming language.

Underlying all computer programs are algorithms, which specify in a more abstract way how a task is to be done. Algorithmic thinking – also called computational thinking – underlies computer science, and there has been a growing movement on algorithmic thinking in schools.

The new national curriculum reflects algorithmic processes, and materials are being developed to help teachers with the new curriculum. Victoria has recently developed a new subject for the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) entitled Algorithmics.
There are even materials for teaching algorithmic thinking without computers. The Computer Science Unplugged movement, led by Tim Bell and colleagues at the University of Canterbury, has developed resources that teach students concepts through movement and fun activities.

Teaching for the this century

Teaching computer coding in schools is very different from initiatives that advocate for computers in the classroom. I was not, and am still not, supportive of compulsory laptop programs in schools.

The idea is not necessarily to expose students to the technology itself, which is almost inevitable these days with the wide penetration of mobile phones. Rather, students are exposed to the skills needed to develop computer applications.

While IT skill shortages is a contentious topic, there is no doubt that not enough of the best and brightest are studying computer science at university. A significant factor is insufficient exposure to the topic at schools. Teaching coding at schools is aimed at addressing the lack.

It might be said that whatever programming language is taught will be obsolete by the time the students enter the workforce. My experience is that, if taught properly, students can rapidly transfer the principles of one language to another.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the challenge was to understand the physical world, and harness force and energy. This understanding percolated into the school curriculum. In the 21st century, the challenge is to understand and harness data, information and knowledge. Computer programming is a necessary way of introducing students to these concepts.

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

The ConversationLeon Sterling is Pro Vice Chancellor Digital Frontiers at Swinburne University of Technology.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Current Ed News, EdTech & Innovation, Education Leadership, Education News,

Instead of textbooks, why not pay teachers for content?

By Brandon Wilmarth

As an English teacher in Oklahoma’s Moore Public Schools, I was recruited by some textbook providers to help them create content. It was a lot of fun, and I was happy to make some extra money doing it. But there are so many teachers in our district who are much more talented than I am. If I was developing curriculum materials that school systems across the nation were purchasing, they certainly could be doing this, too.

So when I became a technology integration specialist for the district, one of my long-term goals was to leverage the expertise of our teachers in creating high-quality digital content.

Teachers are already scouring the web for videos, articles, and other free instructional resources, then pulling these together into coherent lessons and adding their own valuable context to help students understand the material or promote deeper lines of inquiry.

My thought was, why don’t we take some of the money we’re hemorrhaging on expensive, print-based textbooks that aren’t interactive and don’t effectively capture students’ imagination—and use it to pay our teachers more money for their efforts instead?

Our vision is to create a central repository of exemplary digital content that is developed and curated by teachers, for teachers in our district. All teachers would have access to these shared instructional materials. Not all teachers would be required to contribute, but those who do could receive a stipend for their work if it’s approved as a district-vetted lesson or unit.

This would allow us to use our most powerful assets—our teachers—to their fullest potential, while also recognizing and giving value to teachers for the lesson planning and content creation they already do so well.

That’s important, because in Oklahoma, our teachers are among the lowest paid in the nation—and many leave the profession after only a few years. Honoring their talents and contributions could help stop this mass exodus of young teachers as well as veteran content experts and keep them in our schools.

To realize this vision, we needed to have a technology platform that would support teachers in creating and sharing digital lessons. We found this platform in Ogment, which helped us create curriculum by making it easier to grab digital content, including what we found on the web, and turn that into useable lessons for our classrooms.

Part of the problem is not the lack of resources, but rather the overabundance of resources. Every teacher knows how much great content exists online—but managing it all can be a nightmare. Ogment has let our teachers clip videos, articles, games, and other internet resources and put them into lessons or presentations with a simple drag-and-drop process. Then, they can embed questions within a lesson to check for students’ understanding or prompt further discussion—and they can easily share their lessons with other teachers.

Our teachers have used the service to “flip” their classrooms and even personalize instruction. For instance, Tiffany Truesdell, a math teacher at Westmoore High School, says she has used Ogment to make customized lessons for her students.

“I can assign a lesson that presents all the material, and as students go through the lesson, I can have questions that check for their understanding just as if I were presenting the material in class. I can pull videos from any website to enhance the lesson, and if I only want a small section of the video, Ogment lets me assign just that portion of the video in my lesson,” she says.

“Ogment also allows me to differentiate a lesson. For example, if I have a student on an IEP who needs multiple choice, but I want the other students to have a free response question, I can create the lesson once but with differentiated questions. When the questions come up, it will give the IEP student the multiple choice question instead.”

Mrs. Truesdell’s example shows that with the right technology, our district can build a shared repository of lessons that is truly usable. More importantly, a system like this allows our teachers to apply their talents and reignite their passion for creating great content.

We are working toward a model in which we pay teachers extra for the content they create and share through this tool. We’re not there yet; we’re still trying to free up the funding to be able to do this.

But when we come up with the funding to realize our vision, we’ll be able to pay our teachers extra for creating and sharing top-notch lessons—rewarding teachers for their work and restoring professionalism to the field.

Brandon Wilmarth is a technology integration specialist for Moore Public Schools in Oklahoma.

  • no reactions
0
Share