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Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

Are lectures a good way to learn?

Phillip Dawson, Monash University

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

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

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

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

So what’s the alternative?

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

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

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

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

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

So perhaps the warning label should read:

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

What makes a good lecture?

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

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

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

The Conversation

Phillip Dawson, Lecturer in Learning and Teaching, Monash University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education, Secondary Education

Should college and high school diplomas be earned together?

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

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

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

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

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

2 Ways Educational Opportunity Has Risen 80 Percent Since 1970

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rethinking the Emphasis on Standardized Testing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

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

Paul Thomas, Furman University

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

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

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

Following Florida

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

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

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

Long-term consequences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reward vs punishment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Thomas, Associate Professor of Education, Furman University

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

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

Cloud Computing and K-12 Classrooms

Cloud computing has taken the business world by storm. Climate controlled rooms full of servers are quickly being replaced by remote storage technology, whimsically referred to as “the cloud.” Over half of U.S. businesses use some form of cloud computing to back up their important data and improve productivity. Instead of trying to find the capital to pay for a secure server structure, businesses are subscribing to cloud services and paying for more storage as their needs grow. The practical uses of cloud computing technology also translate to K-12 classrooms. Simply put, cloud storage saves space, money and time for teachers, parents, students and administrators.

A report by CDW Government found that over 40 percent of schools use cloud applications to store their data and by 2016, schools are expected to spend 35 percent of IT budgets on the cloud. The savings add up though. Right now K-12 schools report that their cloud initiatives are saving them an average of 20 percent on IT costs. By 2016, those savings are expected to reach 27 percent.

So how exactly are K-12 schools using cloud computing and what are the benefits? Let’s take a look:

Stronger communication through access. Through K-12 cloud platforms like Edline, teachers have better communication with parents and students regarding assignments, tests and projects. Parents can log in from anywhere (including their phones or tablets) and instantly know how their kids are progressing. Teachers can post important messages and keep an archive of completed work in one spot. Depending on the school, cloud forums may even allow parents and students to contribute in the application for a two-way dialogue.

Disaster planning. Schools collect a lot of information on their students and that data impacts decisions and the well-being of the kids. It takes a lot of time to build student databases and maintain them. If a man-made or natural disaster threatened the physical location of school records, whether hard copies or stored on servers, it could mean a catastrophe when it comes to student information. Using cloud computing ensures that student records are secure and accessible, no matter what happens to the physical school building.

One-stop shopping. Cloud platforms are able to bring together data pools that were previously unconnected so that educators and administrators have everything they need in one spot. Since there is no physical equipment that schools must purchase to get started with cloud computing, there is also a pay-as-you-go mentality. Schools do not need to pay upfront for infrastructure and can add cloud storage as their needs increase. It saves money, space, time and other resources.

Fast recovery of data. If you’ve ever experienced a server crash on a personal or professional level, it can be a long time while you wait for your information to come back. Cloud-based businesses recover data quickly and often handle any technical issues that might arise in a “crash” situation. A word that is often associated with all cloud applications is “redundancy” because the technology eliminates any chance of single-point failure.

Some peripheral benefits of cloud computing are decreased energy costs and high security features to ensure protection and privacy of student information. As K-12 schools move toward cloud computing, student information will be better preserved and shared content more accessible. While use of the cloud does not have a large direct impact on classroom activities it does improve teaching efficiency overall. It also has long-term savings attached which is always a bonus when it comes to K-12 technology spending.

Does your school use the cloud yet? If so, how has it improved your school efficiency?

 

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

 

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

Why scholars emphasize the need for affirmative action

Kalpana Jain, The Conversation

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, during oral arguments in the affirmative action case, Fisher v University of Texas, on Wednesday, December 9, suggested,

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well — as opposed to having them go to a less advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.

Justice Scalia is no stranger to controversy. In an earlier Supreme Court ruling upholding Obamacare tax credits for people on the federal exchange in June 2015, Justice Scalia was scathing in his dissent from the majority opinion.

Writing for The Conversation, Robert Schapiro, dean and professor of Law , Emory University, said:

When Justice Scalia gets mad, he does not hold back. He has often adopted fairly sharp language in his dissents but even by that standard, his dissent in King v Burwell is extraordinary in tone…. His vituperation reaches a crescendo in the conclusion where he snipes, “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”

Scholars and journalists alike have emphasized the seminal nature of the Fisher v University of Texas case. Indeed, a number of our contributors have argued that the case could exacerbate the racial tensions that have been evident through protests on campuses around the country.

Clearly, following this week’s oral arguments, the world of social media was on fire. Students and others tweeted at hashtag #scalia. Some even denounced Scalia’s comments with a hashtag of “#impeachscalia.”

Why the case is pivotal

Scholars argue that the judgment in the case will influence not only the admissions policies at UT, but in colleges and universities across the nation. And that could have consequences not just for diversity in education, but also for the educational success of students of color.

Liliana M Garces, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University, who served as counsel of record in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in support of the University of Texas at Austin when the case was before the court in 2012, said:

We might not think that admissions policies can have an influence on the work of administrators charged with supporting students of color once they are on campus, but findings from a more recent study suggest that the influence of these laws extend beyond the composition of the student body. Bans on affirmative action can have a detrimental influence on work that is critical to the success of students of color on campus.

Garces’ research also shows that after eight states banned affirmative action, via ballot initiatives and other measures, there was a drop in the number of students of color.

Before bans on affirmative action, for every 100 students matriculated in medical schools in states with bans, there were 18 students of color, whereas after the ban, for every 100 students matriculated, about 15 were students of color.

The case came before the Supreme Court after Abigail Fisher, a white female, applied to the University of Texas at Austin and was denied admission. She sued the university stating the university’s race-conscious admissions policy violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A lower court decided in UT’s favor.

In 2013, however, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court to conduct a more rigorous assessment of whether UT Austin needed to consider race in admissions.

Garces with her coauthor, Gary Orfield, a professor of education, law, political science and urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles, makes a strong argument that the decision in the case could affect affirmative action policy in higher education in general.

While the case raises questions specific to UT-Austin’s program, it is also possible that the Supreme Court may further limit the use of race in higher education admissions policies for institutions across the nation.

Other scholars underline the importance of looking at the historical context of the origins of affirmative action.

Tanya Washington, professor of law at Georgia State University, says:

Franklin D Roosevelt was the first president to issue an executive order prohibiting racial discrimination in hiring defense contractors in 1943. But it was President John F Kennedy who, in an executive order in 1961, coined the term “affirmative action” to stop racial discrimination by government contractors. Subsequently, state and local governments, including universities, were inspired to introduce similar programs to promote equal opportunity.

In her article, Washington refers to the recent protests on campuses across the country. Black students continue to experience hostility because of their skin color.

Colleges and universities, she says, urgently need policies to address these challenges.

One such existing policy includes the limited consideration of race in admission decisions. This policy allows institutions to build a racially and ethnically diverse student body.

What is happening globally?

Policymakers in the US are not the only ones to have pushed for affirmative action.

Michele S Moses, professor of Educational Foundations and Policy, University of Colorado and Laura Dudley Jenkins, associate professor of Political Science, University of Cincinnati, argue that about one-quarter of the world’s other countries have some form of affirmative action for higher education. And many of these programs have emerged over the last 25 years.

A wide variety of institutions and governments on six continents have programs to expand admissions of non-dominant groups of students on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, class, geography, or type of high school. Several use a combination of these categories.

In fact, as they point out, “the United States’ affirmative action policies in higher education are not the oldest: India’s policies for lower caste students take that prize.”

And this should give policy makers in the US pause, “given that US policies are older than most, much of the cutting edge thinking on the topic is now coming from other parts of the world.”

The Conversation

Kalpana Jain, Editor, The Conversation

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Testing

Students who repeat a year stoke bad behaviour in class

Clara G. Muschkin, Duke University

Students who are held back a year in school or who are older than average for their grade have long been known to be more likely to misbehave and to be suspended from school. But what’s not been clear until now is whether their presence causes ill-discipline across the school community.

In the US, accountability policies in schools have increased the number of students who are old for their grade, or have had to repeat a school year. Schools are evaluated on the basis of students’ demonstrated proficiency in certain skills, such as maths and literacy, for each grade. These policies have led to less frequent “social promotion” – where children automatically progress to the next grade regardless of their ability. Instead, there has been an increase in the proportions of children retained in grade after they fail standardised academic performance tests.

Additionally, some parents choose to hold back their children from entering kindergarten when they become eligible at age five. This trend, known as the “greying of kindergarten”, is linked to concerns about state and school accountability. There are also perceptions among parents that students who are older than their classmates have an advantage in school.

Debates on the consequences of these policies draw upon studies highlighting the effects of grade retention and older age on school attainment and behaviour of these students. But little attention has been paid to the implication on students who themselves are not at academic risk, but who must share classrooms with older and retained students.

Following the leader

Social science theories of peer influence frame questions of how older and retained peers may affect student behaviour in school. These children are more likely to get into trouble at school, in part because of the strong relationship between academic performance and behaviour.

Older students are more inclined to engage in behaviours that seem more “adult” or fitting with their physical appearance, despite a lack of social skills needed for making decisions regarding appropriate behaviour.

The older ones should know better.
Matthew Cole/Shutterstock

A stronger presence of peers who are more likely to misbehave can influence other students through the daily school climate, as well as through increased opportunities for directly interacting with at-risk students. Middle school students are particularly vulnerable to such peer influences, since early adolescence involves developmental adjustments that result in changing relationships with peers, family, and authority figures.

In a recent study, we looked at 79,314 seventh-graders in 334 North Carolina middle schools, using administrative data provided by the public schools and archived by the North Carolina Education Research Data Center at Duke University.

We compared data across schools and took into account student, school, and district-level factors that influence school behaviour. What we found was that the likelihood of a student committing an infraction, the number of infractions per student, and the likelihood of a student being suspended were all significantly higher among students attending schools with higher proportions of retained and older students.

Lowering the tone

There was increased negative behaviour across all groups of students who have higher levels of peers who have been held back a year. But this effect was stronger for students who were themselves retained. Older students share a similar vulnerability to the influence of their peers. There were stronger effects on ill-discipline on older students in classes with more older peers.

Unexpectedly, we found that students in groups that were least likely to engage in misbehaviour were the most susceptible to the potential negative peer influence of retained and older peers. This suggests that contact with older and retained peers can contribute to delinquent behaviour even if the direct contact is not very close or frequent.

These findings can help feed into longstanding debates regarding the benefits and drawbacks of grade retention and delayed school entry. They shift the focus away from the older and retained students themselves, to consider the implications for the entire school community.

For some individual students, being held back a year or delaying school entry might be the appropriate choice for their ultimate success in school. However, it is important that educators and politicians acknowledge that policies that make students repeat a year, and those that delay children starting schools, can have significant school-wide consequences.

Given consistent research evidence of the strong relationship between academic success and behaviour in school, policies that support students academically and prevent them falling back a year have the potential to benefit students who are at risk of academic failure, and can enhance positive behaviour across the entire school community.

The Conversation

Clara G. Muschkin, Director, North Carolina Education Research Data Center, Associate Director, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

As easy as ABC: the way to ensure children learn to read

Kerry Hempenstall, RMIT University

Human speech has long been present in every culture, and our brains have evolved specialized features to enable its rapid development when we are exposed to the speech of others. Reading however is a relatively recent skill, and we have no such dedicated reading module to guarantee success.

Fortunately, our brains are able to adapt to the task, although there is considerable variation in the assistance learners require to achieve it.

Unlocking the alphabet

Humans have produced numerous writing systems in their attempts to create a concrete form of communication, and those languages employing an alphabet have provided the most powerful means of achieving this goal.

The invention of the alphabet was one of the greatest of human achievements. It required the appreciation that the spoken word can be split into its component sound parts, and that each part can be assigned a symbol or letter.

The only other element required to have an amazingly productive writing system is for the learner to be able to identify the sound for each letter, and blend the sounds together to recreate the spoken word.

This is known as the alphabetic principle, and allows us to write any word we can say. Our written language is thus a code, and phonics is simply the key to unlocking the code.

Should we explain to our students through phonics teaching how our speech is codified into English writing? It sounds obvious that we should; indeed, that not to do so would be cruel.

Early introduction is paramount

But some believe there is a better way. English is after all a complicated language, having absorbed so many words from other languages with differing spelling patterns.

But, no, it turns out from years of research that there is a significant advantage in demonstrating from the beginning how the alphabetic principle works. This benefit is particularly evident in the 30% or so of our students who struggle with learning to read.

It also has become clear that demonstrating this principle systematically is more effective than merely sprinkling a few clues here and there as a story is read with, or to, a student.

If we do not introduce this principle early, there is a risk of students developing less productive strategies in their efforts to make sense of print.

Some of these approaches have a surface appeal because they provide a veneer of reading progress, but become self-limiting over time.

Don’t distract from the words

Despite a lack of evidence for its worth, many teachers believe that skilled reading involves making use of multiple cues in identifying words. They believe that words can be predicted (guessed), based on cues other than their structure – picture cues, meaning cues, grammar cues, and hints from the first letter.

However, routinely using pictures to determine word identity draws student attention away from print, thereby diminishing the central importance of the alphabetic principle.

Asking students to remember words as a primary strategy gives the unhelpful message that reading involves the visual memory of shapes, of letter landscapes devoid of alphabetic significance.

Stressing the integrated use of multiple cues (picture, grammar, and meaning cues) leaves students with too many ill-defined options, and produces marked variability in the preferred approach of students.

Fourth grade slump

Of course, many of the better students will develop an understanding that phonics is a foundation anyway; however, those less fortunate will be left to scour their memories for word shapes or attempt to predict upcoming words based on sentence/passage meaning or on the sound of initial letters.

Syntactic cues to word identification tend to be less employed among this less fortunate group group as their skills in grammar are likely to be under developed.

The problem is often not identified until about the Year 4; hence, the term fourth grade slump. In truth, the problem was there from the beginning, and had an instructional source, but was unrecognised because of some teachers’ misunderstanding of reading development.

What happens to these apparently progressing students? As text becomes more complex, prediction becomes less and less accurate.

Many sentences will now include difficult-to-decode words that carry non-redundant information, and hence become more difficult targets for prediction.

There are now increasing numbers of such words. For the memorisers, the number of words that must be recalled from visual memory outgrows students’ visual memory capacity.

These moribund strategies collapse, but in the absence of a productive course of action, students often hold on to them, resisting a return to decoding as a first option as being too hard or too babyish.

Resolution of the problems of these older readers is very difficult for both teacher and student. Better not to create this situation in the first place.

The challenges

Even when the value of early phonics teaching is recognised by educators, students vary significantly in the ease with which they develop from their initial painstaking attempts at decoding through to effortless fluent orthographic-dominant reading.

Our challenge as educators is to be truly sensitive to every reader’s progress through careful monitoring, and to ensure the intensity and duration of instruction is appropriate to their needs.

Once they are on their way, future progress becomes a self-teaching issue, driven largely by how much students choose to read. However, until reading is effortless, we cannot expect children to choose books over the many alternative communication modes available to them today.

The Conversation

Kerry Hempenstall, Casual lecturer in Psychology, RMIT University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert

How to Spell Words: Tips From Spelling Gurus

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.

Do you know a kid who feels so much shame for not being able to read and spell that they don’t want to go to school? A kid who’s very frustrated because they just can’t figure out how to spell or read words? Or perhaps you have a kid who believes they’re “dumb” because they’re struggling while everyone else ‘gets it’? How many of you have changed the word you want to write because you can’t spell it?

Although school is for learning, it just breaks my heart to think that many kids do view themselves that way. And it’s stories like this one that pushed me to travel to Minnesota, USA to work with English guru, Denise Eide.

Denise taught a group of us how to make reading and writing easier for kids to learn how to spell words. I’m so excited by what I learnt that I decided to share some of it with you.

30 spelling rules and 74 phonograms

‘Aha!’ moments seemed to happen frequently for me as Denise shared her research and knowledge. They included her explanations of the 30 Spelling Rules and 74 Phonograms. It is so much easier if you know this stuff!

By the way, a phonogram is the picture of a sound.

Phonograms represent the sound, whereas letters don’t.

For example, the phonogram G represents /g/ and /j/. The rules explain its usage.

The group can now argue why most English words (98%) follow the rules and explain away all those exceptions people seem to think exist.

Denise’s explanations were simple. They made so much sense that I find it easy to remember them.

I’m bringing home some packs of her Rule Cards for all of you and they will be available as soon as my shipment arrives. Every teacher, parent and child will want one. They are brilliant and with them you’ll be creating spelling champions in no time.

Learn the history of phonograms

Denise told us fascinating stories about the history of phonograms which will make teaching them so much more interesting.

Can you believe that the reason we have O representing the /u/ in ‘mother’ and ‘love’ is because the monks who had to copy script, many hundreds of years ago, found there were too many up and down strokes if they used a U? Can you guess what they did? They changed the U to an O.

Try writing the words as ‘muther’ and ‘luve’ and you can see how confusing it is.

Denise calls them the Lazy Monks.

I imagine that with a bit of flourish the kids would love the story and they will never forget how to spell words that apply to Rule # 3.

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